Two minutes, fully given

In a flat in Damanhour, a boy of fifteen is called out of his room because visitors have arrived.

He comes, because he has to. He shakes each hand without quite looking up, says the words of welcome at half volume, and is back at his door before the tea is poured. Strictly speaking, he has done what was asked. Everyone was greeted.

But nobody in that sitting room felt welcomed. The elderly neighbour who has known him since he was born noticed the eyes on the floor. The cousin who came a long way noticed the speed. What he meant as the minimum read as something closer to a refusal.

This is the trouble with courtesies done reluctantly. We tend to think of them as a scale: a warm welcome at one end, a polite one in the middle, a quick one at the bottom that still counts for something. It does not work that way. A greeting with no heart in it is not a smaller kindness. It is a small coldness, delivered in person, and the other person feels it more than they would have felt his absence.

The reason is that these gestures were never about the one making them. The handshake, standing up when someone enters, the question about their health, the walk to the door at the end: they exist entirely for the person receiving them. Their whole value is in what the guest feels. Done grudgingly, they keep the form and remove the only thing they were for.

So the honest choice is narrower than it looks. Stay in his room, or come out and mean it. Look up, use her name, ask about her knee, stay until the tea comes.

Two minutes, fully given, is the whole of it. Two minutes given unwillingly is worse than none.