The friend of a cousin

A family in Ain Shams needs the wiring redone in an old flat. They have two names.

One belongs to a stranger. He has photographs of finished jobs, a list of households who would answer the phone about him, and he offers to come back free if anything trips within the year.

The other belongs to a friend of a cousin, from the same village as the father. Nobody has seen his work. He gave a price over the phone without looking at the flat.

They choose the friend of the cousin, and they feel safer for it.

That feeling is very old. For most of human history, the people who were already known to us were a reasonable bet, and strangers were not. Familiarity was a shortcut that kept people alive.

The trouble is that the shortcut does not check whether it still applies. We relax with the person who speaks our dialect and grow careful with the one who does not, regardless of who actually knows what they are doing. We trust the seller who reminds us of an uncle and doubt the one with a long record we have not bothered to read.

In the flat in Ain Shams, the useful information was all on one side. A record of past work, people willing to vouch, a promise with a cost attached to breaking it. The other side had a shared village and a warm voice.

Familiar is a feeling about ourselves. Safe is a fact about someone else.

They are worth keeping apart, especially when someone is about to open up the walls.