7. Money Talks

In his first two years in America, Mūsā al-Badal was blessed with a considerable fortune. Syrian emigration was still writing the first page of its history. People estimated his wealth at fifty thousand dollars, and some placed him above even that station. The truth was that he himself did not know exactly how much he had. Wealth had come upon him in an instant, giving him no time for counting and calculation. His Excellency had never hoped for such riches; they came unbidden, thanks to circumstances and accidents—and how many of those this country contains!

Having reached this degree of wealth, he opened a proper commercial establishment. He employed a bookkeeper and an assistant, appointed agents in several European and Asian countries, and accumulated great stocks of merchandise. He opened a bank account and began buying and selling. Though merchants customarily closed their shops at six, His Excellency ate supper at the store and then resumed work until after ten. He labored with perfect diligence all day and part of the night.

When the new year came, he inventoried the store and made up his accounts. He discovered that he had not made thousands of dollars; on the contrary, he was several hundred short of covering his personal expenses.

He did not reflect that the first year was one of establishment, on which no great hope of large profits should be placed. Accustomed to making fifty thousand dollars in two years, he despised the proper store and regretted his former condition. Then he could take a case of Istanbul goods and sell it unopened for a thousand-dollar cash profit, with no bookkeeping and no expenses for premises or workers. He therefore made a change: he dismissed the bookkeeper and assistant with his blessing and remained in the store as bookkeeper and everything else.

Had he been able to dispose of the merchandise and return to his former condition, he would not have hesitated. But how could he? He was entangled with a bank and customers who owed him money on enormous accounts, while agents had claims against him and orders in hand.

The poor man was forced to remain a proper merchant for another year, followed by a third, fourth, and fifth. Each year he ate his fingers in regret at having entered commerce, though broad fields of profit lay outside it and beyond the route of formal shops. He longed to escape that ill-fated predicament but could find no passage out with his original capital.

Whenever escape appeared possible, he narrowed the circle of his business. Like the snail who says, “My house is high upon my back,” he moved every year to a smaller store, economizing in the belief that by conquering expenses he would increase profits. He did not understand that he was thereby repelling profit and sentencing it to keep its distance.

Mūsā al-Badal carried his burden for about twenty years, throughout which his wealth was still estimated at fifty thousand dollars. Whenever he grasped his condition, he told himself: “Strange! In those days, with fifty dollars of capital, I made fifty thousand in two years. Then, with fifty thousand dollars, I failed to make fifty dollars in twenty years!”

This riddle of riddles Mūsā could neither solve nor explain. He thought only of expenses. Every year he tightened the noose around himself further, until at last he closed the store and became a moneylender.

In moneylending, Mūsā found that the door to immense wealth had opened before him. He discovered that he now possessed an honored station among his people, especially the merchants. These were the same men whom he once pestered and humbly begged to favor him over others, to oblige him by purchasing his goods—and who showed him no mercy. Once he became a banquier, however, they were like butter and sugar with him.[35] Wherever they met him, they shook his hand with extraordinary eagerness, asked after his health and his family, followed their questions with good wishes, promised visits to his home, and performed every other kind of courtesy.

Mūsā received this treatment with all his heart and lungs. He drew breaths that lasted for minutes while cursing the trade in which he had suffered for years without profit and had been despised and rejected. He contemplated the position he attained after liquidating his business and becoming a moneylender, extending loans to this man and that. Now people kissed his hands so that he might trust them; before, he had kissed their hands front and back so that they might prefer him to the devil and help him move his merchandise.

But no condition lasts forever. The year 1907 brought its financial storm to New York commerce. The Syrian market shook, and a succession of bankruptcies followed, most of them among the Syrian “banker’s” customers.[36]

Mūsā emerged from the whirlwind reconciled to the loss of three-quarters of his fortune and all the friends whom his late wealth and prestigious occupation had made for him. The prestige quickly dissolved. Friends became adversaries, and the eager affection once displayed at meetings turned into hatred, loathing, and rancor that could never be erased.

Not many months ago, a group—mostly former friends of Mūsā al-Badal who are now proprietors of commercial establishments—wanted to convene a meeting of the community’s leading men to discuss an important matter. They wrote down the names of numerous merchants, men of letters, young men, and satchel peddlers. When I mentioned Mūsā al-Badal, a single answer came from every mouth:

“Him? What use is he?”

“What do you mean, what use is he? Is he not a man? Was he not a great merchant and moneylender whose shop people crowded, among whom the happiest of the happy was the one who won favor in his eyes?”

Again a single answer came from all of them: “Yes, he was—long ago. Today he is worth nothing. He lost his money, and no one cares about him.”

I had often heard people repeat the American proverb “Money talks,” but I never gave it the place our people did until that meeting.[37] Then I became certain that, among them, a person is measured neither by his two small things—his heart and tongue—nor by his two great things—his soul and mind—but by one thing alone: his money.

NOTES

[35] Haddad places the French banquier beside the Arabic ṣarrāf. The role is closer to a private moneylender or informal banker than to a salaried bank employee. “Like butter and sugar” is a colloquial image of intimate sweetness and harmony.
[36] The Panic of 1907 was a severe U.S. banking and financial crisis centered in New York in October and November 1907. Haddad represents its consequences inside the Syrian commercial network.
[37] The phrase appears in English in the Arabic text, transliterated and immediately glossed by Haddad’s title. The closing sentence also rewrites classical Arabic maxims about a person’s worth residing in the heart and tongue.
