I am fascinated by con-artistry, and by the cognitive dissonance that seems to help some con artists be their best and most persuasive selves. Some are very calculating and fucking smooth, it's true, but with some there seems to be a kind of grey area they can inhabit.
For years I prided myself on having never been conned, despite my travels and life abroad and my years living in New York City. That is a kind of self-con, as I discovered when I went to Turkey to do research for a novel. 40 years old and I got taken! It wasn't a bad episode, but what was humiliating was that I knew what was happening, all along, yet at the same time was engaged in cognitive dissonance. They got my number.
I was walking down a street in Istanbul, and had a scarf over my head for the sun because it was so strong (among my many paranoias is a concern with UV rays). A man stopped me, asking if I was wearing the scarf to look Muslim. I said no, it was for the sun, and he, in his excellent English, began to chat casually with me. So we talked, and when he found out I was from southeast Michigan, he began naming towns. He knew all the towns in my area. So I told him the name of my town, and he knew exactly where it was. He said he did business in the area, that he was a wholesale goods importer.
Mohammed then told me that among the many goods that he imported were rugs. My warning bells went off: I laughed and said I was too poor to buy a rug. He nodded, said he was waiting for his American friend, Gene, who was working there in Istanbul and wanted to practice his Turkish. Gene and Mohammed were friends from the States, because Mohammed was in business with Gene's family. On cue, up walks Gene, the American guy. The three of us talk for a while, then Mohammed says to Gene, take her to the warehouse and show her the difference between good and bad rugs, in case she wants to buy one while she's here.
This was the con -- bringing this American guy in. Gene was very nice and funny, and had an educated American accent. We walked along through the streets, and I began asking Gene what he was doing in Turkey. He said he worked for an import/export company. His explanation sounded kind of vague; it had weird holes in it. But I just let the uneasiness I felt pass, because I'd been traveling by myself for 6 weeks, researching and writing, and was lonely.
When we got to the warehouse I saw it wasn't really a store; no one on the street would know that it was a place where goods were for sale. But it was full of spectacular, luxurious, sensually-overwhelming goods: glass lamps decorated with iron filigree; intricately-carved chairs of shimmering wood; draperies of heavy silk and satin, as well as light and fleecy hangings that looked like they'd been woven of delicately-hued cobwebs. Maybe they'd intentionally made it look like a scene out of The Arabian Nights.
Several more men materialized, and, with Gene at my side, they brought me upstairs to the rug room. They sat me down, brought me tea. Then I was inundated with rugs. Kilims, carpets, rugs, hangings. The men brought them out one after the other, unrolled them, let me admire them, watched my face, nodded when my eyes widened and put the ones that I loved aside. Then they showed me the differences between cheap ones and good ones. They showed me how to tell real wool from synthetic fibers. Organic dyes from synthetic dyes. How to appraise thread count. How to spot fake aging that made brand new rugs look antique.
After an hour of this Mohammed showed up. He and Gene and I talked in a strange aimless fashion, but underneath the seemingly random talk, I felt a pressure, a mounting tension. I asked more questions, as casually as I could, and noted more and more inconsistencies in the stories they told me of how they'd met, how they came to work together, Mohammed's business. But the rugs were so beautiful.
But what it came down to? I didn't want to be an ugly American. That was what the con hinged on. Mohammed figured out that in my travels, it was very important to me not to be an ugly American. He had understood how I envisualized this stereotype and was using it to frame our interaction. He was brilliant, skillful. He probably even knew that I knew I was being conned, but that it was impossible for me to let my awareness show without insulting him. And so, in order not to be an ugly American, I bought a rug.
It's a nice rug. It's sitting on the floor in my living room. I paid $800 for it. It's worth, maybe, $200 (if I'm being nice to myself and thinking that I don't want to be a conniving ugly jerk-off cut-throat American, out to rape the locals in a grasping, fuck-you sort of way, by driving them down to the lowest possible price they can afford to accept).
After I bought the rug and left, I freaked out. Full-blown panic attack. And this, simply because I saw, very clearly, how expertly I had been manipulated. How, through the extended talk (which was facilitated by Gene, the friendly "trustworthy" fellow American), Mohammed figured out how I wanted to see myself. And went to work on it and me.
As I said because I did manage to ask a few questions, I was able to put the whole thing together later. I realized that Gene was just an American drifter living at a youth hostel, who helped Mohammed out by telling his marks that Gene's hotel-designer family worked with Mohammed back in the US, because Mohammed was their supplier. It was all a set-up.
And yet, Mohammed did know a shitload about American geography, culture, and spoke with an excellent, refined American accent.
What's true? What's not? Who knows? But I know that they saw right through me. And so I had to buy the rug.
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