Only $54,000

I have made many friends in Istanbul. They all sell carpets.

Making friends is very easy. You don't have to do anything, just walk. The friends come up to you, like "Charlie." I met him on the first day in Istanbul at the Grand Bazaar. I was just walking along, looking at the steams of gold bangles and rows of leather jackets when an elderly gentleman, not Charlie, started to walk along with me and asked how my wife was and how the kids were and whether I wanted to look at a carpet in his son's shop, which as just 10 meters up ahead. No thanks.

That's when I met Charlie, who started to walk along with me and confided that it was good I'd sent the old man away because he wasn't anybody's father and was paid a percentage of sales for any person he brought to the carpet shop. But Charlie owned his shop himself so there was no commission, and he was a wholesaler, and I should take a look. And I, thinking what could a carpet cost and maybe Jordan would like one, agreed.

It's basically the same pitch used by a car salesman. You're offered something to drink, in this case apple tea, which of course at once makes you feel like you're making a new friend and like you're incurring a little debt. Then came the carpet. "They call me Crazy Charlie," he told me, "because, believe me, David, these prices are like you'll find no where.

Then comes the carpet. Now, Crazy Charlie, who'd become Reasonable Charlie when I ran into him a few days later, didn't actually roll out the carpet himself, but had a staff of three unfurling carpets at a furious pace. "Do you like this one, David? Of these three, what is for favorite?"

"Well, that's my favorite, but I'm not in the market."

"I know, I know, but just for fun. Wouldn't you like it. Your wife would love you to bring this home."

Now, one thing I've got to say about Charlie was that he didn't have the look or the feel of a sleazy saleman--and I'm not saying this to set up an ironic turn around in which he is revealed to be a sleazy saleman. But, in old Istanbul, the whole city is in a desperate hustle. Charlie was just one of them.

That little carpet, the one I liked, he gave a price of $1,800. It was a crazy low price, he said. I thought I'd be crazy insane to buy a Persian rug an hour after leaving my hotel room on my first day in Turkey. But when I set down the tea and said I really would buy a carpet that day, he looked genuinely crushed, and escorted me like a dejected lover back to the main walkway.

But he was just my first friend. Now I am quite educated about Persian rugs made in Turkey. For example, I know that $1,800 is a really low asking price for these things. The next pitchman began at $5000. The last one really worked me over, and for almost a full quarter of an hour, I had become even crazier than Crazy Charlie as I began to imagine what that carpet would look like in my livingroom. If I paid part on this credit card, part on that credit card. It was only $54,000, and the color to die for.