Real enough to sleep on

A woman in Sharjah pays far more than she meant to for a pillow. The filling is much like her old one. The cover is heavier, it comes home in a cloth bag, and the salesman spent ten minutes asking how she sleeps.

For the next fortnight, she says she sleeps better. She wakes earlier. The stiffness in her neck seems to have eased.

Her sister, who is practical, tells her it is all in her head. Cut both pillows open and the stuffing would look the same.

That is true, and it is also beside the point.

We have taught ourselves to separate what is real from what is felt, and to treat the second as a kind of embarrassment. If a pill with nothing in it eases the pain, the pain must have been weak, or the patient gullible. If a dish tastes better on a nicer plate, the diner must be shallow. The molecules are what count. The story is decoration.

Every time anyone looks closely, it turns out the other way round. The story changes the experience, and the experience is the only place the result ever lived. A woman who sleeps better because her pillow makes her feel looked after is sleeping better. Nobody needs to apologise for that.

This is not a licence to sell people nothing in a nice box. It is a reminder that the cloth bag, the questions, the unhurried attention and the feeling of being looked after are part of what people are buying, and part of what works.

Her sister calls it imagination, as if that settles something. The neck that stopped aching does not seem to mind which word we use.