
The Monk of Mokha

Mokhtar told him they had been speaking Arabic. “Arabic, huh?” the officer said, and his eyes seemed to register, for a moment, that he was onto something potentially serious. “You mind if I see your IDs?”
Dave Eggers • The Monk of Mokha
You want to know how privileged I am? The first thing I thought I'd want to say back is, "Sure, officer, how about I do one better and hand you a pilot's license?"
“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
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This is a heart-breaking anecdote about the sheer stupidity of a process designed to protect us based on radical stereo-typing.
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 col
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A hard-scrabble life can breed ingenuity and resourcefulness. It can also breed despondency, which makes for a much more lame story. Glad this book is about the former.
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.
Dave Eggers • The Monk of Mokha
My brother-in-law brought me some Kopi Luwak from Indonesia (the humane stuff collected from wild civets — so really expensive). It was super mild and smooth, but not at all worth the expense, or the horrors, that it has since caused.
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.
Dave Eggers • The Monk of Mokha
Mokhtar walked out of his captivity in bright camaraderie with his former jailers.
Dave Eggers • The Monk of Mokha
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
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More sad... ;^(
“He’s the problem,” the woman continued. “Men like that are holding the whole country back.” Mokhtar had work to do, and he was tired, but the orator in him was awake and ready. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said in English. “You’re the problem.” The woman’s mouth dropped open. She looked at Mokhtar like he was an animal that had somehow learned to speak.
Dave Eggers • The Monk of Mokha
This is a hilarious exchange but I always wonder how true to life these exchanges are when written in biographies.
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 i
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I do not want to live in a society where adult males freely choose to carry guns. I want to live where it is patently obvious that guns are unnecessary to everyone.