The reasons will still be there

A woman in Mohandessin binds books by hand. She sews the pages, covers the boards in cloth and marbled paper, and the journals that come off her table are better than anything in the stationery shops nearby. For two years she has meant to sell them.

Her reasons for waiting are good ones. The photographs are not right yet. A buyer might complain about a crooked spine. If orders arrive quickly she will not be able to keep up, and she hates letting people down. The courier fees could swallow what she earns. Her cousin says paper is going out of fashion anyway. Maybe after the summer, when things settle.

Every one of these is true. That is what makes them so convincing. A reason to wait does not have to be false to be useless.

Lay them side by side and a pattern shows. None of them will run out. After the summer the photographs will still be imperfect, a buyer will still be able to complain, and couriers will still cost money. The list does not shrink with time. It grows, because each month of thinking supplies a fresh risk to imagine.

What the list never includes is the cost of the journals sitting in a box. The person who wanted exactly that green one and bought something worse. The skill that only sharpens when a stranger pays for the work and says what they think of it.

There is no version of this that begins ready. The first listing will be clumsy, the first price a little wrong, the first delivery more trouble than she expected. All of that can be mended, but only once it exists.

So the honest move is to put one journal up this week and learn from whatever happens next. The reasons can come along with her. They were never going to leave.