The Middle Eastern Bazaar
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The Middle Eastern bazaar takes you back hundreds --- even thousands --- of years. The one I am thinking of particularly is entered by a Gothic - arched gateway of aged brick and stone. You pass from the heat and glare of a big, open square into a cool, dark cavernwhich extends as far as the eye can see, losing itself in the shadowy distance. Little donkeys with harmoniously tinkling bells thread their way among the throngsof people entering and leaving the bazaar. The roadway is about twelve feet wide, but it is narrowed every few yards by little stalls where goods of every conceivable kind are sold. The din of the stall-holder; crying their wares, of donkey-boys and porters clearing a way for themselves by shouting vigorously, and of would-be purchasers arguing and bargaining is continuous and makes you dizzy.
Then as you rate deeper into the bazaar, the noise of the entrance fades away, and e to the muted cloth-market. The earthen floor, beaten hard by countless feet, deadens the sound of footsteps, and the vaulted mud-brick walls and roof have hardly any sounds to echo. The shop-keepers speak in slow, measured tones, and the buyers, overwhelmed by the sepulchral atmosphere, follow suit .
One of the peculiarities of the Eastern bazaar is that shopkeepers dealing in the same kind of goods do not scatter themselves over the bazaar, in order to petition, but collect in the same area, so that purchasers can know where to find them, and so that they can form a closely knit guild against injustice or persecution . In the cloth-market, for instance, all the sellers of material for clothes, curtains, chair covers and so on line the roadway on both sides, each open-fronted shop having a trestle trestle table for display and shelves for storage. Bargaining is the order of the cay, and veiled women move at a leisurely pace from shop to shop, selecting, prici
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