The number they saved

A young couple in Cairo fill in one form online, asking about two-bedroom flats in the new compounds east of the city. By evening the phone has not stopped.

Agents call at nine at night and again at eight the next morning. The voice notes say the same few things in different voices: prices go up on the first of the month, only a handful of units left in this phase, another family is viewing tomorrow. Someone sends a photograph of a show flat with no address. Someone else sends the same photograph.

Not much of it is quite a lie. Most of it is pressure, a way of making two people uncomfortable enough to move before they are ready.

And it spreads. The agent who calls once a week loses to the one who calls every day, so by the next month everyone calls every day. Once one of them says the price rises on the first, the rest have to say it too, or sound like the agent with nothing worth selling. Nobody in that loop chose to be that pushy. Each was pulled there by the one beside him, and the couple stop answering unknown numbers altogether.

I do not think the way out is a cleverer script. It is doing what the others are too nervous to do. Saying which building has had trouble with its water. Saying this phase will not sell out, so take a month. Sending one honest comparison, and then waiting.

That agent will lose some weeks to the louder ones. That cost is exactly why the others will not copy him.

He is also the only one the couple mention when their friends start looking, and the only number they saved.