A minute away from the table

Long dinners have no natural pauses, and so they drift.

A table of old friends at a restaurant in Manama. The food arrived an hour ago. The plates have gone, the tea has come, and the evening has quietly split in two. Half the table is talking. The other half is there in body and elsewhere on a screen, nodding whenever a nod seems called for.

Nobody suggests leaving, because leaving feels rude. Nobody suggests anything else either. So the evening runs on for another hour at half strength.

There is a simple fix, and it is available precisely because a dinner among friends has no programme to protect. Anyone can call a pause. Phones face down, everyone on their feet, a stretch, a glass of water, and back in the chairs a minute later.

That minute is a test. If the table comes back to life, good: the people who sat down again chose to, and they can be there properly, listening, arguing, laughing, with the screens left where they are.

If it does not, if the minute away makes plain that nobody really wanted to sit down again, then the evening was already finished. It ended some time ago, and everyone was too polite to say so.

Either answer is a good one. What is not good is the third option, where everyone stays seated, half attending, waiting for someone else to ask for the bill. Be at the table, all the way, or go home and see each other next week.