Everything Touched Seems to Be Gold--the 24-Karat Kind--in Bahraini Bazaar

On a back street of the bazaar, in a gray marble fortress of a building amid shabby merchant stalls, all that glitters is solid gold.

Or almost.

Eighteen karat--three-quarters pure--is the minimum quality offered at Bahrain’s gold souk , where courtyard shop windows blaze with baubles of every description and the prices are far below those of Europe and America.

Most Arabs regard anything less than 21- or 22-karat gold as tourist stuff and their standards prevail in the souk , as bazaars are called in this part of the Arab world.

How about a one-gram, 24-karat ingot for milady’s necklace, 0.999 pure gold and stamped with a rose, for $22?

Or perhaps your name in inch-high letters of 21-karat yellow gold at anywhere from $100 to $350? Al Salaam Jewelers makes them overnight, but you can have one right now if your name is Lucinda, Terry or Al Davis. Those are in the window.

To a stranger from the West where 14-karat metal makes pricey jewelry, the gold souk is a wondrous sight. Any glance takes in tens of thousands of dollars worth of the stuff.

The Arabs take a less romantic view. To them it is more of an investment house, like the stock market, only safer.

“We have had an eye for this bright metal for a long time,” says Mohammed Zainal, proprietor of Palace Jewelry, as he wraps a purchase for a wide-eyed tourist.

“It’s for a rainy day, eh? It’s better than having your savings in cash.”

Gold souks, in fact, are common from the Persian Gulf to Syria and Arab North Africa, and have been since antiquity.

Syrian clay tablets dating from 2500 BC refer to a quality standard known to merchants as “Dilmun gold.” Dilmun was Bahrain, then a well-watered oasis and traders’ crossroads midway along the much-traveled gulf.

“Western cultures usually see gold as decoration or jewelry, and if they are going to invest in it they invest in paper,” said a diplomat with long experience in the Arab world.

“The Arabs have always seen it as a way to store wealth, and it’s a good store. Look at the tradition of the Bedouin. You don’t have houses. You’re on the move.

“So you store your wealth in gold and carry it.”

Arab experts say dowries are still paid in gold in some parts of the Arab world--by the groom to the bride, with the woman keeping all in event of divorce.

Asked why prices are so low in the gold souks, since the Arabs import their gold under license from Swiss banks or other foreign sources, Zainal the jeweler said it was because the Arabs work with, and sell in, such volume that they can afford to charge the going world-market gold price plus only a tiny profit.

“In Europe,” he scoffed, “they want all the profit they can get.”

Foreign analysts more or less agree with that assessment.

“They essentially don’t charge for minor workmanship,” said one western expert. “There’s a tiny markup for simple stuff.”

In addition, souk merchants said, there is no tax on gold in Bahrain and there are few middlemen because most of the jewelers are smiths who convert ingots into jewelry on the premises.

In Bahrain, the gold souk would be a sight even without its gold.

Jewelry shops line one or two streets of the ramshackle old market quarter. But a three-story building that looks like a polished-stone bunker has risen in recent years to house many shops under one roof as “The Bahrain Gold Souk.”

Inside could be wealthy suburban Dallas or Santa Barbara except for the clientele, almost exclusively Arab or South Asian.

Plate-glass shop windows shimmering with wares look out on an enclosed mall of beige marble floors, ceilings with soft spotlights and balconies railed in redwood.

Soft rock from Radio Bahrain plays at a discreet level while shoppers browse or snack in the blond-wood Oasis cafe, where a fountain bubbles over blue tiles.

Outside, on the nearest corner, an old gray stucco shop selling embroidered gowns fairly sags against the souk building.

For blocks around, down cramped curry-scented streets, stretch shops selling clothing, foreign watches, bric-a-brac, Japanese electronics--the usual stuff of souks, under signboards proclaiming “Godfathers,” “Mothercare” and “Abdulazziz Alali Albassa, General Merchant.”