How To Export Coffee In A War (Pt 1) (Reheat)

Mokhtar Alkhanshali was a doorman in San Francisco when he saw a statue that changed his life. The statue was of an Arab man holding a cup of coffee, and it led Mokhtar to learn about the origins of coffee, in Yemen, where his family is from. While coffee’s roots in Yemen run deep, Mokhtar learned that present-day Yemeni coffee was hard to source, and the quality was inconsistent.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  As we turn to fall and the weather starts to cool down, I think of things like crunching leaves. I think of sharing from the sidelines of a soccer game, walking the dog in the woods. And when I think of doing all those things, I'm usually wearing something from LL Bean. Whether it's my puffer vest, my puffer coat, my scarf, whatever you're doing outside this year, you probably need something from LL Bean, whether it's their boots, their Scotch plaid flannel, their rugged field coat, or more. Grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  What kind of day is it? It's a White Claw day. Grab a pack, grab your friends, everything else in life can wait. Your friends shouldn't. Let's go. White Claw. Grab life by the claw. Please drink responsibly. Heart's also with flavors. White Claw's also works, Chicago, Illinois.

• 0:51Dan Pashman?

  I always kick off these reheats by saying, hey, if you have an episode you want us to reheat, tell us. Well, this is proof that we are actually reading all your emails and taking your opinions into account because we are about to drop a two-part series that many of you have requested. It's the incredible story of Mokhtar Al-Kanshali. He was working as a doorman in San Francisco when he saw a statue that literally changed his life. It inspired him to start a company that sells great coffee and helps Yemeni farmers. But in the process of launching this company, Mokhtar got caught in the crossfire of a civil war. As I said, this is a two-parter. We're dropping a part one today, part two for next Friday's reheat. So look, as I said, we take requests. Drop me a line to [email protected]. Let me know what episode you'd like us to reheat. Thanks so much and enjoy part one of our story.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  I'll start with our fears. Our biggest fear is that we sell the coffees at a lower price than what farmers can sell in Yemen. And what's a bigger fear than that is people have given us much of their hope. And for them to give a hope in a country like Yemen that's going through so much difficulty, it's a difficult burden to carry.

• 2:02Dan Pashman?

  This is Mokhtar Al-Kanshali. He runs a nonprofit that works with Yemeni coffee farmers. He recorded this voice memo for us about a month ago, the night before Yemen's first ever national coffee auction. He created this auction to let the country's top farmers sell directly to buyers, cutting out the middlemen, so that farmers keep more of the profits. Mokhtar's been planning this for two years, in the midst of Yemen's civil war. His hope for the auction?

• 2:27Speaker 02

  We sell these coffees at ridiculous prices, prices that farmers in Yemen never thought they could reach. And this becomes a spark that really can ignite more work in the coffee sector.

• 2:40Dan Pashman?

  But there's never been an auction like this in Yemen, so Mokhtar doesn't really know what's gonna happen.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  We can't fail, because if we fail for this, it means that people will feel that trying something new isn't going to work.

• 2:59Dan Pashman?

  This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Mokhtar Al-Khanshali is the founder of the coffee company Port of Moka, which exports some of the highest rated coffees in the world, all from Yemen. He's also the founder of the Moka Institute, the nonprofit I mentioned that's setting up this national coffee auction. We'll get back to the auction a little later, and we'll hear the story of how Mokhtar got to this point, which involves twists, turns, and more than one near-death experience. But first, when he came into the studio, before we got to all that, we had to drink some coffee. So what do you got here? Walk me through the equipment that you've brought.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  So I feel like a traveling salesman here. This is my hand grinder. I like grinding coffee with my hand, because you just kind of feel the... And I can travel with it, it's very small. And then I have this normal V60 here, and then I have...

• 3:51Dan Pashman?

  V60?

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a...

• 3:52Dan Pashman?

  What's that?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  The V60 is a pourer. And you basically, you see people when they take those weird-looking swan-neck kettles, and they kind of...

• 4:02Dan Pashman?

  Right, and they pour the hot water in a circular motion over the ground coffee?

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, the more it seems like you're gonna get hypnotized, the better.

• 4:09Dan Pashman?

  Right, right. This is the kind of thing you see at these upscale coffee shops, where all the baristas look like they're in Mumford and Sons.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, quote-unquote hipster, and it's... It is, and what it...

• 4:19Dan Pashman?

  A lot of mustache wax in these places.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Mustache wax, sometimes man buns, but...

• 4:26Speaker 02

  I took mine off today. But for this is actually.

• 4:29Dan Pashman?

  Moktar was ready to show me how he makes his morning cup of coffee. He lined up all his gear, brewed a cup, then remembered one other important piece of equipment he forgot to take out, something used by professionals to rate coffee.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  I might have a spoon. I usually carry one.

• 4:44Dan Pashman?

  He carries a spoon? Oh, my gosh.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  They have these special taste in spoons and it's just like a normal spoon. It has like a little bit dip.

• 4:51Dan Pashman?

  It's like it's the size of a spoon, but it's the shape of a ladle.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  And the spoon, basically you slurp the coffee very aggressively and then they spit it and they slurp and they spit and they write down their notes and like it sounds, this is how it sounds usually.

• 5:07Dan Pashman?

  Whoa, whoa.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  I've heard people sound like birds chirping. Another person literally sounds like an F-18, just like taking off. And then afterwards they start describing what they taste. So one person was like, you know, I taste a hint of baby carrots. Next person, she was, no, I taste this one has the hint of like.

• 5:25Dan Pashman?

  Adult carrots?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  She said pink starburst.

• 5:28Dan Pashman?

  Oh, wow.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  And the one that really lost me, he looked me in my eyes. He goes, this coffee is just too passive aggressive for me. And I was like, yeah, yeah, totally, bro. It's totally passive aggressive.

• 5:44Dan Pashman?

  I tried the coffee the old fashioned way from a cup. At first I didn't know what to make of it because it was so mild and smooth, not strong or bitter like the coffee I'm used to. It's like when you first drink straight liquor and you feel that burn in your throat. But then hopefully at some point you try really good liquor and it doesn't burn. You're almost like something's missing. Where's the burn? That's how it felt drinking Moktar's coffee, like the first time I ever tasted a really smooth tequila. I would have guessed that this coffee was like weaker because it doesn't have that super bitter.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  This is more tea like.

• 6:15Dan Pashman?

  Right, it is. It's almost like a coffee tea hybrid, but it's much more floral and lighter without sacrificing the caffeine.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Well, this one actually has half the caffeine. So caffeine is a chemical that plants make to kill insects. And so the higher coffee is grown, the harsher and colder it is and there's less insects. So these coffees that reach over 7,000 feet, which is ridiculous in Yemen. And we have half the caffeine, but double the natural sugar is because caffeine tends to be a lot very bitter.

• 6:42Dan Pashman?

  Properly caffeinated, but not too caffeinated. It was time to talk. Mokhtar's parents were born and raised in Yemen. Mokhtar grew up in Brooklyn. Then, when he was nine, the family moved to San Francisco. Mokhtar struggled with the transition to the Bay Area. By seventh grade, he was getting in trouble at home and in school.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  And my family were just stressed out and they didn't know what to do with me because I was going down the wrong path in life. And so when I was a teenager, their last resort was, "Okay, let's just take him to Yemen, to his grandfather, and let him live there and just see if he can be a better person."

• 7:15Dan Pashman?

  So at age 12, Mokhtar was sent to live with his grandfather, Hamud, who was a successful local businessman.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  He really put me through it. He took me in this kind of arrogant, stubborn kid, and he put me through his educational program, if you want to say. For example, he didn't put us in some fancy private school in Yemen. He put us in this normal public school. We had to walk 45 minutes each way in the dirt and gravel to school. He made sure that we had this normal lifestyle there. And that was really important for me.

• 7:45Dan Pashman?

  Hamud also put Mokhtar to work running errands, like cashing checks, big checks.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  So when someone gives you a $10,000 check to go cash in, in Yemen, the currency, when you convert $10,000, you literally get a freaking sack full of money.

• 8:03Dan Pashman?

  Another errand Mokhtar was sent on? Buy some stones for a house Hamud was building for himself. That meant taking a trip to the rock quarry. Hamud told him.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Here's like $20,000. Go get these stones and bring sure they come from this type of rock, from this kind of space. And I had to find out the different scammers and what are the fake rocks and what are those. And believe me, I got scammed quite a bit. And yeah, I would go and I would come back with these three truckloads of stones. And I felt like an amazing person and a 12-year-old kid doing that. And no one had given me that kind of responsibility and that kind of trust growing up. And for someone to do that, it made me feel like, it made me feel that, well, this person really thinks highly of me. I don't want to lose that or betray that trust.

• 8:48Dan Pashman?

  It was in Yemen and his grandparents' family farm that Mokhtar first encountered a coffee tree. The fruit on the tree is called the cherry, and it does look like a cherry. The coffee bean is actually the seed inside the cherry.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  And I would pick coffee cherries to my grandmother. But the thing is, I didn't know those were coffee trees.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  And for me, I assumed coffee was like this thing in Starbucks where you press the button and it just came out somehow.

• 9:13Dan Pashman?

  While Mokhtar didn't make the connection between the cherries he was picking and the beverage he knew as coffee, the experience did plant itself in his memory. He lived in Yemen for a year with his grandparents, went back to San Francisco and returned to high school.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  And then, at some point, I decided I wanted to become a lawyer. My parents obviously loved that idea. When you're a child of an immigrant, you really have limited options and career paths. And so it's either you become an engineer, a doctor, or a lawyer.

• 9:39Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  That's pretty much like a friend of mine, he told his dad he wanted to be an actor. His dad told him, in English beta, it's pronounced doctor.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  So I lived in this lawyer, I joined the speech and debate team, I was a paralegal. And so I started being this kind of translator. Groups like the ACLU would come to Muslim community centers and spaces and I would just translate. We would do know your rights workshops and legal clinics. And I liked this space I was in as a bridger.

• 10:09Dan Pashman?

  Despite this interest in law, Mokhtar never finished college, never went to law school. In his early twenties, he knew he wanted to do something that served a higher purpose. He worked short stints at a nonprofit serving inner-city kids and did policy work at the mayor's office. But he didn't have a clear direction or a career path. He was living with his parents and working odd jobs to pay the bills, like as a doorman at a fancy building in San Francisco. Then one day, in 2013, while he was working at that building, he got a text from a friend.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  And so she texted me about the statue of a weird Yemeni man in front of my work that's drinking coffee. This beautiful, masculine, handsome Arab man with a turban, holding a cup of coffee to the sky. The building across from us, it's the old Hills Brothers Coffee Building. This district near the ferry building was called the Coffee District. So the Folgers family was there, the Hills Brothers were there, and all these very important coffee dynasties started there because San Francisco was the most important port for coffee in the US. I walk into the lobby of this building, and in the lobby, they have pictures of them, these signs that said Arabian Coffee, Best in the World.

• 11:23Dan Pashman?

  That night, Mokhtar told his mother about the statue, about learning that coffee came from the Arab world. She laughed and said, "Didn't you know that your grandparents have coffee trees at their house? Didn't you know we've been growing coffee in our family for hundreds of years? Didn't you know that Yemen basically invented coffee?" Mokhtar did not know any of this. So he went down a rabbit hole and found out that, according to legend, coffee was discovered in Ethiopia, where people chewed the beans and steeped them into a tea. It was in Yemen that coffee was first brewed at the port of Moka. Sufi monks prepared it as part of their religious ceremonies. Sufis were traveling monks, and wherever they went, they brought their coffee and brewing technique with them. Over time, coffee spread across the Arab world. By the 14th century, coffee was grown in many areas of Yemen, and it was all brought

• 12:08Dan Pashman?

  to the port of Moka for processing and shipping. That port was the hub of the global coffee trade. Back then, Yemen's coffee plants were closely guarded and not for sale. But a worker for the Dutch East India Company stole seedlings. That set off a coffee boom among European powers. They raced to plant it in their colonies around the world. Learning all this led Mokhtar to the world of specialty coffee today, higher-end companies that buy top-quality coffee directly from farmers. One company that kept coming up was Blue Bottle. They had a shop near where he worked, so he walked in and checked out the menu.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  There was a cup of coffee, it was $5, which I thought was really expensive for Ethiopian coffee. And so I got this cup of coffee and I had my first sip, and I remember tasting very pronounced flavors of blueberry. And I was like, "Wow." I went to the barista, I'm like, "Hey, what kind of syrup? Like, what did you add in here?" He goes, "No, no, there's nothing in here." I'm like, "No, no, I'm tasting blueberries." He goes, "No, this is coffee when it's done the right way." And he begins to tell me about their relationship, this community in Ethiopia. And they pay the farmers more money, and in exchange, the farmers can work on better quality, and they roast it a certain way, and they brew it a certain way. He explained to me this whole thing. I'm like, "Wow, this is awesome. This is like, I had this trifecta of something that tastes delicious, there's a social impact

• 13:25Speaker 02

  around it, and it's something that connects me to my family's roots."

• 13:30Dan Pashman?

  But Mohter couldn't find any specialty coffee coming from Yemen.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  And I would ask seasoned coffee buyers and roasters, "Where can I get Yemen coffee?" "Or, 'What do you think about Yemen coffee?'" And they would say things like, "It's just really hard to get. We don't know where it comes from because we can't go to that country. It's very expensive and it has a lot of defects. But the best cup of coffee that I had was like a Yemen coffee 10 years ago or 20 years ago." And I remember one of my friends, Craig Holt, and he said, "You know, Mohter, Yemen coffee, it's like the Uncle Rodney of coffee." I was like, "What does that mean?" It's like, you know, that one uncle that comes through the holidays. Sometimes he's cool and normal and sometimes he's just too drunk. You never know which uncle you're gonna get.

• 14:22Dan Pashman?

  Today, most of the coffee Yemen exports is commodity coffee, not specialty coffee. With commodity coffee, the price is set by global markets. Farmers are incentivized to produce as much as possible, as cheaply as possible, with very little regard for quality. And they barely make enough to get by. Saudi Arabia buys most of Yemen's commodity coffee. Now, in Yemen and around the world, most coffee farms are still small, family-owned plots. To get their product to a major export market, they have to send it through a lot of middlemen. And each one takes a cut. Specialty coffee buyers, they don't buy the commodity stuff. They seek out high-quality coffee and either buy direct from the farmer or through smaller cooperatives. And they pay a much higher price. But very little direct buying was happening in Yemen. As you heard, the quality was inconsistent.

• 15:07Dan Pashman?

  And getting to the coffee, getting it out, was too hard for specialty companies. The coffee regions were mountainous and remote. There were tribal leaders and militias to deal with. And political instability there was growing. In 2011, the US State Department warned against traveling to Yemen and ordered non-essential diplomats to leave the country because of terrorist activity and civil unrest. Mohter looked at all these obstacles and saw an opportunity. Like when he worked with the ACLU, he could be a bridge connecting coffee farmers in Yemen to specialty buyers in the US. He could help these farmers and Yemen's economy and create a business for himself in the process. But at that point, those vague goals were all he had. Forget a business plan, he'd never even been to a commercial coffee farm. But he dove into the world of specialty coffee anyway, looking for anyone with a connection to Yemen.

• 15:52Dan Pashman?

  That led him to Willem Boot, who runs a specialty coffee company and who had just written a report on the state of coffee in Yemen. Willem agreed to work with Mokhtar as a consultant. He would teach Mokhtar about the coffee business and how to source coffee in Yemen.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  He goes, "If you're gonna do this, first you're gonna become a coffee Q-grader, which is our version of Sommelier." I'm like, "Sure." Then you're gonna go to the Specialty Coffee Association World Conference that happens, you know, once a year. It's kind of our coffee Olympics. And I'm like, "Okay." And then you're gonna go with me to Yemen, because I'm gonna go to Yemen this summer, on this project. And I'm like, "Holy crap. Oh, sure." And I'm like, "Okay, I'm in." No idea how I was gonna, you know, fund this consultation project, no idea how I was, you know, make this work, but I... It can be as hard to explain this when I'm abroad, but here in the US, we have this art called "fake it until you make it."

• 16:50Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, Mokhtar tries to fake it in Yemen. He searches for the best coffee in the country and makes some progress. But things get a lot harder and a lot more dangerous than he expected. Stick around.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  Ooh, advertisements.

• 17:10Dan Pashman?

  Yummy. As we turn to fall and the weather starts to cool down, I think of things like crunching leaves. I think of sharing from the sidelines of a soccer game, walking the dog in the woods. And when I think of doing all those things, I'm usually wearing something from LL Bean. Whether it's my puffer vest, my puffer coat, my scarf, whatever you're doing outside this year, you probably need something from LL Bean, whether it's their boots, their Scotch plaid flannel, their rugged field coat, or more. Grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, be an outsider.

• 17:46Speaker 04

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• 18:17Speaker 05

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• 18:36Speaker 03

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• 18:38Speaker 05

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• 18:46Speaker 03

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• 19:18Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back for another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman, and I have a very big, exciting announcement for you. This past November, I took a group of Sporkful fans and some others on a special trip across Italy to eat pasta, to retrace many of the steps I took on my own research trip for my cookbook, and we had so much fun and ate so, so well. We ate spaghetti alla sasina in Bari. We took a cooking class with Silvestro Silvestri in Lece. We ate with Katy Parla in Rome. And the folks at Culinary Backstreets who organized the tour. They added some stops that I didn't even know about, that were new to me, that were incredibly delicious and also fascinating. Point is, it was so great, we're doing it again. This November, we just opened up spots. It's a small group, so space is limited. Bottom line, come eat pasta with me in Italy.

• 20:02Dan Pashman?

  For all the details, go to culinarybackstreets.com/sporkful.

• 20:08Dan Pashman?

  Okay, back to the story of Mokhtar Al-Kanshali. After connecting with coffee expert Willem Boot, Mokhtar started training to be a Q grader, like a coffee sommelier, so he could learn to taste the difference between good coffee and great coffee. Meanwhile, there was a coffee conference coming up in Yemen that Willem was attending, so Mokhtar bought a ticket. In May of 2014, he flew to Yemen. The first stop he made was at his grandfather's house, and when he explained his big plans, his grandfather had some advice.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Don't tell people you're a business person. Don't tell people you have any money. Just tell people you're a college student.

• 20:41Dan Pashman?

  Why wouldn't you tell anybody that you have a business or have any money?

• 20:47Speaker 02

  For many reasons. One, it's just never a good idea to let people know you have money, especially when you don't really have money. So that was... And also, I think another reason is you don't want to give people hope, and you don't want to lose your word with people.

• 21:03Dan Pashman?

  So Mokhtar would use a cover story. He was doing a report for college about Yemen's coffee industry. The plan was to meet Willem Boot in the capital city of Sanaa, attend the coffee conference, then tour coffee farms together, giving Mokhtar a chance to learn and make connections. But very quickly, things went wrong.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Willem, he came with me to Yemen for two days. He had to go back. The US government forced him to go back because of the violence. Like, the day we arrived, a French engineer worker was shot in the head, and things were very, very, like, disthicy, and he had to leave, and so I was left alone.

• 21:41Dan Pashman?

  Around this time, Al Qaeda had gained power in parts of Yemen. The group was blamed for a number of attacks against Westerners in the country, including the murder of that French contractor. Willem came to Yemen as a guest of USAID, a branch of the US government. As violence increased, the US said it could no longer guarantee his safety, and he had to leave. The State Department, meanwhile, was urging all Americans to leave, but Mokhtar decided to stay. He was alone in Yemen, with violence on the rise, and without the coffee expert who was supposed to guide him. But he wasn't at a total loss. He spoke the language, and he had experience making his way on his own in the country, as he had when his grandfather sent him on missions as a teenager. He was able to connect with local coffee growers at the University of Sena and took his first trip to a coffee collective in Yemen.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  I didn't know anything about about nature. Like, all I knew about nature was probably Avatar. And so I I went to this tree, this coffee tree. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, wow, like, I'm having this moment. I'm like, wow, I'm in this village. And like, a few months ago, I was on my couch on YouTube, looking at these these trees. And now I'm here, I'm having this, I'm holding the leaves. And and this farmer comes up to me, he goes, Mokhtar, I'm sorry to bother you. He goes, um, that's not a coffee tree. The coffee tree is actually over there.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  He like points somewhere else.

• 22:59Dan Pashman?

  What was the state of a lot of those coffee beans?

• 23:02Speaker 02

  They were just horrible, like, the way they stored it. They would keep the coffee cherries for sometimes years in these like, storage rooms. And they would use it as a kind of currency. On the rooftops, you see these coffees being dried, which looks pretty, but like, there's dirt and gravel, chickens poop.

• 23:18Dan Pashman?

  Mokhtar still had a lot to learn, but he knew there shouldn't be chicken poop in the coffee. He also knew from picking cherries with his grandmother that the good ones were bright red. But these farmers were picking cherries in big bunches all at once, no matter their color.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  So the coffee cherries, when they grow, they they start green and then yellow. And then when they become ripe, they become red. It's sort of like a green banana. If you ever tried a green banana, it's unripe, it doesn't taste sweet. But when you have a ripe banana with those dots on it, how sweet it could be. And so to to just pick the ripe cherries, it's a lot more work to selectively pick.

• 23:52Dan Pashman?

  There was no incentive for the farmers to do that extra work. They weren't paid enough. After searching and searching, Mokhtar found a few older farmers who did take that much care with their cherries, only picking them when they were perfectly ripe, even if it didn't make financial sense. These farmers had coffee that looked beautiful. But the problem was, the way the industry worked, their stuff would end up getting mixed into a giant batch with coffee from dozens of other farmers who didn't have the same quality.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  All these beautiful gems get lost away. And that was just was heartbreaking. As I, as I, every step along the route, I saw things that really were just made the coffee taste like crap. So I told this farmer, I told her, hey, if I paid you more money, could you just pick these ripe cherries? And she looked at me and said, if you paid me more money, I could pick rainbow colored cherries for you.

• 24:41Dan Pashman?

  But Mokhtar didn't have more money to pay Yemeni farmers. To get it, he first needed to prove to specialty buyers that Yemeni coffee was worth it. They weren't going to pay top dollar for Uncle Rodney. He spent three months visiting every one of the 32 coffee regions in Yemen. He collected coffee samples from across the country and brought them back to Willem Boot in California. Willem organized a tasting where he and other experts gathered around a room to taste each coffee with a spoon, just like the one Mokhtar showed me when he brewed me coffee. They slurped up each one, making those loud screeching sounds that we heard Mokhtar make. There were 21 samples. Mokhtar hadn't tasted them himself yet, so he didn't know how it would go. Tasters began.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  One tasted like armpit. One had like wood taste. Weird rubber. It was just disgusting. I'm like, every cup, like, oh, no. And these coffees, there were some that Willem called DOA. Death on arrival. They were horrible. And out of the 21 samples I brought back, 19 failed basic standards. They were just horrible. And we went around the table. We're tasting these coffees and you're supposed to have a poker face. You're not supposed to like influence the person next to you.

• 25:47Dan Pashman?

  After all those DOAs, Willem picked up his next sample. And something changed.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  I looked at Willem. He had this kind of Mona Lisa smile.

• 25:56Dan Pashman?

  Like a very subtle smirk.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  It's like, was that a smile? I don't know. But he is a good, is it bad? I don't know. It was so different.

• 26:01Dan Pashman?

  Mokhtar tried the same coffee that made Willem smile.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  And I tasted passion fruit. I'll never forget. Passion fruit and papaya and banana. Which I had never really had that kind of coffee before. And I was like, wow. This is different. So it's out of 100 points. Anything above 80 is considered specialty. You know, you'll find that at Starbucks, at Pete's. 85, 86, 87, you'll find that like higher end specialty coffee shops. 88, 89 is really rare coffee. And 90 plus is like these unicorn coffees you'll find once in a lifetime.

• 26:31Dan Pashman?

  Willem issued his verdict.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  He gave it a 90 plus score, which is, he said, this is one of the best coffees I've ever tasted.

• 26:39Dan Pashman?

  That moment, what were you feeling?

• 26:41Speaker 02

  I was excited because I was like, wow, this is not just me being, you know, proud of my culture, my family's homeland. This is objectively real good coffee. And maybe this could actually work.

• 26:55Dan Pashman?

  Two of Mohtar's coffees scored above a 90. All those experts who had told him stories about a legendary cup of Yemeni coffee they had decades ago, this was what they were talking about. This was proof that thanks to Yemen's elevation, unique microclimates, and rare coffee varietals, the country has some of the best coffee in the world. It just has to be handled with care. Based on those results, Mohtar was able to raise funds from investors to start a coffee operation in Yemen. In the fall of 2014, he returned to Yemen, once more against the advice of the US State Department. He spent the next few months talking to the coffee farmers at the collective, getting ready for the harvest season, making sure they were only picking the ripest red cherries, promising to buy them all at a big premium.

• 27:38Dan Pashman?

  He also set up a sorting and processing facility there. His goal was to get enough of an operation going that he could bring samples to the big Specialty Coffee Expo in Seattle in the spring. It's the largest coffee trade show in North America, the Super Bowl of specialty coffee. This is where he would show everyone how great Yemeni coffee is, and hopefully line up his first sale. But as the coffee expo approached, Yemen's civil war was intensifying.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  To be honest, I had these, like, my therapist would call peculiar blind spots that we all have in life. We create these kind of, this cognitive dissonance around certain things that we don't want to deal with. I didn't want to see all the issues that were happening around me. Like, there was a lot of violence, a lot of instability. And I just had this mission, vision, and I kept doing it until one day eventually, you know, that I had a rude awakening.

• 28:33Dan Pashman?

  What was the rude awakening?

• 28:35Speaker 02

  March 25, 2015, I woke up at 2:00 in the morning, almost 3:00 in the morning, and I heard, I thought it was like a wedding going on. Sometimes in weddings in Yemen, they'll like, you know, have fireworks or even like shoot guns in the air. But this was very loud. I could feel like the earth shaking. And I went outside and I saw what looked like laser beams being shot in the sky. And those were anti-aircraft machine guns being shot at fighter jets.

• 28:59Dan Pashman?

  Over the previous few months, the Houthis, a rebel group backed by Iran, had been gaining power, eventually taking over Yemen's capital. Saudi Arabia is an adversary of Iran and didn't want the Houthis in power. So the Saudis began a bombing campaign to try to push the Houthis out. Mokhtar was caught in the crossfire.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  So in my head, I kept trying to think, how am I going to go to this coffee conference in Seattle? I mean, it's been now almost a year and a half, almost two years of my life. I've taken money from investors. I've given hope to farmers now. I have employees now, like this whole thing now, this whole operation I've done. And I needed to figure out how to make this work. And so I reached out to the US government because there were other countries taking their citizens out, Russia and China, Pakistan, India. And I remember reaching out to the US State Department and their response was, "I'm sorry, we can't help you right now. We can relay your messages to your loved ones via our website."

• 30:01Dan Pashman?

  Mokhtar was one of hundreds of Americans stuck in Yemen. The US State Department said it gave citizens multiple warnings about leaving, and now it was too dangerous to evacuate them. Meanwhile, the US was allied with Saudi Arabia in this fight against the Houthis. Later that year, the Obama administration sold $1.3 billion worth of weapons to the Saudis. The war in Yemen is still ongoing, and it's considered one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  And that was really, it really hurt, you know, because I knew like, especially in this conflict, those bombs were made here in the US, you know, and they were being supported by the US government.

• 30:35Dan Pashman?

  Mohter tried to leave from the airport in Sanaa, but the Saudis had bombed the runway. He knew another Yemeni-American, Samar Nasr, who was also stuck in Yemen. She told him about a Greek ship leaving from Aden, an eight-hour drive south. Mohter was hearing that Aden was an active war zone with intense fighting on the ground. Towns along the way had been destroyed, but he thought it was his only way out.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  And all I had with me are my coffee samples. And I had $5,000 that I hid in my underwear and a Colt 45 handgun.

• 31:03Dan Pashman?

  He hired a driver and a bodyguard, and they left for Aden. When they got there, they were stopped by an armed group of resistance fighters. These were local men who suspected that Mohter's driver and bodyguard were Houthis, fighting for the other side. All three of them were blindfolded and taken to a local jail.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  And it was a very difficult moment that I really can't speak a lot about. But I ended up, you know, it was, I mean, at one point, I was, I had my hands tied up behind my back and was blindfolded. And someone told me they were going to kill me today.

• 31:47Dan Pashman?

  Next week, in the second and final part of our story, Mohter tries to keep himself and his dreams of a Yemeni coffee company alive in the middle of a civil war.

• 31:57Dan Pashman?

  Quick note before we wrap up. Please make sure you connect to our show in the podcasting app of your choice. Just click Follow or Plus or Heart or Favorite or Subscribe, whatever that button is on our show page in your app, please press it. You can do it right now. Thanks. This show is produced by me along with senior producer

• 32:14Speaker 04

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 32:15Dan Pashman?

  and producer Andres O'Hara. Our editor is

• 32:17Speaker 04

  Tracy Samuelson.

• 32:19Dan Pashman?

  Additional editing by

• 32:20Speaker 04

  Devin DeComo.

• 32:21Dan Pashman?

  Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Eric Eddings and Colin Anderson. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 32:31Speaker 06

  And I'm Doug Hastings in Seattle, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more butter.

• 32:56Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by Gianna Palmer. The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the Sirius XM app? Yes, the Sirius XM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the Sirius XM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 33:43Speaker 07

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• 34:15Speaker 05

  Hey, it's me, Teddy Swims. You hear that? That's life. So go grab it. Grab your old friends, grab new friends, grab a White Claw. Grab flavor for everyone in your group. Grab music, laughter, and moments you'll never forget. You'll never regret it.

• 34:34Speaker 03

  Hey, Teddy. Oh, hey, man.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  Grab new friends, grab old friends, grab life by the glow. White Claw.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Please drink responsibly. White Claw Seltzer works Chicago, Illinois.