"Joe Haldeman - Angel of Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

medina with the cart, while I went over to the antiques section.

You don't see many Kafir in the produce part of the medina, but there are always plenty wandering
through the crafts and antiques section, I suppose looking for curiosities and bargains. Things that are
everyday to us are exotic to them, and vice versa.

It was two large tents, connected by a canvas breezeway under which merchants were roasting meats
and nuts and selling drinks for dollars or dirhams. I got a small cup of sweet coffee, redolent of honey
and cardamom, for two dirhams, and sipped it standing there, enjoying the crowd.

Both tents had similar assortments of useful and worthless things, but one was for dollar transactions and
the other was for dirhams and barter. The dollar purchases had to go through an imam, who would
extract a fee for handling the money, and pay the merchant what was left, converting into dirham. There
were easily three times as many merchants and customers in the dirham-and-barter tent, the Kafir looking
for bargains and the sellers for surprises, as much as for doing business. It was festive there, too, a lot of
chatter and laughing over the rattle and whine of an amateur band of drummers and fiddlers. People who
think we are aloof from infidels, or hate them, should spend an hour here.

Those who did this regularly had tables they rented by the day or month; we amateurs just sat on the
ground with our wares on display. I walked around and didn't see anyone I knew, so finally just sat next
to a table where a man and a woman were selling books. I laid out a square of newspaper in front of me
and set the Thrilling Wonder Stories on it.

The woman looked down at it with interest. "What kind of a magazine is that?"

Magazine, I'd forgotten that word. "I don't know. Strange tales, most of them religious."

"It's 'science fiction,'" the man said. "They used to do that, predict what the future would be like."

"Used to? We still do that."

He shrugged. "Not that way. Not as fiction."

"I wouldn't let a child see that," the woman said.

"I don't think the artist was a good Muslim," I said, and they both chuckled. They wished me luck with
finding a buyer, but didn't make an offer themselves.

Over the next hour, five or six people looked at the magazine and asked questions, most of which I
couldn't answer. The imam in charge of the tent came over and gave me a long silent look. I looked right
back at him and asked him how business was.

Fatimah came by, the cart loaded with groceries. I offered to wheel it home if she would sit with the
magazine. She covered her face and giggled. More realistically, I said I could push the cart home when I
was done, if she would take the perishables now. She said no, she'd take it all after she'd done a turn
around the tent. That cost me twenty dirham; she found a set of wooden spoons for the kitchen. They
were freshly made by a fellow who had set up shop in the opposite comer, running a child-powered
lathe, his sons taking turns striding on a treadmill attached by a series of creaking pulleys to the axis of the
tool. People may have bought his wares more out of curiosity and pity for his sons than because of the
workmanship.