THE ROAD FROM MOROCCO

by Wafa Faith Hallam

  “No. I’m talking about that tall, dignified-looking Cuban woman with silver-gray hair? You’ve seen her; I’m sure—the one who called to complain about the loud music on New Year’s Eve in 2000. In any case, she’s been living one floor below for the past twelve years. We know each other, and we’ve always been on pretty good terms. She started to complain about the noise, and all of a sudden, she decided to send her big son—the giant who also lives in the Versailles?—she made him get the town’s building inspector to visit my apartment. She did that without ever calling me personally to tell me about her grievances,” I said in disgust.

  “Didn’t you inquire about this before you started?” asked Nezha.

  “I did, but I was told I would be required to hire only state-licensed contractors with proper seals, file all the necessary permits, and pay all the fees, all at once. And everything had to be approved before I’d even be allowed to begin. I had a general contractor, an electrician, a plumber, a window contractor, a Home Depot kitchen designer, even an architect, at one point. All of them told me that, because of the bureaucratic delays and cost involved, most people tend to overlook the permit requirements. And I foolishly listened. Now I’m paying the price for my negligence.”

  “I don’t understand how that could be. You’ve always been so organized and on top of things!”

  “Yes, right? Here I’m planning a huge renovation-three bathrooms and a kitchen with upgraded electric wiring to accommodate top-of-the-line appliances. I’d ordered the installation of brand new windows, AC units, and wood floors. I knew I’d be breaking through walls and re-configuring the design flow of two apartments, and I really thought I could get away doing it all without applying for a single permit! Crazy and irresponsible, I know!”

  “I’d say that sounds quite unlikely! So what’s going to happen now? You’ve done half of the work already, right?” Nezha inquired.

  “Yeah. Everything’s been stopped. It’s been four weeks now. I had to straighten out everything. I had to go to the building inspection office I don’t know how many times. Each time, I had to wait and wait and plead with them to attend to my requests and send the inspectors quickly so that I could resume my renovation.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “The grumpy old lady got a few weeks of respite, but barely. For the remainder of the work, I’m going to encourage as much noise as we can possibly make, especially on Saturdays… That’s the thing—she works weekdays and wasn’t even home during the time of the construction work.”

  Nezha laughed. “Revenge is sweet, huh?”

  I sighed. “To tell you the truth, not really,” I admitted. “I’m the one to blame here. I’m pissed off at her for not contacting me before taking action, but it’s my fault for listening to bad advice. Hopefully, the work will be done by the time you come back.” I paused and added: “I wish you were here, honey. I miss you very much, and so does Mom.”

  When Nezha finally came home on August 20, the renovation was almost completed. I was putting in the last touches and overseeing the installation of the remaining fixtures in the apartment.

  On one such day, on a beautiful Tuesday in September, as I was waiting for the plumber to fix a bathroom fitting, I got a call from my brother, a little after 9:00AM.

  “Are you home?” he asked point blank.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m leaving now for the office. I had to wait for the plumber—”

  “Go on your terrace,” he interrupted. “Something terrible just happened.”

  “What? What’s going on?”

  My heart skipped a beat as I run to the terrace, stood outside, and looked around, my cell phone glued to my ear. The river was shimmering like a ribbon of liquid silver under the shining sun. There was not a cloud in the clear blue sky—a crisp and balmy, perfect autumn day.

  I turned my gaze downtown—huge billows of smoke were swelling out of the Twin Towers.

  “What’s that?” I asked Larbi still on the phone. “It looks like there’s a fire—”

  “No, they’re saying a plane hit. They don’t know what’s going on. You stay home, don’t go anywhere. Put on CNN. We’ll talk later.”

  I run to the den and turned on the television set. The large window was facing south and I could clearly see the fire now raging out of the Towers.

  My chest barely contained the mad pounding; fear seeped through my flesh, flowed in my veins, and built clasps of steel in my guts. A feeling of doom overcame me.

  Stay home… How could I stay home? Sophie’s in school in Manhattan, I thought.

  I flipped channels, hoping to comprehend the incomprehensible, grasp the meaning of the madness. Reporters were talking non-stop, mostly speculating. A growing sense of dread was sweeping through the city.

  Videos of the Towers being hit by the planes were showing on a loop. Images of horror flashed on the screen as bodies begun flying out the windows to escape the blaze, choosing the void over the inferno. My sister and mother, who’d come down from their apartments, were weeping uncontrollably.

  At 10:05, the South Tower collapsed, plummeting like a castle of cards into the streets below in a giant cloud of dust and debris, under the eyes of the world.

  Oh no, Oh my God, Oh my God, I kept repeating in my head, trying to reach the Lycée Français by phone. The school, where Sophie was in sixth grade, was way uptown, on Ninety-Fifth and Fifth, thank God!

  Then the news that the Pentagon too had been attacked was announced.

  Full-fledged terror was now gripping the collective psyche.

  At 10:30, the North Tower, in turn, crumpled from the top down, forming a tsunami wave of thick white and black powder mixed with fragments of the wreckage. It mushroomed and drifted through the narrow streets of lower Manhattan, swallowing everything in its wake. People were running, crying, turning around to watch the monstrous cloud threatening to bury them.

  A horror movie, no doubt—it couldn’t really be happening in my city.

  For two long days, Sophia stayed at the home of a school-friend in Manhattan. All tunnels and bridges were closed; nobody could go in or out by land. On the third day, she really wanted to come home and I encouraged her to take the ferry. There were literally hundreds of thousands of people using the New York Waterway ferries to leave the city. She had to wait for hours on line before she finally boarded the boat that took her home.

  I received her in my arms, relieved that she was well and unharmed.

  28

  The Eye of the Storm

  The world as I’d known it changed forever after that day. Nothing could have prepared me for such a terrible event both emotionally and professionally. The markets had been on a free fall for a year already; I had become a therapist to my clients, comforting and supporting them in their moments of doubt and fear even as I had to overcome my own uncertainty. Every down day was followed by yet another down day in an endless downward spiral.

  One of the greatest tests of will I passed in my own mind came the day I fired a fifteen-million-dollar client because I refused to be abused by him anymore.

  “I need to talk to you about something that’s been causing me a lot of grief lately,” I said as I took a seat in my manager’s office.

  “Sure, Faith. What is it, and how can I help?” Ralph answered in his usual affable manner.

  “It’s about Juan Costas, one of my largest clients,” I began uneasily. “You know how much work it was for me to get his account in the first place. I think I told you that I was introduced to him by his accountant, also a good client of mine, who thought that Mr. Costas was in need of a serious financial plan and good money management. I travelled to Florida twice to meet him, and we got together again a couple of times here. I also introduced him to you when we were still in the Fifth Avenue office.”

  “Yes, I remember well,” Ralph said. “You did a good job getting that account.”

  “Yeah, I think so. I presented him with a whole plan and a strategy for a sound asset m
anagement. Finally, he transferred his accounts to Merrill Lynch. That was two years ago. Ever since, I’ve done everything possible to keep him satisfied. He’s not only a demanding client, he lacks discipline, he’s very controlling, and he has a hard time listening to professional advice. That would be okay if in fact he had an adequate knowledge of the financial markets, but he doesn’t. He thinks he does, but he’s moved entirely by rumors and unrealistic expectations.”

  “Have you tried to talk to his accountant about this?” Ralph asked.

  “Yes, I did. He said he was aware that Costas was an impulsive and very difficult man to deal with, and to be diplomatic with him. Well, I’ve been more patient and diplomatic with him than with any other client. He has a quick temper, and he readily resorts to verbal abuse. He’s very high maintenance. He calls almost every day under one pretext or another. It’s gotten so bad that even my assistant now refuses to deal with him. Imagine—he’ll even have his assistant call me, asking to get him a corporate discount on his five-star hotel stay in the city. I didn’t even know we could do that, but he apparently did.” I paused.

  Ralph’s phone was ringing. He gestured for me to hold on briefly with his finger pointing up.

  “Excuse me for a second,” he said, and, speaking in the phone, “…Tell him I’ll call back in a few minutes. Thanks… Sorry, Faith. So what do you want to do?” he asked. “You want me to talk with him?”

  “No, unfortunately, it won’t help. The first time I ever met this man, I knew he acted like a spoiled brat with his assistants, accountant, even clients. It’s been no different with me. The truth is he’s the type who has no respect whatsoever for others. He thinks his money entitles him to abuse people, especially those who work for him. Well, I’m not his employee, and I want to fire him,” I said with determination.

  Ralph looked at me surprised, half-smiling, and nodded in silence.

  “Ralph, this guy is a real jerk. He’s always been a jerk, but now that the markets have been going down, he’s turned into a tyrant. I know it’s a huge account, but that cannot justify the amount of stress and anxiety that I have to live with to keep it.”

  I felt tears welling in my eyes and quickly tried to change the tone of my argument. I’d been feeling increasingly emotional.

  “I agree, you shouldn’t,” said Ralph.

  “Don’t think that I haven’t tried to deal with this. But you saw the state I was in last month when I was lying flat on the floor with that horrible back pain. Well, I’ve been going to a chiropractor three times a week. I’ve already been struggling with the brunt of the turmoil in the markets before and after 9/11. I cannot also argue daily with an angry, vindictive customer, no matter how big.” I paused, relieved I’d let it all out at last.

  “You’re right, Faith. Nobody should disrespect you. If you want to fire Costas, you have my support.”

  He stood up and put his hand on my shoulder. “I know you. I trust your judgment, and I want you to take care of yourself during these trying times.”

  He walked me to the door. I was grateful to him. It had been much easier than I’d thought.

  I went back to my office, picked up the phone and called Juan Costas.

  As soon as his assistant put him on the line, I blurted out: “I’m sorry to tell you that I no longer wish to manage your accounts. Please have your assistant get in touch with mine to transfer them out of Merrill Lynch. We’ll do our best to make it as seamless as possible… Best of luck to you, Juan.”

  I put the phone down with a sigh of relief. Thankfully, he’d remained mostly calm.

  Less than six months later, I had to terminate another relationship that I’d been cultivating since the summer of 1996, almost six years earlier. I had first met Richard Cohen when I opened a new 401k plan for his employer, then in South Florida. For the following weeks, I had a great deal of telephone interaction with him as I proposed to organize his finances, do some planning and consolidate his scattered assets. Two years after the accounts were open and funded, he and his wife Judy closed a mortgage for a new home in New Jersey with Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation.

  For four years, the Cohens’ assets grew significantly. The couple was thrilled with our relationship and ecstatic at the prospect of achieving a seven-figure portfolio so quickly. Throughout, their investment style drifted from a long-term growth strategy to a more aggressive one, and we added more technology stocks to the mix. Richard was always expressing the need to make “as much money as possible, in the shortest period of time.” His wife and he were then contemplating early retirement. Two financial plans were completed, only two years apart, followed by extensive meetings and portfolio adjustments.

  During the second half of 2000, with the market entering its downturn, Richard was calling me constantly for reassurance and hand-holding. I had always been in close touch with him; he was often unemployed and had a lot of time on his hands. But then he became increasingly fearful of losses and in search of sure answers that no one could provide.

  For my part, I continued to build my knowledge and information of events in the financial markets better than most, and I kept on top of Wall Street research, economic analysis, and the global environment. Even so, no certainty about short-term market direction existed anywhere. Richard would keep me on the phone literally for hours at a time, draining me of every bit of energy. He inquired again and again about the market’s prospects, always questioning whether he should “sell everything and wait for the turn around.”

  At one point, I introduced him to Ralph, who stayed on the phone with him close to fifty minutes and then gave the phone back to me for another thirty-five minutes of the most twisted and contradictory reasoning a human being could bear. I kept preaching investment discipline and patience and advised against market timing while slowly increasing the couple’s exposure to municipal bonds and fixed income. Then, in March 2001, he and Judy ordered the liquidation of all their equity positions, maintaining only the annuities and fixed income portion.

  In July, four months after pulling out of the equity market, the Cohens decided to return and invest their cash in a diversified mix of mutual funds I had researched and discussed with them. Unfortunately, the events of September 11 brought a fresh round of mayhem to the global economy and stock market. The pressure to provide Richard with “crystal ball” insight was unrelenting. At the end of October, my new partner, Cliff, and I met the Cohens in New Jersey and spent two hours explaining the importance of market allocation and discipline as well as the concept of professionally managed money.

  Judy seemed to approve of the strategy immediately and was ready to sign on the process right away; Richard could not let go of the idea of “recouping” their losses and only then adopting a new discipline. He was reluctant to lose control and worried about not making his own decisions. He kept going on ad nauseum about whether the time was right to adopt a new strategy.

  Cliff and I left the meeting exhausted and decided then that, if they did not agree to the new discipline and did not acknowledge they were fully responsible for their current positions, we were going to terminate the relationship altogether. The retention of assets was not worth the level of stress and ongoing emotional mistreatment Richard had been inflicting on my assistant and me. I felt I had gone beyond the call of duty. In January 2002, I sent the Cohens a letter officially ending our relationship and inviting them to transfer their accounts to another firm.

  Three months later, in reprisal, he wrote to management, using my words out of context and alleging negligence and mismanagement while demanding remedy from Merrill Lynch. In response, I sent a long letter defending my position:

  In almost five and a half years of a close relationship with me, the Cohens have had ample opportunity to appreciate my extensive experience as a financial advisor. Indeed, the level of trust they placed in me during all those years speaks for itself. It is because of my integrity and belief that their interests would be better served that Cliff and I ele
cted to direct them toward professional money management.

  Mr. Cohen’s lack of discipline and market knowledge, and his irrational fear and greedy reactions to daily events, which led him to rush decision-making, were standing in the way of a successful long-term investment strategy. That fact, more than any other, guided us to terminate our relationship with the couple. If anything, the brutal bear market of the past two years has taught us that strict discipline and asset allocation based on sound financial planning must become the very foundation of our team’s business.

  Therefore, it is our strong belief that we cannot in good faith accept to work with clients who refuse to heed our advice. I only regret that Mr. Cohen interpreted our insistence as negatively as he did.

  Unfortunately, the overall gloom was not about to lift up any time soon. For months, the stock market persisted in its retreat. The NASDAQ 100 technology-laden stock index dropped a whopping eighty-three percent from its high of 4800 in March 2000, to about 825 in September 2002. Furthermore, for three excruciatingly long years from March 2000 till March 2003, the broader S&P 500 Index itself lost fifty percent of its value.

  Nothing I did seemed to work. Any restructuring of portfolios into more moderate allocations appeared only to highlight the weakness of the equities I had advised to keep. No company seemed immune to the debacle, and investor trashing of all industries alike kept me and my clients on edge at all times. 9/11 had thrown all of us, clients and consultants, into a doldrums that no amount of optimism could shake. Governments embarked on an all-out war on terror on the terrain. I had already been living in a world of apprehension and disbelief that no one but I seemed to be aware of.

  Huge corporations were going out of business because of the greed and corruption of their upper managements. Reputable accounting firms were increasingly coming under attack for aiding and abetting their corporate clients. Brokerage firms and their analysts were found guilty of the same while issuing misleading stock ratings and analyses to the public. For the first time, my fairy tale world of success and material achievement was looking like a snake pit. I could not trust anything or anyone with impartial advice, least of all my managers.