Stocked up on school supplies, they start to head back up to the cafeteria. On the way the Damascus boy asks Naima what her price is for renting out her microscope.

"If you want it first thing, for, say, two weeks? Guaranteed babysitting on demand by people who are not freshmen, for the first six weeks of school."

She's not sure how reasonable an offer that is, because she doesn't have a very strong sense of how much time crunch most people perceive themselves to be under here (or, like, the specifics of class logistics and how difficult they make this), but in fact her priority is to avoid getting eaten while she's still getting her bearings, so, best to try her luck in this direction, probably.

His reply is almost immediate. "Three weeks of babysitting for two with the 'scope."

"Four," she says, sort of habitually, and then wonders if she should be kicking herself for thinking that she can haggle like that here. "....actually, you know what, I'll take three, if you swear not to let anyone outside Damascus have a turn with it without negotiating directly with me. Then I can make offers to Cairo and Istanbul and Dubai afterwards for reading their mail, if I don't have a system worked out by then."

"Deal." He was totally expecting to haggle, three weeks was a lowball offer. He'll put one of his sophomore minions on escort duty, so it's not even his own time he's trading away.

Well, that response means she probably could have gotten four and the promise of renting the microscope to others after, but she's going to try not to waste time feeling dumb about it. The microfilm reader breaking is still a stroke of extremely good fortune for her, and she does think she can get something from the other enclaves with microfilm letters. If God is apparently actually looking out for her, best not to be too ungrateful for his gifts. She now has three weeks to find some people who can stand to be around her without being bribed into it. She's hoping this will be easier in the Scholomance, where everyone is hopefully as serious as she is about learning, but it could also easily be harder, because everyone is on a hair trigger and social decisions can be life or death here.

Anyway. "Pleasure doing business. Naima Saadawi, I don't think I said. I'll get the microscope out when we get back to the cafeteria, I don't want to get in the habit of being distracted in stairwells."

"Faruq Al-Amin. Pleased to meet you, Naima Saadawi." And they walk back to the cafeteria in silence. They do run into one small mal on the way, but it looks to have been more interested in running and hiding than eating any of their faces. Faruq zaps it anyways.

After the microscope is handed over and they've left the earshot of Faruq, Malak gives Naima a look.

"Your first instinct was right, you want to haggle. People who don't want to will name their price and tell you it's not negotiable. My read is Faruq would've taken your first offer and just wanted to see if he could get away with less. And now he knows he can, when trading with you, so he's probably going to offer you even less next time."

"You're right," she says, immediately, face falling a little. "I guess at least I'll know to trust that and to get more from the next person, now. Just - suddenly aware that I don't actually have anyone around here who cares enough to enforce deals for me yet. - unless you want to help, you seem to have some weight behind you. I'm going to be useful, my affinity's healing. Just need to not get eaten for long enough to make that obvious to people."

She does not have very much weight behind her. She just knows how to stand up for herself ever. She doesn't say that.

"It's less about finding people to enforce deals and more about finding the right people to deal with. I can help you set up some trades as opportunities arise, until you've got the connections yourself, but I'm going to want a cut for my time. Here's a freebie, though - You're probably going to want to approach all the muslim enclaves yourself for letter copying instead of letting Faruq be the middleman, and you want to add Tehran to that list."

"And... if you've got healing, we could make a deal right now. I'll put up and maintain a ward on your room to make it hard for mals to notice, and if me or one of my sibs or - let's say one other person, to be named later - gets hurt, you patch us up at a discount. We can talk about exactly how much of a discount once you've figured out what you want to charge everyone else."

At least she has siblings! Siblings who presumably have mana. Naima does not have siblings and Naima does not have mana right now. 

"Deal. I did think of approaching everyone directly, there's no reason to let anyone from Damascus be middleman if the reader's broken. Not entirely sure whether to do that now or to wait until Dama - Faruq gives it back." Probably it's rude or something to use people's cities as a metonymy for them. "What are you planning to do with all your microfilm? Mine's not labeled, so I don't think I can send it out to all of the intended recipients until it's been read. Is yours like that, too?"

"- yeah. I hadn't thought of that, it's going to be a pain just addressing all of it. Faruq is probably right that most people are probably not going to be willing to pay much for a letter, less if you're also going to charge for the cost of searching through all the mail for theirs."

"Seems true. I was thinking maybe we could set ourselves up as the new Anwar, skim through everybody's mail first, and then offer to trade for copies of the things that it seems like people might pay for copies of. Since it's not like there are any options that don't involve someone reading everybody's mail. And there could be something interesting in there, who knows."

"Pretty sure Anwar didn't sell the service. Standard is usually for things like mail to be handled outside, people won't be used to paying for their letters. The situation is exceptional, of course, they'll understand and nobody would expect you to do it for free, but that doesn't mean you'll have a ton of buyers even if you're picking the people with a sick sister outside or something like that. Just - trying to warn you it might not work out profitably."

"Yeah, that's fair. Seems worth a shot, though, I don't want to give it up without trying. Not interested in helping look through everybody's private correspondence, then?"

"Oh I'll absolutely help, if nothing else comes up in the next two weeks. Someone offers me an enclave spot to help them make an invisibility cloak and you're on your own, though."

"Of course! Good to have lots of irons in the fire, though, right?"

She likes this girl. That's something.

"That is how it's done here. I'll see you tomorrow about the ward on your door? I'll need to build the mana for it, I can't do it today."

Actually, Malak will probably help Naima with the transcribing even if something facially better comes along. A strong working relationship with a healer is a great thing to have in this place. Naima doesn't project competence like an enclaver - if anything she does the opposite - so she's probably going to wind up undervalued. Malak might even do Naima's door before her own, the first days are safe enough and a good second impression is worth its weight in gold.

"Sounds good. The serious mals are probably still digesting anyway." Oh that's probably morbid. Whatever. "Glad I ran into you."

"Salaam."