An unexpected gesture of kindness

Random story on how I was kindly offered these berries for free. As usual it’s nothing particularly fascinating but I think it’s cute. On the day restaurants opened in France after an 8 months closure I was in rue St Denis. This street was known as a prostitution hotspot but now it’s mostly taken over by hip restaurants, cheap bars and the occasional 60+ year old « fille de joie » who you see at the same spot, day in, day out, come hell or high water, displaying a work ethic that is clearly undervalued, but I digress. So on that particular day, while people were fighting tooth and nail for a spot at a restaurant, à man stood in front of his little grocery desperately trying to sell a case of strawberries. He was doing this with a doggedness and an obstination that for me could only be Egyptian. In Egypt we tend to display the same obstination for good or bad business ideas alike. Funnily this man, in normal times is always in his shop quietly not trying to push any sales at all. Today, I saw him and asked him, directly if he was Egyptian. He told me yes and asked me how I guessed and I replied that it was obstination on selling strawberries at the least appropriate time. He never did sell his strawberry crates that day but tried to sell me some today. Then he gave me these blackberries for free, telling me that they are «the French berries » and are different from Egyptian mulberries which he would eat as a child. I didn’t tell him I had had blackberries before, his kindness had touched me as well his constant chatting that kept going on for over 15 minutes. In the past few years in Cairo, vegetable sellers no longer chat with you and they no longer give you anything for free even if you have known them for years.