Fathi Ismail is upset. Just a few moments ago, the middle-aged local was strolling lackadaisically with his five-year-old son around the exquisite archaeological site of Cyrene, training a toy pistol at the weatherworn statues standing on the ledges of this Greek military training ground in modern-day Libya.
His carefree gait changed when he saw me. Lifting the folds of his grey acrylic dishdasha like a dress, he hurried over solicitously with a fixed smile and an outstretched hand. An ancient Greek coin glints on his palm.
Thirty dinars (HK$190) is his opening offer - and then we bargain. He drops his price quickly and cheerfully, happier to have found an Arabic-speaking customer than at the prospect of a sale. Life as small fry in the Libyan antiquities business is hard: many of the locals are not impressed by the country's pre-Islamic past and tour guides jealously protect their well-padded foreign charges.
'Most of the guides oblige but some are tiresome,' Ismail says, describing how he approaches tourists to sell them antique coins dredged up from the site's fertile earth. 'One even whipped out his mobile and threatened to call the police.'
Ismail has many coins. He pulls a white plastic bag out of the inner recesses of his dishdasha and spills its contents onto the smooth surface of a column. A dozen Roman and Greek coins tumble out, the emperors' heads glinting from the bronze and gold even after two millennia.
This is nothing, Ismail says. The real money is in the heads of statues lying buried. All they need to emerge from centuries of slumber is a drenching downpour to wash them to the surface. As for the coins, many are found in piles of freshly turned earth ejected by hundreds of badgers toiling in their networks of tunnels.
Still, you can't always depend on luck, says Ismail, as his face clouds over. He has to work. And such a lot of work for so little reward.