The scrape with no note

A man in Ajman comes back to his car outside a row of shops and finds a long scrape along the back door. Nobody has left a note.

He knows exactly what should happen next. The person who did it should come forward, apologise and pay. That would be fair, and it would feel very good.

So he starts. He asks the shopkeepers whether anyone saw. He photographs the scrape from four angles. He asks about cameras. By the evening he has told the story to three friends, each time a little more polished, and he is no closer to anything.

The trouble with blame is that it only works if somebody else picks it up. Fault can be handed out all day, but it lands only when another person agrees to hold it. The driver who scraped the car has already decided not to. Every hour spent chasing them is an hour in which his mood, his week and his car all wait on a stranger who has no intention of helping.

He has handed the most important part of the story to the one person guaranteed not to use it well.

The alternative is less satisfying and far more useful. It is his car. The scrape is now his problem, whoever caused it. He can get a price for the repair, decide whether it is worth fixing at all, and put the evening back to work.

None of this makes the other driver right. It simply stops him from being in charge.

Once the problem is his own, every choice that matters is in his hands. That was the part worth having all along.