The print on the folding table

Two illustrators in Ismailia trained together and draw in much the same hand, and they earn their living in opposite ways.

One has a folding table at a weekend craft fair by the canal. She props up a few prints, watches people stop or not stop, and listens. Most walk past. Some smile at a drawing and put it back. A few buy two. By evening she knows exactly how the day went, and nobody has to tell her.

The other draws for a publisher of children's books. He is paid by the page. An editor approves the work, and her manager approves the editor. Months later the book appears somewhere he will never see it. He has never watched a child turn one of his pages.

He has the calmer life. He is spared the people who walk past. He can tell himself the drawings are right and the books are badly sold, and nothing in front of him says otherwise.

She has the louder life, and it has its own danger. After a few slow weekends she is tempted to draw more cats because the cat print sold, then brighter colours, then whatever the last woman asked for. The crowd is always there, and the crowd always wants something slightly different. Follow it far enough and the drawings stop being hers.

So neither has it solved. Too close to the buyer and you start making whatever the last person asked for. Too far away and the only voice you hear is your own, which feels like confidence until the day it turns out to be wrong and there is nobody to argue with but the publisher.

The table is hard. The desk is comfortable. It is the comfortable one I would worry about.