The right kind of promise

When a promise is kept exactly, nobody says thank you.

An electrician in Giza says he will come at four, arrives at four, fixes the fault and charges what he quoted. The family nods. Of course. That is what an electrician is for.

A wedding photographer works in a different category. She does not promise exactly what the pictures will look like. She shows the most beautiful album she has ever made and lets the couple imagine theirs. She will almost certainly fall short of the dream. And yet the dream does part of the work: a couple who walked in expecting magic often look at ordinary pictures and see a little of it, because they were ready to.

Then there is the third way. A shoe repairer in Dokki hands the boots back a day early, polished, with new laces he did not charge for. He loses a little on that pair. He gets it back for years, in the cousins and neighbours who are sent to his door.

Each of these has become a signal in its own right, and over time we have learnt which one belongs where. We would not trust an electrician who talked like a wedding photographer. We would not book a photographer who described the album as precisely as an invoice. A shoe repairer who never surprised anyone would be fine, and forgotten.

So the question is not whether to promise more or less. It is which kind of promise this kind of work is supposed to make, and whether we are making that one, or the one that belongs to somebody else.