The first Saturday at the stall

A young woman in Jeddah takes a table at a weekend market for the first time. Succulents in hand-painted pots, a small sign, a cash tin. She has been getting ready for weeks.

Two things come with her to the stall, and they are easy to mistake for each other.

One is hope. Perhaps someone will love the pots. Perhaps a buyer will come back next week with a friend. Perhaps this becomes something. Hope is what got her up early to load the car, and it costs nothing to carry. A slow hour does not use it up, and even a slow day leaves plenty over for next weekend.

The other is expectation. Thirty pots gone by sunset. The table cleared. A crowd in front of her stall like the one at the stall next door. Expectation feels like ambition, but it behaves like a promise nobody else made. When the day fails to keep it, the disappointment is not with the market. It is with herself.

By late afternoon, with eight pots sold, the two have produced very different people. The one who arrived expecting is packing up early and deciding not to come back. The one who arrived hoping is writing down what the eight buyers asked about, and wondering whether smaller pots would travel better.

Same table, same sales, same evening.

The answer is not to want less. It is to let the hope run as high as she likes and keep the expectation as low as she can manage. That pairing bends without snapping, and it is the one still at the market in spring.