The Monk of Mokha

by Dave Eggers

And about how Americans like Mokhtar Alkhanshali—U.S. citizens who maintain strong ties to the countries of their ancestors and who, through entrepreneurial zeal and dogged labor, create indispensable bridges between the developed and developing worlds, between nations that produce and those that consume. And how these bridgemakers exquisitely and bravely embody this nation’s reason for being, a place of radical opportunity and ceaseless welcome. And how when we forget that this is central to all that is best about this country, we forget ourselves—a blended people united not by stasis and cowardice and fear, but by irrational exuberance, by global enterprise on a human scale, by the inherent rightness of pressing forward, always forward, driven by courage unfettered and unyielding.

When Mokhtar made a mistake, Hamood was angry only if Mokhtar made an excuse. “Own the error and correct it,” he said. Hamood had a thousand proverbs and maxims. His favorite was Keep the money in your hand, never in your heart. He used that one a lot. “What does that mean?” Mokhtar asked. “It means that money is ephemeral, moving from person to person,” Hamood said. “It’s a tool. Don’t let it get into your heart or your soul.”

By eighteen, he knew these people, who had gone to college and could live wherever they wanted, had nothing he didn’t have. They weren’t any smarter, this was clear. They weren’t quicker. They weren’t even more ruthless. If anything, they were softer. But they had advantages. Or they had expectations. Or assumptions. It was assumed they’d go to college. It was assumed they’d find jobs befitting their upbringing and education. There were no such assumptions in Mokhtar’s world. In high school there had been the odd teacher who mentioned college to him, saying he could do it, he had the mind, but there wasn’t much college talk at home. There was no precedent and there was no money.

The last step was convincing the customer to pay for it. A customer accustomed to a two-dollar cup of coffee will startle at the idea of paying five dollars for a cup of direct-trade Ethiopian coffee. But if the customer knows that five dollars is the actual price that cup of coffee should be—the correct price to ensure that everyone involved in bringing that cup of coffee into existence is being treated humanely and given a chance to live with dignity—would that customer balk or step up?

Mokhtar continued to go into tribal areas, hours or days from Sana’a, and every time he packed his dagger, and a SIG Sauer pistol. His driver had a semiautomatic rifle. When he was in more troubled or unknown districts, he brought along another man who carried an AK-47 and a grenade. None of this was unusual. There were twenty-five million people in Yemen and at least thirteen million guns—after the United States, it was, per capita the world’s most armed nation. Men wore AKs walking down the street. They brought them to weddings.