'Why not?' or 'Mad Foreigners?'

On a wander round Zamelek, I stumbled across a little jeweller's up an alleyway. I spotted a ring which went with the earrings I bought last night along from Kandahar Indian. As we were paying up, I noticed these cute little silver camels. He offered to put one on a silver chain for me, but I had the idea of earrings and held one up against my ear. The jeweller laughed, shrugged and said what I'd like to think was, 'Why not?' and started to put together the earrings. What he'd probably said was, 'Mad foreigners'! By his wrinkles and laughter lines you'd have thought he'd have heard it all. Obviously not!