Nicholas Lezard

Coffee and Kalashnikovs

Mokhtar Alkhanshali dodges roadblocks and air raids to transport his precious beans from Yemen to San Francisco

issue 03 February 2018

‘This guy’s crazy,’ says a taxi driver, listening to a BBC interview with a man who has decided to become the first exporter of coffee from Mokha, Yemen, in 80 years. The man being interviewed, we have learned, has risked his life quite a few times over, in the most hair-raising ways imaginable it would seem, to achieve his dream of putting Yemeni coffee back on the map.

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