The same week in Qena

A shopkeeper in Qena used to know roughly what Cairo would be buying in two years.

A new snack, a new flavour, a new way of wrapping something: it would appear in the big city first, travel down the Nile slowly, and reach his shelves long after the excitement had moved on. He had time to watch, to decide, to wait and see whether it would stick. Some things never arrived at all, and nobody in his street noticed.

The older men who shopped with him had their own version of that delay. Whatever the young people were doing could be left to the young people. It would not reach them, and if it did, they would be gone first.

That cushion has disappeared. The teenagers who come in after school now ask for the same thing, in the same week, as teenagers in Zamalek or Jeddah. They have seen it on the same screens at the same hour. The distributor who used to bring new products a season late is being asked for them before the trucks have even left Cairo.

The shopkeeper can grumble about it, and some do. But grumbling is a way of pretending the old delay still exists.

It does not. There is no longer a region that hears about things later, and no age at which change politely stops visiting. What used to be the future of a far-off place is already the present of this one.

And the thing about the future arriving early is that it does not stop arriving. Tomorrow there will be another one.