Feseekh week

Egypt's spring holiday falls on Monday, and the categories that will sell hardest for it have never run an advertisement in their lives.

In the days before it the occasion sits on the pavement. The fish shops have a queue out of the door by mid-morning, mostly men, waiting on salted fish that has been curing for months. The grocers move lettuce and spring onions to the front and stack them where the pavement meets the road, because that is where they sell. Eggs go home by the tray to be dyed at the kitchen table by whoever is small enough to enjoy it. The pavement florist takes twice the usual stock. The man with the hand scales outside the bigger shop is having the best day of his month.

None of it has a campaign behind it. No brief was written for the lettuce. Nobody bought media for the salted fish, and the shop that will sell the most of it in the country before Monday has a name no marketer would recognise.

The oldest occasions here do not need marketing. They need stock on the shelf, a shutter that is up, and a price the street has already agreed. Demand for Monday was settled thousands of years ago and confirmed by every family since. Nothing a brand says between now and then adds to it.

Which is the tell. In this week the businesses that understand the market are on the pavement: the extra pallet, the crate outside, the second man on the scales, the shutter up at seven. The ones that do not are on the feed, greeting the day with a photograph of it.

The occasion never needed explaining to anybody. It needed to be in stock.