“Ever had pho?” he asked without waiting for an answer. “It will blow your mind. They put in ginger or something like that, this crazy punch that hits you out of nowhere. The only problem that one bowl of soup cost fifty-two shekels and it doesn’t look like I’m getting raise anytime soon,” he said despairingly, telling me that all his friends in the hi-tech industry were making fun of him and saying that twenty thousand a month was barely a military salary. He seemed to have forgotten that only a year ago, when I interviewed him for his position, his jaw almost dropped when I offered him a double-digit salary.

“Teachers would kill for a salary like yours,” I said, to which he waved dismissively.

“No disrespect, but that’s hardly the same,” he said. “If tomorrow you give me thirty kids to teach, I can do it. Maybe I not be great, but I could do decent job. But if you tell school teacher to write something on Python, he don’t know where to begin. Get it?”

I didn’t tell him he had gotten the job because we didn’t have the resources to recruit better people. I was so annoyed I thought I’d better not open my mouth. He started listing every occupation he could think of and explain why he could excel at any one of them. When he said that being a farmer was just watering plants, it struck me. That was exactly how I saw Nabil. Nicolai and I saw the world with the same eyes, convinced that people who didn’t buy organic vegetables at the farmers’ market were somehow inferior.

“I look after my kid,” I said. “Trust me, it’s a lot harder than programming.”

“Sure, but you do that and work on app, you know?” he tried to explain.

“Not really,” I replied. “I’m not working on the app. Most of the time I’m with the kid.”

“What, that’s all you do? Take care of her? Isn’t that just giving her food or something?” he said and started laughing, realizing only after a few moments he was out of line.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it, it was stupid joke,” he said and scratched his head with embarrassment. “So you’re like stay-at-home dad?”

“That’s exactly what I am,” I said.

He took a sip of his beer, then slapped me on the back. “You da man, bro!” he said. “I wish I had dad like you. My dad used to come home every night at ten, half the time I thought he was burglar.”

I didn’t know what to do with his compliment. At first I thought he was just being ingratiating, but then I realized he wasn’t. Nicolai just said what he thought, for better or for worse.