Watermelon Weirdness

If you haven't heard, it is stinking HOT here in Fes!  And what could possibly be a more refreshing snack than ice cold watermelon, yum!  Both my roommate and I ended up craving some of this local delicacy a few nights ago when we went off in search of an ice cream first and then decided to talk a waltz passed our fruit & vegetable stand.  We arrived, gave our greetings to our produce guy, YES, we have our OWN produce guy! then made our selections.  One small-ish watermelon.  Our produce guy picked it out for us, presented it for our examination and then proceeded to weigh it.  B'shal? we asked (how much?). He responded with what sounded vaguely like "hums mia" which we took to be humsa mia.          Either way the price didn't make sense.  Using our limited understanding of Arabic we knew that humsa was five and mia was hundred, but 500 dirhams for a watermelon was a bit much!  (1 USD = 7.2 DH)  

    Noticing our confusion, he pulled out a calculator to show us what he meant.  The numbers read 250.  How you could get 25o or potentially 25 from what sounded like five hundred was beyond either of us.  Even more unsure of what he was actually asking for we debated amongst ourselves.  Not anticipating what seemed to be a high price for watermelon we counted up our money and found that we were seriously lacking!  Realizing there was still confusion he kindly tried again, this time showing us 2500!  

      Now we had absolutely no idea what the price was but we knew we didn't have enough.  Not willing to give up though we resolved to walk to a nearby ATM, telling the fruit guy that we would be right back, in english of course... incredibly helpful since he didn't speak a word of English!!!  Laughing at what had truly turned into an amusing situation we gathered our money from the only english speaking ATM on the road and made our way back across 3 lanes of traffic to get our watermelon!  

     Walking back down the row we inquired, in English, about our watermelon, thankfully he understood and smiled as we prepared to pay him.  A look of shock quickly spread across his face though as we attempted to hand him the 250 dirhams.  In the very wildly animated exchange that followed he explained that for that sum of money we could have ALL the watermelon and that our one watermelon was only 25 dirhams!  

     We all ended up laughing at the language and culturally botched exchange.  As Nicole and I left in ongoing fits of uncontrollable laughter, I was certain our watermelon story would be told and retold up and down the shops for hours if not days and years to come.  After the whole incident though he gave us each free plums and now every time I visit he always hands me a few yellow plums after every purchase.  

I have also now learned what he had been trying to communicate.  He was actually saying "khmps miah" which actually means 500 but what he didn't include was rials!  Apparently no one actually says rials when they are referring to that form of currency, you are just expected to know.  A rial is 20francs or 1/5 of a dirham.  Therefore 500 rials = 25 dirhams!  They really should have this printed somewhere!