The Friday table was never fair

For years, the cousins saw each other without arranging it. An aunt in Shubra kept her door open on Fridays, and whoever was nearby came for lunch. News travelled across her table: who was looking for work, who had trouble with a landlord, who needed a lift to an appointment on Tuesday.

Now the cousins live in Jeddah, Alexandria, Sheikh Zayed and further, and the common complaint is that the family has lost its glue. The Fridays held everyone together, the argument goes, and nothing replaces chance.

But the Fridays never held everyone. They held whoever lived within a short drive of Shubra. The cousin in Aswan heard the news a month late, if at all. The ones who sat nearest the aunt got the most of her attention, and the ones who were shy, or younger, or had married into the family, mostly listened. The table was warm, but it was not fair, and it rarely put two people together at the moment they needed each other.

What it was, above all, was effortless. Nobody had to decide to connect. It simply happened to those who were there.

Distance takes that away. What it offers in exchange is choice. A cousin in Jeddah stuck on a question about a lease does not have to wait for Friday, or ask whoever happens to be sitting beside her. She can call the one cousin who is a lawyer, today. Two who have never been in the same room can be introduced with one sentence. An uncle can be phoned for ten minutes about nothing at all, on purpose.

None of it happens by accident. It asks someone to decide, every time, and that is harder than turning up for lunch.

But it can reach further than the table ever did, if somebody bothers.