Don't You Have any Donkeys in your country?

When we first started reading this story in class, I was confused. A man came in, shaking his head, flagellating himself, and saying he was disgraced. This is very unusual behavior. I was also puzzled by his abrupt entry and statement on knowing a man who had been ripped off. Later on, when reading the story, I found out why he did this. The rug expert, thinking very highly of himself, believed everyone he encountered selling antiques in Turkey were low class, uneducated peasants that didn't know the true value of what they were selling. While traveling along the excavation site, they had come upon many peasants trying to sell "antiques". These antiques, the rug expert said, were pieces of junk not actually ancient, but carved and buried by people to make them look old, rusty, and expensive.
Later on, when meeting the donkey merchant, the rug expert underestimated the merchant's mind, and saw that he had a beautiful, ancient rug, possibly the highest quality in the world. As he knew the merchant would charge him much more for the rug than the donkey, the rug expert and his friend bought the lame donkey instead for a very high price. They expected the cloth to come with the donkey. However, the merchant kept the rug, and stated that he had done this many times before, using others' ignorance to fool them. If the rug expert said he wanted to buy the rug, he would've been better off as the merchant would have sold it to him. I believe the merchant knew that the cloth was worth a lot, picked the rug expert as an easy target, and played dumb.

The moral of this story is not to be dishonest, because the only person we are cheating is ourselves.