The third reason

A woman in Beirut makes fig jam in her kitchen, fills small jars, ties brown paper over the lids, and has been taking samples round the small shops of Mar Mikhael.

One owner turns a jar over in her hand, holds it to the light, and says the wrapping is a little plain for her shelves.

So the jars get new clothes. Printed labels, a loop of twine, a square of cloth over each lid. Two weeks and a fair amount of money later, she goes back. The owner says it looks lovely now, really lovely, but the price would be hard for her customers.

So she works out a smaller jar at a lower price, and goes back again. This time the worry is that it sits too close to what the grocer down the road already stocks.

Each answer was polite, each was fixable, and fixing them has used up most of a month.

I think the mistake is treating them as answers at all. A shop owner who has decided against something is not writing a brief for the next attempt. She is looking for a kind way to close a conversation with a woman she likes, who came all that way with a basket on her arm. Plain wrapping, a high price, too much like the grocer's: these are the soft words people reach for so that nobody has to hear the hard one.

The real reason might be a full shelf, or a cousin who also makes jam, or simply a feeling. It was never going to be offered, and it was never owed.

What she was told the first time, heard plainly, was no. Hearing it that way would have given her the month back, for the shops that might say yes.