The craftsman with the reputation

A family in Ras Al Khaimah is redoing the majlis, and two names keep coming up for the carved wooden panels.

The first carpenter is famous. People tell stories about him. He walked off a job because the owner questioned a joint. He arrives when he feels like it. He once made a household wait four months, and the panels were magnificent. The stories are told with a kind of admiration, as though the temper were proof of the gift.

The second carpenter is barely talked about. He gives a date, he arrives on it, he explains what he is doing, and his panels are also very good.

It is easy to read the noise as a sign of depth. Someone who makes this much fuss must be extraordinary at the work itself. Occasionally that is true. Far more often, the difficulty and the ability simply happen to live in the same person, and only one of them was ever doing the carving.

The stories are entertaining at someone else's dinner. They are much less entertaining when it is your majlis, your four months, your money on hold, and your family tiptoeing around a man with a chisel.

What the family actually wants is the panels. The storms are a charge they pay on top, not part of the craft.

Very few people would think to put "easy to work with" at the top of their list of strengths. It sounds like a soft quality, something to mention after the real ones.

It might belong first.