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The Monk of Mokha

Summary

I really loved this book. It was a great balance of educational on topics I find very interesting and an easy story to read. While reading an enthralling story about Mokhtah (A Yemeni born in the US), you learn a great deal about the recent history of Yemen, and hear very detailed stories of life there while being attacked by Saudi Arabia, while also learning a lot about coffee.

A great lesson to come of this is the importance of picking something to do with your life (for work) and becoming a master of it. Mokhtar picked coffee for no reason other than he had a statue near his work with a guy holding a coffee. The singular focus on this then led him on a path back to his home in Yemen, and meeting many incredible people.

I found the story of Yemen to be the most interesting. From being the first democracy in the middle east (in the 1990s) to this collapsing harder than any other place less than 20 years ago, right at the time (and because) the arab spring was taking place - which was meant to have the opposite effect. It's interesting to wonder why it had the unintended effect in Yemen while being broadly positive in the rest of the region.

Yemen sadly seems like a very disjointed place. The Houthis control large parts of it, there are non-official enforcers of a more democratic lifestyle who are very much trying to remove the Houthis, while Saudia Arabia has a large role and actually supports the government.

Both the arab spring and disjointed countries like this are things I'd like to know more about. How many countries are there that actually operate in this way? Is there any hope that it will be united?