The last shop before the sea

Halfway down the road from Cairo to Ain Sokhna there is a service station with one shop, and everything in it costs more than it does in the city.

A bottle of water, a bag of crisps, the phone charger somebody left at home. The man behind the counter knows exactly where he stands. The next shop is an hour away, the children in the back seat are thirsty, and the price on the bottle sits just below the point where a tired parent would rather drive on.

Nobody hands over money for anything unless it seems to be worth the price. That part is fair. What changes from place to place is who keeps the difference.

On a street with five shops side by side, the shopkeepers compete to give more of that difference away: a better price, a fresher loaf, credit until the end of the week. The one who leaves the most on the table for the buyer tends to grow, because the buyer comes back.

On the empty road there is no next shop, so there is no contest. The seller can keep nearly all of the difference, and usually does.

The buyer can feel it. They pay, and they remember. Next summer the same family packs a cool box before leaving Cairo, and the shop on the road sells them nothing at all. A seller who takes everything the moment allows is quietly teaching people to plan around him.

Making something worth paying for is the whole job. Taking every last piastre of what it is worth is a separate decision, and rarely the good one.