Shopping: The Khan and Others

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Another place that is a must see in Islamic Cairo is the Khan el Khalili market. Khan means market and it was originally a Turkish bazaar established in 1382 during the Ottoman Empire. Part of the Islamic Cairo tour, you are only allowed 45 minutes to shop, so, if you are planning to do some really heavy duty souvenir shopping, it is advisable to come back when you have more time, which is what I did. The Khan is a 15-minute taxi ride away from the hotel and be sure to agree on a cost before you set out with the taxi. We had no problems with the taxi to or from the hotel. The market contains a treasure trove of trinkets and souvenirs as well as more pricy items such as silver, brass, leather goods, and fine jewelry. Remember that haggling is obligatory and if you don't do it, then you will easily pay 50% over the going price. Haggling is not for the faint of heart and is pretty overwhelming, particularly if you’re not used to it. In my case, a European man that I had met on a previous tour and I started out rather weakly on the haggling circuit, but wound up really getting into the swing of things in the end. Gone were the niceties of civilized mall shopping as we ended up gesturing wildly while yelling, “No, no!!” to prices that we felt were exorbitant. One vendor that I was heavily haggling with over a pair of singing, stuffed camels forgot for a moment that I was American and praised my companion for his shopping shrewdness by giving him the ultimate complement, “Boy, I can tell that you’re not an American”. I looked at the vendor in a very deliberate manner and got those camels at my price.

At the Khan, I purchased some other great things such as Pharoahnic pens that kiddies love, scarabs for good luck, beautifully crafted leather wallets, a brass plate, and of course, t-shirts for my family and friends, all at pretty good prices, although not as cheaply as I had previously imagined they would have been in Egypt. This was also the case with an 18-karet cartouche that I did not feel that I was getting the greatest deal on, but hey, it comes from Egypt.

If you travel, you’ll notice that on all tours around the world, tourists are subjected to a ritual called forced shopping. I don’t know if this is fact or not, but some sources have suggested that all tour guides in foreign countries get kick-backs from bringing the tourists that are in their tours to strings of wholesale establishments that sell any manner of products that are unique to the particular country the tourist happens to be in at that moment. So, when our tour group was all mellowed out, laughing and having a good time and thus was highly vulnerable to engaging in serious credit card debt, our tour guide told us that we were going to be visiting a number of wholesale industries, which sold products of Egypt, and then added slowly with a sly smile, just to remember that we shouldn’t feel “obligated” to buy anything.

The first stop was the “Acme Carpet School (name changed to protect the innocent)”. Our tour guide explained that the, “Acme Carpet School” is the best of its kind and produces the highest quality hand-woven carpets in all of Egypt. In the school, we crowded around an instructor who guided us to several looms where young men were weaving extremely intricate and beautiful Egyptian carpets so quickly that it was mind-boggling. And when I say those men were young, I mean young. One of those weavers couldn’t have been more than 10 years old. Several of my tour mates were aghast at this and interrogated the carpet instructor as to whether these young men were being subjected to child abuse or not. In response to those sighs of “how terrible”, the carpet instructor denied that the boy in question was 10 years old and was actually 17, but was very small for his age. To this, everyone looked a little doubtful and even the boy snickered, but everyone wanted to go shopping, so they decided that this was a perfectly satisfactory explanation. The instructor also went on to deny that this was an evil practice and that the trade provided the young weavers with a valuable skill.

After some of my tour mates were talked out of a cool few thousand U.S. for carpets, we were then off to the Egyptian papyrus and jewelry store. Upon arrival, we were treated to Northern African hospitality with delicious hibiscus tea, the preferred beverage of pharaohs, and a demonstration of how papyrus was made. The demonstration was really very interesting and I thought pretty easy too. Ever the thrifty person, I secretly calculated how I could make this stuff at home and save myself some money. After all of the oohing and aahing was finished my comrades were led to the kill and once again dropped a lot of cash on various papyrus works of art. We then wandered upstairs to the fine jewelry section and were given a fast-talking sales pitch for pieces of Egyptian jewelry that we were told that we would never again have the opportunity to buy. Although on a conscious level nobody really believed this, it struck some primordial hunter-gatherer nerve and everyone’s resolves failed and my acquaintances and I bought some small pieces of gold and other jewels. But, once you buy one item, then the proprietors know that they have you and proceed to parade all kinds of jewelry past you. The only thing that stopped them was the call of the tour guide calling for us to leave.

The last wholesale store that we visited sold a vast variety of essential oils extracted from all sorts of fruits and flowers as well as wonderfully delicate and filigreed glass perfume bottles that were softly tinted with all the colors of the rainbow. The bottles were hand-blown by their craftsman using huge containers of gas that flame their torches. Although I had decided to put a little distance between myself and the hazardous looking gas container that our glassblower wielded, the glassblowing demonstration was spectacular and culminated in crows of delight from the audience as a fiery piece of glass shot out of the glassblower’s hands and soared through the air until it landed on my neighbor’s lap. The oil demonstration went on for nearly one hour until the salesperson had everyone convinced that these oils would make our wrinkles go away as well as attract persons of the opposite sex. Most of our group purchased various oils and I settled on a lovely Egyptian lemon scent because, frankly, I couldn’t in good conscience leave this place empty-handed after this man had talked to us for two hours straight.

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