The comments book by the door

A young sculptor in Zamalek has her first small exhibition, and on a table by the door there is a notebook for visitors to write in.

On the last evening she reads all of it. One person thinks the figures are too thin. The next thinks they are too heavy. Someone wishes they were in colour. Someone else says the room is too bright. She goes home unable to sleep, trying to work out which of them is right.

None of them, really, and it is not their fault. Almost nobody who wrote in that book was ever going to buy a piece. They walked in on the way to somewhere else, looked for a minute, then found a pen in front of them and felt they ought to say something. So they did. People are poor at explaining why something moved them or left them cold, and when asked, we reach for a reason that sounds sensible and write that down instead.

And the pieces are finished. The bronze is cast. A note that the figures should be heavier is not advice she can act on, only a small weight to carry.

There is a kind of second opinion worth seeking. Before she casts the next piece, she might show the clay to one teacher she trusts, or to a collector who has actually paid for work like hers. Someone with knowledge and something at stake, consulted before anything is fixed. That is a conversation that can change the outcome.

The notebook by the door is something else. It is a record of strangers filling a silence, about things that can no longer change.

She can leave it on the table. She does not have to read it.