The Fine Art of Baksheesh

The Fine Art of Baksheesh

Should I really be holding a lion cub? Two female students in my Arabic study abroad group were already cooing and petting the irresistibly cute, furry fluff-balls. We were at the Cairo Zoo, where I was discovering that for a little baksheesh, visitors could get a lot closer to the animals than back home in the United States. “Baksheesh” technically means “tip” in Arabic (as well as several other languages), but it’s really a stand-in word for a…