Shopping, redux

I got to go shopping with two of my coworkers yesterday, which was a rare chance at true freedom -- no work, just looking for pretty things to bring home. S wanted to buy a painting for his mother's house in Baghdad, A wanted art to decorate his family's new home in Amman, and I went along for the ride.

With the exception of the bodyguard lurking outside, it felt fairly normal. We walked around a series of adjacent galleries, compared our favorite paintings, chatted with the owner and generally had a good time. I bought an absolutely amazing painting -- it's hard to describe, but it's an abstract painting of a couple of "Baghdadi doors," a minaret of a mosque, etc. It's royal blue with other bright colors (lots of gold) and some raised texturing. It's going in my bedroom when I get back.

The gallery owner was clearly pretty desperate to make a sale -- when my coworker asked about the price of the painting I was looking at, he said "Oh, whatever you think." We eventually settled on $20 American for something that was similar to pieces that people were charging $150 for in American military compounds. These guys can't make a single sale most days, so having three people walk in with money to spend was pretty exciting. All told, we gave him the equivalent about $100 American (for five paintings, one of them framed), and he couldn't stop thanking us.