After a year at Banana Republic, he heard about a job at the Union Square Macy’s, selling shoes to women, and even though he was seventeen and knew nothing about women’s shoes, or about women, or Macy’s, he applied for a job, and in his Rupert incarnation, he got the job. The commissions were higher than Banana Republic’s, so he left that gig for Macy’s, and on his first day, holding his breath, he held the trembling foot of a thirtysomething woman in a short skirt.
I would heartily recommend this job, he told his friends.
You weren’t supposed to ask out the customers, and he didn’t have to. They pursued him. Every day there he was, well dressed and kneeling before them, holding their unslippered feet. They were Cinderella, he was Cinderella. He was the interloper to the ball. He didn’t know their world. A pair of women would come in, holding Gucci purses, fondling the shoes, talking about vacations in Madrid and Cannes and Saint Bart’s. On Monday he’d hear a woman telling her friend about her son who wanted to go to USC, how they had an excellent film school, and on Tuesday, hearing another mother talking about her own creative son, he’d expound with great authority about how good and selective the USC film program was. Probably the best in the country, he’d say.
The Tenderloin taught you to think quick, talk fast. You had to listen and assimilate. If you sounded ignorant, you got taken. Within a day or two at Macy’s, he knew Cole Haan, Betsey Johnson, Coach, Vince Camuto, Michael Kors, and was making about two hundred dollars in commissions a day. He averaged twenty hours a week, after school and on weekends, and there were women who believed, or let themselves believe, that Mokhtar was older than he was. There were the twentysomething sisters from Germany. There were the thirtysomething women from New York. He and another shoe guy would take them out, or let themselves be taken out, show them spots in the city they wouldn’t otherwise know. Nothing much came of any of these dates, but he learned. He learned what it was like to travel, to have the money to buy things, to buy plane tickets to the Caribbean, to Europe. When you’re in Paris, these women would say, you have to go to L’Abeille! And don’t go to Jackson Hole in January. December or February, but never January. Good to know, he told them, and every night, he went back home, to sleep on the top bunk of a two-bunk set in his family’s one-bedroom apartment on Polk.
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.
CHAPTER VII
RUPERT SELLS HONDAS
A FEW MONTHS AFTER his high school graduation, Mokhtar saw a help-wanted ad for a valet. Honda of San Francisco, a dealership on Van Ness, was looking for someone to park cars.
Mokhtar filled out an application and found himself sitting across from a sturdily built man named Michael Li. Quickly Mokhtar learned that Li had been a marine, did time in the First Gulf War and now ran the sales floor at the dealership. He asked Mokhtar questions about cars, about his work experience, and Mokhtar told him about Banana Republic, about Macy’s, and exaggerated a bit about his own car knowledge. He had two uncles downstate near Bakersfield, Rafik and Rakan, who had taught him a few things about cars. Mokhtar threw out some terms—alternator, dual-quad, carburetor. Li nodded, listened, asked questions. The job interview went on longer than an interview for a car parker should, and finally Li came out with it: “You ever think about selling cars?” They’d just lost a sales associate, he said. Would Mokhtar want to give it a try?
Mokhtar was prepared. He was always prepared. Any Tenderloin kid was always prepared. His mind worked quickly enough that after a few minutes with Li he’d already sensed some possibility in the air, and while he was answering questions about folding shirts and selling shoes, the parking of cars, another part of Mokhtar’s mind was assessing the likelihood that the marine would offer him some other kind of job. Mokhtar couldn’t tell people about this kind of thing—how he could sniff some opportunity and mentally prepare himself for it. They didn’t understand. But he knew that if anyone gave him the slightest opening, if the door were even an inch ajar, he could talk himself all the way in.
Which is what he did with Li. Sure, he’d thought about selling cars, he said. He went into high-bullshit mode. He’d thought about it a lot, actually. Especially Hondas, Mokhtar said. Hondas are so reliable. And the resale value! He looked out to the lot and threw out random-but-general-enough-to-be-accurate thoughts about the Accord, the Civic, that bizarre box-on-wheels called the Element. He talked about ABC, Always Be Closing. Where had he heard that? He used it, it felt right, and Li continued to nod. After half an hour of hearing Mokhtar talking out of his ass, Li hired him as a junior sales associate.
Mokhtar was nineteen years old.
He brought a dozen brochures home, studied the various models and features, and came back feeling invincible. Now that Mokhtar was working there, Li shifted into a different man—not the guy who had interviewed him. That guy had been so gentle. He’d spoken with a small and delicate voice, strange coming out of his square jaw and thick neck. But that was Li’s way during interviews, and with customers, too—his voice tiptoed around, his smile was kind, his posture relaxed. But off hours, behind closed doors, talking about quotas, moving inventory, Li was a marine. You gotta control the motherfucking conversation, Mo! Don’t let those fuckers get control. Don’t let those fuckers get control! Whoever controls the conversation controls the deal, you got that?
Mokhtar couldn’t argue. The guy was about a buck-ninety and cut like a statue. So Mokhtar tried to control the conversation. Ask them questions. Questions they have to say yes to, Li said. Get ’em saying yes. Get them fucking saying yes, you understand?
Mokhtar understood. He’d see a prospect on the lot, a middle-aged guy wearing a 49ers hat. He’d saunter up.
You like the 49ers this year?
Sure.
That Justin Smith, he’s a beast, right?
He is.
And Frank Gore! That guy’s a tank! Plays the game how it should be played.
Right.
(Now look at the car, a black Accord. Keep the yeses coming.)
You like this car?
Sure.
You like this color?
Yeah.
Can’t beat black. Always looks good, day or night. You want to get inside?
Sure.
You like the dash?
Yeah.
You like the leather?
I do.
Check out the digital speedometer. You like that?
I do.
Check out this sound system. You like Tupac? Coldplay?
Coldplay.
Me too. You see that concert last year? At Shoreline? Oh, and check out the GPS. You like it?
Yeah.
You want to take it for a drive?
Sure.
You like the acceleration?
Yeah.
You like the steering?
Yeah.
The cornering?
Sure.
The digital speedometer?
Yeah.
If we get the right price for you, you think you’d want to drive this baby home today?
After the test drive, it was up to Li. That was the arrangement. Li had decided that Mokhtar would be the young car guy, the young upstart who knew cars, loved cars, but didn’t know prices. The numbers weren’t his forte. So Mokhtar would grab a prospect, get them excited about the car, just one car lover to another—doing the test drive, cranking some jams, cruising around South o
f Market, sweet. Then he’d bring them back to the office and Li would step in.
The second month Mokhtar sold two cars. The third month, nine. Soon Li let him deal with the numbers, make the offers. First Mokhtar had to learn how to size people up. He knew clothes, knew when someone could afford a nice shirt, nice shoes. The shoes were key, but sometimes deceptive. The tech people all wore sneakers, and sneakers had a low ceiling. But he learned how it worked. Some of the wealthiest people liked simple cars and paid cash. The aspirational types wanted the car loaded with extras, and they liked to finance. Either way the price could be massaged. There were four boxes—total price, interest rate, monthly payments and down payment—and you could toggle each one till you got the price you needed. But first was the offer, the base number, and how that number was delivered was everything.
Make an offer and shut up, Li said. You make the offer and whoever speaks first loses, you got that? Whoever fucking talks next loses.
Mokhtar would say a number, $32,500, and stare at the customer sitting on the other side of the desk. Just stare. Nothing bizarre—he wasn’t trying to hypnotize anyone. But you had to be confident in that number. The number was the number. It was the best number you could do. And always the customer would speak first. Always. You let that fucker talk first, you hear me? Whoever fucking talks first loses.
After a while Mokhtar was averaging twelve cars a month and was pulling down three thousand dollars a month in commissions. He bought himself new clothes and new shoes. He gave the rest to his parents. They were proud and saw no reason for him to deviate from that course. Selling cars—it was more than he’d make working behind the counter at any of the Yemeni corner stores. More than he’d make pushing a mop.
But after a year, Mokhtar felt an itch. He wanted something else, something more. A few of his friends were going to college, or were already in college, and he was thinking of making a move. Maybe he was just looking for an excuse.
There was an old man on the lot. Impossibly old. Mokhtar couldn’t understand how the old man had driven his way to the lot, had gotten out and was walking around. He looked at least ninety. Mokhtar made his way over to him, and the closer he got, the older the man seemed. A hundred and ten, easy. He was dressed in an old-man way and he wanted a new car. He wanted to trade in his Chevy station wagon for an Accord, he said, but he didn’t like the Accord’s sticker price. Mokhtar had been told about these men, the ones who had read some Consumer Reports article, or something on the Internet, and came to the dealership with some arbitrary price in mind. This price was never the sticker price. It was always some number below the sticker price. Sometimes it was five hundred dollars under. Sometimes it was fifteen hundred. Usually it was one thousand. This was the standard number. They wanted a thousand off whatever the sticker price said. And this old man was no different. He told Mokhtar he wanted the car, but wanted a grand knocked off. Mokhtar told the old man he’d check with his manager, and he went inside to see Li.
Sure, Li said. Let’s get the paperwork written up.
Mokhtar went back outside and told the old man that they had a deal. They’d knock a thousand off the sticker price.
The man was elated, and they shook hands, and Mokhtar brought him inside and introduced him to Li. I’ll take it from here, Li said, and Mokhtar went back to the lot.
An hour later Mokhtar watched the old man drive off in his new Accord, and he waved to the old man, thinking that something good had been done that day. He was impressed by Li, by the way a brutal negotiator could show a certain respect, a certain mercy, for an old man, call a cease-fire that day in the endless commission skirmishes, and go ahead and just knock the thousand off. The old man only had so much time left on the planet; the hassle wasn’t worth it.
That was cool of you, Mokhtar told Li.
Li looked at Mokhtar funny, and pointed to the contract. The numbers were the usual garble of add-ons and fees and other nonsense, and Mokhtar realized Li hadn’t knocked off anything. The car cost the old man exactly what Li wanted to charge him. He’d taken $1,000 off the initial number, but he’d added it right back on.
That made it easier to leave. Mokhtar had been part of a hundred deals before, and there was always some number juggling, but this was different. Mokhtar went home that day, and a few days later he resigned, via text. He knew it was unprofessional, and that it spoke to the declining standards of propriety and workplace decorum, but he was done. That’s what he wrote to Li in his text, just three words: I’m done, son.
CHAPTER VIII
RICHGROVE AGONISTES
BAKERSFIELD IS NOT HIGH on the list of places a young man might go to begin his hero’s journey. But Mokhtar’s grandmother Sitr, his mother’s mother, lived in nearby Richgrove, and she had a couch. Mokhtar planned to sleep on this couch, rent-free, while he took classes at Bakersfield College. He needed time to concentrate on school without spending money, so he took a bus four hours downstate.
It was not entirely his choice. His father Faisal was not happy about him quitting the Honda job. The way Faisal saw it, Mokhtar was well paid there, had a future there, and he quit for no significant reason. It was further evidence of a restless, or even shiftless, disposition. Mokhtar’s parents wanted to know that Mokhtar had a plan. Either get and keep a job, they said, or go to college. Quitting good jobs while continuing to sleep on their floor was not a tenable option.
Live down here for a while, his grandmother said. Take some classes.
Mokhtar needed some air, a change of pace. He packed his stuff and enrolled in four courses: political science, world history, sociology and film studies. He moved into Sitr’s house, just behind the Fastway Gas and Grocery on 99 South.
Sitr and her husband Ali had purchased the Fastway back in the 1980s. The business was in the middle of the Central Valley, surrounded by fruit farms—grapes across the highway, avocados and almonds down the road. When Sitr and Ali took over, it was the only gas station for miles, and it was instantly profitable. For the fruit pickers, almost all of them from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, Fastway was the place they’d buy lunch, buy beer for after work, gas for their trucks. The fuel never made a profit—no gas station can turn much of a profit on actual gas—but it brought people into the grocery, and that’s where the profits happened. Food, lottery tickets, liquor.
Ali and Sitr built a compound behind the station and lived there, happily, for twenty-five years. Their kids and now grandkids were brought up working at the store, speaking Arabic at home, English in school, Spanish in the grocery. Mokhtar had been going downstate to visit since his family had moved to California. It was a rural life—quiet and dry and hot. On the narrow roads cut between fields of plums and grapes, his uncles Rakan and Rafik had taught him to drive. And because in Yemen, basic facility with a rifle was expected of any young man, they took him to the 5 Dogs Range to teach him how to shoot.
When Mokhtar arrived this time, his grandfather Ali had been dead ten years, but the business was still thriving, still owned by Sitr, and run by Rakan and her son-in-law Taj. Taj and his wife Andrea lived with their four kids in the compound, too. It was crowded, but they made room for Mokhtar. He slept on the couch for the first month or so, until Rakan found and resurrected an old bed frame from the garage; it had been used, years before, by Andrea’s daughter Khitam. It was pink, but he was grateful, and he tried to be useful at the Fastway. He took out the garbage. He broke down cardboard boxes. He helped out Olga, the sharp-tongued Mexican American cook who made burritos and empanadas and sandwiches for the farmworkers.
The laborers who came to the Fastway would give Sitr boxes of grapes, oranges, plums, blueberries and almonds—whatever was in season—and Sitr would give them the herbs, spices and figs she grew in the compound. Sitr loved Richgrove. It reminded her of Yemen—the warm and fertile Yemen she’d known as a girl. Everything grew in Ibb, she told Mokhtar. Melons, figs, lemons, apples, almonds. Anything. Their Yemeni ancestors had been farmers in their native
province of Ibb, so it made sense that Yemenis from Ibb came to California. It was where she was meant to live.
Sitr had known Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. She’d known Nagi Daifullah, a Yemeni American farmworker and a martyr to the farmworkers’ cause. When Cesar Chavez began to organize farmworkers, the Yemenis in the Central Valley lined up behind him. In 1973, Daifullah, a Yemeni from Ibb, became a United Farm Workers’ strike captain. Fluent in English and Spanish, he was a crucial link between the Spanish- and Arabic-speaking laborers. In August that year, at the height of the UFW battles with the farm owners and law enforcement, Daifullah was outside a bar, celebrating a modest union victory. A Kern County police officer approached, and he and Daifullah had words. He beat Daifullah over the head with a flashlight and dragged him through the street, killing him. Chavez himself led the funeral procession, seven thousand farmworkers strong, through Delano.
Now Mokhtar was going to college with the sons and daughters of these farmworkers. His classes at Bakersfield College were decent but he was soon bored. To some residents of Richgrove, Bakersfield was the big city, but Mokhtar found nothing to do in Bakersfield. He had no car and no spending money. He didn’t connect with the other students. There was a Persian woman in his sociology class he found intriguing, and there were a few Muslim women who found him intriguing, but otherwise he quickly realized Bakersfield was not his destiny. After a semester he was gone. He moved back in with his parents, who now lived on Treasure Island, a few blocks from where he’d gone to middle school.
They were unhappy with him. He’d quit his Honda job. He’d quit college. Now he was sleeping on their floor.
—
But there was hope in Yemen. It was 2011, and Yemen was swept up in the catapulting hopes of the Arab Spring, and Mokhtar joined the Yemeni American community in the Bay Area to celebrate the progress made and to try to articulate the possibilities at hand. In April, Mokhtar and a group of other young Yemeni Americans organized a march, and two thousand Yemeni Americans demonstrated in San Francisco to support Yemenis’ push for democratic change. Shortly after, he was part of a national delegation of Yemeni Americans invited to Washington, D.C., to address the State Department and the White House. Mokhtar was twenty-one years old, the youngest of the delegation, comprising nineteen representatives from eleven states, and he had nothing to wear. He had owned one suit in his life, and he’d worn it through.