Not every mother

Tomorrow every brand in Cairo and the Gulf will speak to every mother, and no mother will hear a word of it.

I know how the line gets there. The brief says mothers. Then it goes round a room, and each round takes a detail out, because someone at the table has a mother the detail does not fit. The one who works. The one who does not. The one who is not here any more. Every objection is fair, every edit is a small subtraction, and what survives is a sentence with nobody in it. A tribute to the woman who gives everything, from a brand offering fifteen per cent off.

Nothing in it offends. Nothing in it lands either.

Now look at what actually gets forwarded in a family group this week. It is never the tribute. It is the piece of writing that describes one mother, closely. The one who eats last at iftar. Who fills every plate, sits down when they are already half empty, and says she ate in the kitchen while she was cooking. Who keeps the good dates for the guests and eats the broken ones herself. Who asks the person she has just fed whether they have eaten.

Every family has some version of her, and that is why one of her reaches all of them. The general does not travel. The specific does, because the reader supplies their own mother the moment you give them a real one to look at.

Every mother is not an audience. It is a way of not choosing, and the reader can hear the not choosing before they finish the first line.