Ask the stall for proof

At a frankincense stall in the old market in Muttrah, the seller has an answer for everything.

Which resin is the best grade? This one, the pale one. Where is it from? The far south, from the oldest trees. How long will the scent hold in a room? All evening. Is it worth twice the price of the bag beside it? Easily. Each answer arrives before the question is finished, in the same warm, certain voice.

Some of it may be true. Some of it is plainly improvised. He has no way of knowing how the smoke will behave in a stranger's sitting room, and he does not pause to wonder. When a buyer doubts him, he checks nothing. He repeats himself, a little louder.

It is fashionable now to complain about the new machines that answer questions in exactly this tone: fluent, sure of themselves, sometimes wrong, and stubborn when corrected. But they learned the tone somewhere. People have sold this way for as long as there have been stalls.

And the fault is not only on his side of the counter. He talks like this because it works. Most buyers nod, pay and walk on, so the confidence is rewarded every time. Nobody changes a habit that keeps closing sales.

So the buyer sets the standard. Ask him to burn a piece of each grade side by side. Ask how he knows where it was harvested. Ask what happens if the scent is gone in an hour. A good seller enjoys these questions, because the evidence is already in his hand. A glib one gets irritated.

Either way, you learn something worth more than the bag. The standard at any stall is simply whatever its customers let through without proof.