The Monk of Mokha

He wandered Sana’a that day, feeling trampled upon but then again free of the burden of dreams. He had had a dream, and dreams are heavy things, requiring constant care and pruning. Now his dream was gone, and he walked the streets like a man without anything to lose. He could do anything. He could do nothing.

He paid, and she gave him his new tickets, which bore the code that indicated they’d been singled out for extra screenings. “You know what?” he said. “You work in a racist institution. You should know about these things. I’ve been through four hours of screenings and I missed the flight. That’s why I’m here getting a new flight. And you’re putting

Apparently Khaldi was far afield with his sheep, allowing them to graze on any vegetation they could find. Every night he slept near them, and all was peaceful until late one night, when he expected them to be resting, he found that his sheep were still up and about. More than up and about—they were jumping, prancing, braying. Khaldi was mystified.

Any given cup of coffee, then, might have been touched by twenty hands, from farm to cup, yet these cups only cost two or three dollars. Even a four-dollar cup was miraculous, given how many people were involved, and how much individual human attention and expertise was lavished on the beans dissolved in that four-dollar cup. So much human attentio

exertion.

They were being detained. Not in a hostile way. Not in a way that felt especially menacing—not yet at least. It was more like the disorganized and irrational detentions common at American airports, the kind of detention that came from the officers feeling they’d been confronted with something beyond their immediate comprehension, something too unus

“Officer,” he said, “what if I told you that I’m an American citizen, and that we just came back from the State Department and the White House, where we were asked to speak? And after a day speaking to important people and feeling good about our democracy, now this will be my experience in D.C.? Because that’s what just happened. If Lincoln were al

Kopi luwak became popular, and its purveyors were able to demand a premium for it. Willem was not impressed. He liked to repeat an expression coined by George Howell, a well-known coffee roaster. “Coffee from assholes, for assholes,” he said.

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 brav

They reach their flavor peak three days after roasting, and after seven, they begin to decline. Grinding the coffee three days after roasting is ideal, and it’s best to brew it immediately after grinding.