The door that sticks

There is a café near the Corniche in Alexandria where the front door sticks, and it has the look of a door that has always stuck.

You push, nothing happens, you push harder and it gives with a small bang. Regulars do it without thinking. First-timers stand there for a second, embarrassed, until someone inside waves them on. The sign over the window has lost a letter. One of the ceiling fans turns at its own pace, slower than the others.

All of these are broken. None of them is a problem anyone in there is losing sleep over, and I suspect that is exactly right.

Every broken thing asks for a little attention. Fixing all of them would be possible, in the sense that anything can be fixed. But attention is not endless, and a place that chases every small fault has nothing left for the things that matter and that nobody else would think to fix.

From a table inside, it is clear where the attention went instead. The tea arrives at the right strength without being asked twice. The man who runs the floor notices when a table has been waiting and when it would rather be left alone. Somebody decided the glasses should be warmed before the tea goes in, which no guest asked for and no other café on the street seems to bother with.

The door is a fault everyone can see and nobody minds. The cold glass was a fault nobody could see, and somebody minded anyway.

That is the trade. The door stays stuck so that the glass can be warm.