ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

Welcome to This Being Human. I’m your host Abdul-Rehman Malik. On this podcast, I talk to extraordinary people from all over the world whose life, ideas and art are shaped by Muslim culture.

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

I loved everything about coffee. I loved the people, stories of farmers. In the process of learning about this, this beautiful beverage, I learned that it changed the world. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

When you think of coffee producers, what are the first countries that come to mind? I’m guessing Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam, or even Ethiopia. You probably don’t think of Yemen. And yet, Yemen holds a central place in coffee history. The beans first grew in Ethiopia of course, but they were first properly cultivated in Yemen. For over a century, Yemen was the world’s only coffee exporter, before the drink took root in places like Indonesia, Turkey and France. But in more recent history, their industry went through a severe decline, due to factors like climate, war and economics.

By 2013, when Yemeni-American Mokhtar Alkanshali began his obsession, a cup of real coffee from Yemen was hard to come across. So he left his home in San Francisco and went on a three-year journey through Yemen to learn everything he possibly could about the country’s coffee industry. And to help bring it back.

As the CEO of Port of Mokha, Mokhtar has reinvigorated the international market for Yemeni coffee, and helped rebuild the industry itself. Today, coffee connoisseurs around the world seek out Yemeni coffee for its rich, unique flavours. And they’ll pay upwards of $16 a cup for it.

Mokhtar’s life and adventures were the subject of a best-selling book by the writer Dave Eggers, called The Monk of Mokha. I called up Mokhtar in San Francisco, where he lives part time, to talk about this extraordinary history, and where he fits into it all. 

Mokhtar Alkanshali takes coffee very seriously. He’s a certified Q grader – kind of like a coffee sommelier. For Q graders, coffee is not just an art, but a science, where they can assign a specific, numerical grade to a cup of coffee.

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI: 

So when we talk about coffee tasting, I remember walking into that space where I see people with very serious looks on their faces. They have clipboards in hand and they're slurping very aggressively, very loud, and then spit in it. And then they're writing their things. And you have to have this poker face, because if I blurt out, "I taste almonds," now you're thinking of almonds. And this is what it sounds like, just so you guys can have it, because it's hard to explain. And I remember I did this one time and people were just, they couldn't believe that people did this. But here's how it sounds. [slurps] It's this very aggressive- you got to, you want to vaporize the coffee around the different parts of your tongue and mouth.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

So you've taken this special spoon that is designed for tasting and the coffee for its full breadth of flavours. You have brought it to your lips and you have slurped it in that aggressive way. Do it one more time for us Mokhtar because it's quite something. 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI: 

I always say that the more your mother would disapprove, the better. It's almost like soup in a spoon. Here we go. [slurps]

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

Mokhtar discovered this passion for coffee in his adult life. But the seeds were planted in his childhood. He grew up in Brooklyn and then San Francisco, the son of Yemeni immigrants.

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

Growing up in a country where your parents were not born and sometimes you're not born even. You look different, your hair's a different texture. Mine's very stubborn. Your food smells different, you pray differently, all these different things. And a lot of times that is not celebrated and it's sometimes not even accepted in the culture that you come into. As Toni Morrison would say, that the master pen, the master narrative. I've always been trying to find something about my culture, something about my people that I would be proud to just showcase and talk to. And I remember when I was younger, I read passively about coffee in Yemen. There's a place called Mokha. And so that was always in the back of my mind. And I started to dig deeper and deeper. And I went on this journey of reading all these books. Also growing up on, quote unquote, the wrong side of the tracks, I got into a lot of things that I shouldn't have been doing as a young kid and my parents freaked out. And so I got sent back to Yemen when I was 12 years old to live with my grandfather and grandparents. And it was sort of a boot camp. And that's where I got connected with the coffee plants and farming, my family's history. And then fast forward, I go back to the US a few years later, and still like you, I had an obsession with the history of our people, of Islam, of Arabs. And when we look at Western civilization, it's always like, you know, it begins somewhere in the Euphrates River and the Nile River in Egypt and back in Iraq. And then somehow and in Greece, you know, you know, Rome. And then we have this dark age period. And then somehow these cities pop up in London, Paris, Vienna. And so I became obsessed with this medieval time. And this is a time where we were a light in the world and we did incredible things. And from that, coffee was one of those incredible things that was invented and produced and distributed in a really interesting way. And I wanted to somehow have that continue now. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

But he still didn’t know how he fit into that industry. Mokhtar saw his friends finishing college and finding their paths in life, in fields like tech. Yet he was still searching. 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI: 

Sometimes we have ideas that society puts on us as immigrants. You know, it's the doctor, lawyer, engineer route. And sometimes we think we know what we want to be, but we don't really know who we want to be, what we want to do. And it's hard to find a path when you don't know where you want to go. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

Then there was a moment when everything started to come together. And I mean an exact moment.

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

It was on October 1st at 12:02pm, 2013, approximately. I was working as a doorman in this really high luxury high rise. Actually, no, take that back, the title they gave us was not doorman, it was lobby ambassador. I guess they wanted us to feel more special. But essentially, like you were sat down at this desk and you had to have this kind of sixth sense. Whenever a resident - and these were really wealthy one percenters, I mean, the 1% of 1% live there, who came in those doors. You had to run up, rush up that door, open the door, stand up straight, you know, head up high, greet them, speaking up from your diaphragm, smiling. This whole like poetic motion has to happen, like a ballet performer. And then, you know, they don't even acknowledge you. They just kind of continue down their route. But I was doing that while I was reading these books that are very critical on race and class. Books by authors like James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky. And as I'm reading about the systems of oppression that are keeping people of colour down, and I'm seeing these people who live these ridiculous lives and I'm like, they're not any smarter than I am or my friends are. And I'm over here, you know, trying to find out what am I supposed to do with my life. I'm like, I shouldn't be doing this. I want to do something else in my life. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

It was then that he got a text from a friend telling him to go check out a statue of an Arab man near his work. So on his lunch break, he walked on over.

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

And I get there and I remember seeing it. Such a strange statue, you know, this man wearing this robe or fauve, as we call it, with flowers on it. He had these pointed sandals. He had this cup that's pointing towards the sky and turban. It was a mix of I mean, a collage of orientalism, something an Arab man would probably never wear. But nonetheless, it was very romantic. Not even exotic, it was a real romantic depiction of an Arab person drinking coffee. 

So I wandered into that lobby and I started to see these old photos of the Hills Brothers family, this amazing, industrious family. And they were the first to vacuum seal and roast coffee. And they were very innovative at the time. And they chose this, they call him the taster, this Arab man to, I guess reflect coffee's origins. They even had this this tagline, "Arabian coffee, the best in the world." And I'm reading that and I'm like, I'm Arabian or Yemen. You know and I start this rabbit hole and, you know, now we're here talking about this. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

You know, you took me to that building, and that building was the headquarters of Hills Brothers Coffee. And you took me inside that very lobby that you're speaking about and there's these incredible photographs of showing the immense sort of industriousness of the coffee culture in San Francisco. And you'd never think about that. In fact, you told me that San Francisco was called Baghdad by the Bay, that this was a city that in a way was eminently cosmopolitan, multicultural. And so Arabian coffee on the shores of the Pacific wasn't kind of a weird thing for San Francisco and here you are, a kid who's grown up in San Francisco all of a sudden discovering this. I mean, that's a remarkable moment because it essentially inspires you, Mokhtar, doesn't it, to dedicate your life to not just coffee, but everything that it represents - people, connection, land. And it eventually leads you back to the Yemen, doesn't it? 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

It does. I think in a time in my life when I was trying to find meaning, there were just so many signs that I saw and they weren't even subtle. In the process of learning about this beautiful beverage, I learned that it changed the world. And then I learned about the beauty of the coffee culture of the first wave. Istanbul. Damascus. Vienna. London. Paris. Cairo. These places where people drank a beverage that didn't numb the senses like alcohol did, but it actually inspired fields, social revolutions, political revolutions. The first newspapers. The American Revolution. The French Revolution. In coffee spaces. I thought that was an amazing moment and I thought that coffee, this drink, it's important in a time, especially we live today where the rat race and we lose ourselves and we need these moments of intimate reflection and intimate engagement with another person. I always love drinking coffee with somebody. And so I love that aspect of it. And the last which really tied it together for me was this is a way to have really sustainable, impactful social impact. A real social impact that's measured, that's material for these farmers, producers. It's not a charity. People produce these things and they get paid more for it and everyone wins. And this is, I was like, okay, I don't know what I'm going to do here, but I'm going to do something in this space. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

Coffee quickly became an obsession for Mokhtar. He couldn’t find a cup of coffee from Yemen, though he remembered that visit from his childhood, seeing the coffee beans growing. So he set out to learn more. And he learned just how important Yemen had once been to the coffee world.

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

This time period of Yemen, it's an amazing time period. Every major country had ambassadors there in Yemen. Coffee gets planted and it gets distributed throughout these regions in northern Yemen. The Yemeni imams, Qasimid imams that ruled at that time, they really prize coffee and they enact incredibly important and strict protocols. One, it was illegal to sell seeds to foreigners. If you sold seedlings, you would be executed. They had a very intricate market system and supply chain. All the coffees from these different regions, Bani Mataar, Haraaz, Udayn, they would come to a city called Bayt al-Faqih and it would all get there then taxed, then from there it would be sent to the port. And there were these Indian traders, who were the intermediaries between the Spanish and French traders. And coffee in its height over 70,000 tonnes were exported from the port of Mokha. They make its way eventually from Yemen to Mecca to Cairo to Damascus to Istanbul. That first wave really, coffee in Central Europe, a pound in the Amsterdam coffee exchange was well over $13. For one pound. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

One pound of coffee was the equivalent of $13? 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

Unroasted coffee in the Amsterdam exchange. And do you know how much it is currently? 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

How much? 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

Less than $2.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

That's incredible. This is like a kind of gold. 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

If you extrapolate at that price, well over $15 for a cup. Up to $20 even. And if you look at coffeehouses in this time period, you know, you're talking about the late 1600s to the 1820s and ‘30s even, they're opulent, magnificent, beautiful places that are very inspiring. That's why the French Revolution, American Revolution, you know, that's why these musicians, these philosophers are so inspired. You would go and you would buy a cup of coffee and you would have access to this incredible space. And that coffee came from Yemen, from farmers who were paid fairly. This was a fair supply chain. And when coffee leaves Yemen and it's taken from Yemen to Indonesia first. The Dutch, they take a few seeds and they take it to the colony of Java which is where the name Java comes from. It's around $9 a pound now. Right? And then then eventually coffee makes its way to the Western Hemisphere and it's just straight slave labour. People are extracted and exploited for their labour. That becomes $5 a pound in Suriname, in Haiti, in Puerto Rico. And it's a horrible, horrific institution. And then these mechanized, massive farm operations began in Colombia at the turn of the century in Brazil. And that takes it to a whole another level when coffee becomes literally what it is right now, a dollar, $2 a pound. And coffee becomes thought as a fuel for workers in capitalism. And so coffee moves from this sophisticated, intellectual, amazing drink where farmers are paid fairly for it to a commodity that's just used for the fuel of caffeine to make people work harder. And that's very sad. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mokhtar, you spent years in the Yemen. You go back to the Yemen. You spent years not only learning about the coffee industry and experiencing it firsthand, but actually engaging with farmers to produce better coffee. And you arrive in the country and what did you find? What was the state of the coffee industry when you first arrived? 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

When I got to Yemen, I was smacked with reality. You're living in a post, you know, revolution or time period.  A lot of political instability. Like I had this SWOT diagram that I had done - strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And yeah, in strength, there is like this heritage, this 500 year old brand, these amazing, you know, coffees helping the farmers. We live in this legacy of all these wonderful things. But under threats, you had pirates in the Red Sea, you had Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, inflation, instability, rival political parties. I mean, all of these like I mean, and then it's one of those things where ignorance is bliss. If I knew then what I know now about supply chain management, about risk, about just how to manage capital and this is such a ridiculous endeavor. It doesn't make any sense to start a venture. There's a thin line, I would say, between being a visionary and being delusional. But it's almost like you have to will your existence. You have to will- this has to be more than just material gains. You have to really have something that's so core to what you believe in. 

Going there and visiting these farms. I spent the first year, I visited 32 regions across Yemen. And that was some of the most incredible adventures in my life. Going and finding these lost farms in these mountain top villages that live a beautiful way of life. They take care of the land. The land takes care of them. How hospitable these people were. I remember, for example, this happened numerous times where I would go to a village and they would line up one person from each household. And I would ask, you know, what are they doing? And they told me they were doing a lottery to see who gets to host me because everyone wants to host me. And they would come out, the whole village. They would recite a poem to welcome me. In many times, I had to recite a poem back to them. Then I would go on a tour of their beautiful terraces or their valleys, and they're amazing mango trees and bananas and guava and all these amazing things and their coffee. Then I would sit down with them, have this wonderful lunch. And then after that, we'd sit down and they would tell me their stories. And sometimes I would go to places that I would find in books that had that talked about valleys of coffee, cherry trees. And I'll get there and there wasn't a single tree. And I would ask, hey, do you guys have coffee here? And they would say, yeah, you know, my grandpa told me we used to have coffee back in, you know, 80 years ago or 100 plus years ago. And now it's like, unfortunately khat. This huge problem in Yemen. This drug, this amphetamine that unfortunately for every one coffee farm, there are seven of these drug farms. And it takes up so much of Yemen's water resources. Nationally, I think 32% of Yemen's water goes to this plant, this drug. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Wow. 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

And it's not that people in Yemen are proud of this. It's just you see this, a lot of different countries that are struggling. Afghanistan they have the poppy plant and Colombia cocoa. Like they growing out of a necessity. And for me, I was trying to find a viable alternative for them. And I really believe coffee could do that. So this time period, it was a lot of difficulties. I went through a lot of personal risk and just a lot of health issues - malaria, tapeworms, to, you know, just shootouts and explosions and just war, unfortunately.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Because the the conflict in the Yemen that we're even seeing now kind of exploded all around you as you were beginning to work with some of these farmers to kind of completely revive and you know, give life to the coffee industry where that industry had fallen on hard times. 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

It was almost extinct and in many places gone. And it was sad when you find a place that… and you see them ripping out the coffee plants that have been planted there for generations, hundreds of years, that now this drug takes its place. In that first trip, such a broken system, these loan sharks that took advantage of smallholder farmers who gave them predatory loans ahead of harvest. The way every part of the supply chain coffee gets mixed and diluted, the quality. And by the time it gets exported, it's just really horrible unfortunately. All these issues and then no transparency or traceability either. And so all these different things. And I realized I have a lot of work to do. When I first brought samples back - I bought 21 samples I believe from regions across Yemen - 19 failed basic standards. They just had all these horrible defects. But there were two that were some of the highest grade coffees that the people I had - these coffee professionals and consultants - had tasted. And so that gave me hope. And so every time I would take one step forward, there would be like eight steps backwards because of the situation. And then as things were getting better, you know, it all kind of percolated to March 25th, 2015, where this war begins. And it was really horrific to live that. What I knew about war was like many people, just what we see in movies or maybe we read about in books. But to live it is something else because it becomes a part of you forever. And it's very sad to see, especially children normalize death and normalize war that way. And my family, my friends, then all those things that happened at that time was very difficult. And again, I don't know, I just felt that I had this mission and I wanted to continue. And I loved everything about coffee. I loved the people, stories of the farmers. I loved the plant, working on the earth with my hands around the season. I loved continuing the legacy. I loved the coffee bean brewed, roasting coffee, the culture around it. I loved seeing somebody order coffee and sit down at a coffee shop and this coffee came from a village of people, you know. It's one of the few things that you can actually trace the hands that touch it and everyone is an artist. I loved it and I love showcasing and working with people who are artists and that's what I love about this field. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

There's a photograph, and it's one of the photographs of you that I really love and cherish. In this photograph, you are sitting in front of a group of farmers, farmers who up until this point have been largely growing khat, who may not even know the history of the great coffee tradition that they come from because somewhere along the way, global politics, cash crop, colonialism and global economic trends reduced the coffee industry in the place that was arguably one of the origins of coffee. Yet in this photograph you are brewing the coffee that you've worked with these farmers to cultivate. And you're serving them. And there's this look of awe, wonder, joy, bewilderment on their faces. It's like they're tasting the fruit of their labour for the first time. And it makes me catch my breath, because everything that you just said is encapsulated in that moment. 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

I was working with this community and at one point I realized they had never really tasted their coffee. Ever. Most people. They have to sell every bean to make a living and they don't have a roaster to roast a coffee. And so they mostly drink the husk. So I got really emotional and I just kind of held my composure. And I went three, four hours to the capital the next day, roasted some coffee, brought it back. And so I'm grinding it, the hand grinder. I have this, like, chemex, I have the swan neck, you know, gooseneck, kettle. And I have a temperature gauge and then all these things and a scale. At one point in the beginning, the farmers are kind of laughing at me like, okay, wait, this is not that serious. But after a bit, they see me, you know, this is not a joke. I'm actually taking your coffee very seriously. What I want to do is I wanted them to see that people care about what you produce. And it's really beautiful now because, you know, I moved to Yemen. I lived half the year in Yemen. And there's a beautifully budding specialty coffee scene now where there's local- I often times show pictures of these like cafes. And they're doing these beautiful pullovers or they have siphons or an Arab press. And I show people, you know, I'm traveling like, where do you think this is? And they’re like, oh, that's San Francisco, Berlin, Tokyo. I'm like, this is Yemen. So it's kind of great to see. It's like that full circle happening now. And domestically, people are enjoying coffee that way. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mokhtar, you literally put your life on the line in those early years to get those early harvests of that coffee to the United States in time for the coffee experts to taste it. And this story, this incredible story of your life, of this kind of death defying journey is the subject of a book by Dave Eggers, arguably one of the kind of major literary forces and figures of our time. That must have been quite something to find yourself the subject of a book by Dave Eggers, who very closely in a really beautiful way engaged and followed your work. How did that change things for you? How did that book change your trajectory, your journey in coffee? 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

Dave, I had become friends with him years ago, a few years before I even started coffee. He was working on a script for a TV show where one of the main characters was a San Francisco police officer from Yemen. And so a friend of ours, mutual friend, connected us because they wanted to have a creative consultant, a Yemeni, to make sure it was an accurate portrayal. And I met Dave and he just seemed like a great normal guy. He had like, I remember he had a flip phone which he still has, by the way. He didn't have any Wi-Fi in his house. He just was this kind of writer, a quintessential writer. And I didn't know he was famous. I read at that time two of his books, and I thought he was a great writer, a local, you know, San Francisco person. Just how easy it was for me to talk to him and how simple he was. And fast forward, I come back from Yemen and he asked to meet up with me after hearing my story and media and TV here. And at that point he was talking about an idea around a book. And I knew where he was going. And I thanked him. I just told him, hey, I appreciate it, but I just you know, I'm going through a lot right now. I don't really see the value of that right now. But I appreciate, you know, for thinking of that. I just didn't think my story was that important. And, you know, for a while this went on until one of my friends, he's like my coffee Mr. Miyagi, one of my mentors and close friends. He told me, “You should write a book.” I said, “I don't know how to write a book.” He said, “Well, find someone to write a book about your life, what you've gone through. It's pretty interesting.” I said, “Well, there's a guy named Dave Eggers.”And he's like, “You're lying.” I'm like, no, no. He goes and takes down two of his books he had in his library at his house here in Mill Valley. And he said,” Mokhtar, he's an amazing, he's a very important writer.” And so I quickly Googled him, which I had never done before, and I found out he's this amazing, famous writer. And so we agreed to this idea of a book to tell the story of coffee, the economics of coffee, the history of coffee and the geopolitics of coffee in the region. And he's like, okay, but I also want to add your life story and your coming of age story. And so I think that's very important. And so if you ask me, like, you know, how was it going through this process. First of all, he told me it would take at least a year. I said, “Dave, what are you talking about? I was born here. I lived here, I moved here. I can probably finish this in the next hour or so.” He was like, “No. It's not how it's going to be.” And so he spent three years with me. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Oh wow. Wow. 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

He went to Yemen with me. He went to Ethiopia with me. He went to Djibouti with me. He took the coffee Q course. I mean, I have such a deep respect for writers now, especially nonfiction writers, because you don't know where that's going to go. And the level of the fact checking, his life became my life for those years. And honestly, it was extremely therapeutic for me because he wanted me to go backwards. I had just escaped a few weeks before and to relive these moments that are very traumatic, I think I had boxed away. You start to see the patterns in your life. Oh, when I was a kid, this thing happened to me. And because of that, I've developed this thing now. And that's why I'm a people pleaser. And that's why I have- for those listening, all of your problems, in your personal and professional life, they come from your childhood trauma. So sit with yourself sometimes and have a good cup of coffee. So there was that process and then there was the book launch, you know, and going on this tour and TV. And then I didn't think anyone would like the book, you know, I just didn't know what people would think about it. And it was very personal. I had to tell the whole story. And I did it because I knew a lot of people like me, like I mean, we hear stories of entrepreneurs who start out in the garages, you know, these companies that we know now. All of them, without exception, have wealthy parents, come from upper white class, you know. They're not poor people. But someone, a person of colour who, you know, doesn't come from an aristocratic family, who was trying to figure out how to do this. I wanted someone- I think that so many countries that are going through conflict, countries in the global South who have not coincidentally a history of colonization that is still legacies are still felt now. Right? I mean, even in coffee, the biggest producers are, you know, Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Ethiopia. But after Brazil, the biggest exporter is Germany, France, the US. They don't even grow coffee, but they are able to buy the coffee and centralize distribution. And 200% of the profit happens at roasting, which is what they control. So I was like, you know, we people who come from producing countries, we can tell our stories. We can tell our stories better than anyone else. And now I have a lot of friends I mentor and people around me who are doing incredible things in this space. People like my friend Sana Kadri, who has an incredible Indian Spice company called Diaspora Co. that's literally colonizing the Indian Spice trade. My friend Nguyen Coffee Supply, out in Brooklyn, who's bringing amazing Robusta coffee out of Vietnam. And other other industries like that. And so I wanted them to see my struggles, see all the mistakes I made so they don't make them, hopefully. And now, you know, seeing like hundreds of business schools teach it in their courses or high schools who look at it as a coming of age story. It's been, you know, I have a lot of imposter syndrome, you know seeing people send me really nice messages and what they see of me and think of me. But you know, I'm nowhere near what you think but I hope that the story, it relayed the message that your circumstances do not define you. Where you are is not who you are as Nayyirah Waheed once said. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mokhtar, tell me about a joy or a meanness that came to you recently as an unexpected visitor. 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

We've all had some kind of trial or tribulation through COVID or after COVID. I went through a very difficult experience a couple of years ago, actually, maybe two or three years ago. And in the moment, you feel, you know, all these questions like, why me? Why am I going through this? It's not fair. And you get to a point where there are certain lessons in life that the only way to learn them is to go and do these kind of tribulations. And you get to a point where you've I'm at a place now where I actually feel grateful for that struggle because it taught me lessons of who I am. Often times people we admire, they go through a lot of difficulties. Someone told me that when you take gold, like raw gold from the earth, it's not pure. It has to go through intense heat to be purified. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Mokhtar, as long as our conversations always are, they always feel terribly short. It's been such an honour to have you on This Being Human. 

MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI:

The honour and pleasure was incredibly all mine. Thank you for existing.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

Thank you for listening to This Being Human. Look in the show notes for links to learn more about Mokhtar Alkhanshahli and his businesses Port of Mokha and Alkhanshali Estates. 

This Being Human is produced by Antica Productions in partnership with TVO. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Hailey Choi. Our executive producer is Laura Regehr. Stuart Coxe is the president of Antica Productions. Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Our associate audio editor is Cameron McIver. Original music by Boombox Sound.

Shaghayegh Tajvidi is TVO’s Managing Editor of Digital Video and Podcasts. Laurie Few is the executive for digital at TVO.

This Being Human is generously supported by the Aga Khan Museum. Through the arts, the Aga Khan Museum sparks wonder, curiosity, and understanding of Muslim cultures and their connection with other cultures.

The Museum wishes to thank The Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation for their generous support of This Being Human.

In this episode, Mokhtar Alkhanshali talks about….

• Growing up in Brooklyn and San Francisco as the son of Yemeni immigrants.
• Moving back to Yemen when he was 12 to live with his grandparents and connecting with his family history.
• A time in history when the entire world’s coffee supply came from Yemen. 
• The coffee-tasting process, and it’s peculiarities.
• Acclaimed author Dave Egger’s book The Monk of Mokha which is based on Mokhtar’s life.

Quotes: 

"I loved everything about coffee. I loved the people, stories of the farmers. You know, it's one of the few things that you can actually trace the hands that touch it. And everyone is an artist."

“Often times people we admire, they go through a lot of difficulties. Someone told me that when you take gold, like raw gold from the earth, it's not pure. It has to go through intense heat to be purified.” 

Learn more about Mokhtar Alkhanshali: 

Follow Mokhtar on Instagram

Learn more about Mokhtar’s company Port of Mokha

Read Dave Eggers’ book The Monk of Mokha