Nobody compares prices tonight

The last nights have the same notes every year.

The barber has a queue on the pavement and is taking walk-ins at a price he would be embarrassed by in January. The tailor stopped accepting orders a week ago and is now only handing things over. The shoe shop has one size left in the good style and is not sorry about it. The mall is open until dawn, and the queue at the tills runs back into the aisles.

Nobody is comparing prices.

For three weeks the same shops ran an offer, and the offer was the whole conversation: the percentage, the code, the free delivery over a threshold. It mattered then. It does not matter tonight. Eid is expected on Sunday or Monday, depending on the sighting, and the shirt has to exist by then or the child wears last year's.

That is a different kind of scarcity from the one marketing usually manufactures. The customer has the money. What they have run out of is time, and no discount buys back a day.

So the last two nights sell at full price better than any night in the year, and the businesses that understand it are not discounting at all. They are extending their hours, putting more people on the floor, and saying one thing only, which is that they are open and they have it in stock.

The rest are still running the offer, and the offer is now the least interesting thing in the shop.