Sold by the gram

In a Cairo gold shop the price is not on the piece. It is on a board on the wall, and the number on it was different yesterday.

Everything in the window is priced off that board. The rate per gram for the day, multiplied by the weight, plus a charge for the making of the thing. The making charge is the only part of the total anybody argues about, and it is argued down, because it is the part that does not come back when the piece is sold again.

The gift weeks have just finished, Mother's Day on the twenty-first and Eid before it, depending on the sighting. Watch a buyer at the counter in a week like that. He asks the weight before he asks about the design. He wants the piece on the scale in front of him. He knows the rate already, because it was in the family group this morning, and he is not being difficult. He is being careful with money in a currency that keeps moving.

So the gift is doing a job no gifting brief describes. It is a savings account that can be worn, handed over in front of the whole room, and turned back into pounds in a bad month at a price the household can look up. The occasion decides that it is bought this week. The board decides what it is worth.

Which leaves the jeweller advertising the one component the customer negotiates to nothing. The collection, the season, the story of the house, the photography: all of it lives inside the making charge. The weight sells itself, at a price the shop does not set and cannot discount.

Sell the moment and you are bidding against that board. The moment lasts a weekend. The board is the reason the piece was bought at all.