Gemstone Deals

Stayed a little longer in Srinagar to organize money for Sarita's gemstone deal. Also Rasool wanted to show us a furniture making place that his cousin worked for. He is very eager for us to start importing all things Kashmiri into South Africa. The furniture making place was in the old town. We drove through it in a classic Ambassador car. The town itself was medieval and quiet. The furniture solid and dependable. I'll send for some when I have an address.

We couldn't draw the cash needed for the gemstones, so we told Rashied he can use his manual Visa card machine. But he wasn't sure how to use it, and didn't have a phone number to approve the funds, and he was very stoned and probably a little paranoid - so he got cold feet, and we had to try again the next day to draw money.

Rasool's daughter has been very ill for weeks and in and out of hospital. We had to take her temperature. It was almost 42. Rasool was obsessed with sweating a sickness out of the body, so he had only given her warm water to drink, and she was burning up under thick blankets. I suggested to give her cold water, and to remove all the blankets, let her lie underneath the ceiling fan, and mop her forehead with a cold wet cloth. It just makes more sense.

Yousef is very close to Rasool, so he had been visiting Rasool's daughter everyday in hospital. He too gets very angry. He says he gets more angry the older he gets. He threw his food he was eating at a security guard. The day was so hot, he wanted to sit in the park in front of the hospital to eat some food and take a break. He wasn't allowed to. He knows the park is only there for the media to show everybody what a great hospital it is. So he sat in the shade of his car on the street to eat. He was almost done when the security guard told him to move because a car wants to park there. It was then that he lost it. The security guard ran away because he mistook Yousef for a terrorist.

Rasool orchestrated 'the best deal' for us on a Kashmiri carpet (twenty years old; tribal design; so nice). We got it at cost. It was a complicated deal that hinged a lot on past working relationships and future 'preferred' partnerships between Rasool and the owner of the co-operative.