Doing things with language

There's a fruit stand on the corner two blocks away where they charge too much, but people pay, because the shop is right downtown, as much as anything can be downtown here. If I'm in a rush, I buy things there. Yesterday, in the rain, I bought half a kilo of tangerines and some apples and bananas. Usually I pick the fruit myself, but I was already carrying a box of cookies from Avenida bakery. The man behind the counter picked and weighed the fruit for me and handed it all over in a plastic bag. I hurried home.

Three of the tangerines had started to rot! 

The man knew they were rotten when he chose them for me. He had touched them with his own hands. He had abused the situation to sell me bad fruit. What to do? Thoughts: I could stop buying fruit there. I could buy fruit there, but always insist on picking it myself. These options were so negative, though, based on punishment and mistrust. This morning, after French, I wrapped one of the rotten tangerines in a plastic bag and walked over to the corner. It was a different man than yesterday.

Me: Salam aleikum.

Man: Wa aleikum asalam.

Me: Labes? Bighair?

Man: Labes, bighair, alhamdulilah.

Me: Alhumdulilah. 

Pause.

Me: Amss, ana kuntu hinaya, wa nus kilo mandarine... [gesture] lakin, talata mithal hatha [holding up the bad one]. (Yesterday, I was here, and I... half a kilo of tangerines, but three are like this.)

Man: Talata? Fi kilo? [talks about how it's normal to have one or two bad ones in a kilo]

Me: Talata fi nus kilo! (Three in half a kilo!)

Man: [He thinks for a moment. He looks at me and the rotten fruit dangling in the air. Then he apologizes and fills a bag with three of the biggest, shiniest, unscarred tangerines.]

Me: Shukran bzef. Bslama.

Man: Bslama.

YES!