Crossing Allenby Bridge

by Michael Looft

  Later, during the walk back to my hotel, he would explain that his job in Jerusalem was to arrange targeted trainings for women business owners who’d taken a small loan from the organization. The objective was to teach them skills, enabling them to thrive and no longer need to take loans. As he explained, most microfinance borrowers got themselves into a cycle of debt and had merely swapped their payments from loan sharks to a friendlier bank–but they were still stuck in a vicious pattern of perpetual debt. So, his organization attempted to offer value-added services to help them truly climb out of poverty. It reminded me of the work I’d seen in Southeast Asia, reinforcing a growing awareness that loans by themselves did little to help people in the long-run. That without access to trainings or other forms of education, people kept taking loans every year until it just became part of their life–doomed to a lifetime of debt.

  Back in her salon, as I watched Fatima and Alex talking, I saw bare feet coming down the stairway and a disheveled man about thirty passing by the children and looking on us. He had the look of a prey animal, waiting to see what the world around him might do to him before making a move. I smiled at him, trying my best not to stir any unnecessary fear in him. He didn’t return my smile, just looked at me as he leaned against the railing, and then watched Alex and Fatima flipping through the calendar and writing things down. He looked almost childlike. I also asked Alex about him after we left. He said the man was the woman’s husband. He suffered from brain trauma caused by an incident with the butt of a soldier’s rifle, and could not work. In a way that explained the blank stare he gave the world, as though he was searching for something missing. Fatima had started the salon to keep the family together. Alex told me when he first met her two years prior, when she had started the business, she was scared and did not know what to do.

  The organization arranged for her to attend a cosmetology school and later financed materials for the shop. Over time, she realized her entrepreneurial nature and it was obvious to me that her business was thriving as a result. In fact, she was doing so well that she was starting to teach girls in the neighborhood how to do manicures and pedicures, employing them in her shop. She had asked Alex for a loan to buy a chair for doing pedicures. As he spoke about her and I thought about the look in her eye, it hit me that I’d seen that same spark in the eyes of many an entrepreneur. It was a look easily mistaken for a fearlessness or even assertiveness. Perhaps these true entrepreneurs operated that way, but I’d like to think that they saw opportunities and were not afraid to act on them–even appearing risk tolerant to the point of sometimes not recognizing the risk, or even seeing the risk in not pursuing an opportunity. In Fatima’s case, it wasn’t clear whether she was just doing what she needed for her family’s survival, but she had that climbing the ladder aura emanating from her.

  When Alex had finished doing business with her, and another woman came into the shop and began helping the customer with her hair, Fatima invited the two of us upstairs for coffee with her family. We sat on the floor of a large carpet laid out over the concrete floor, without much furniture up there. An older woman came out through a curtain to another room, carrying a gleaming silver pot on a platter, surrounded by small porcelain cups that didn’t match. She greeted us with a salaam and Alex whispered to me that she was Fatima’s mother.

  We all sat down on the floor and drank the coffee her mother poured for us. I noticed that Alex dumped more sugar in his cup than most people. It was a beautiful moment, as we sat there next to an open window and I could hear the call to prayer wafting through it and looked out over the smiling faces of Fatima and her mother, appearing pleased to have us there. The husband sat closer to the corner with the children, arms draped around them and watching us but not drinking the cup before him.

  That was seven years ago, and I still remember holding back tears that welled up behind my eyes and the lump forming in my throat as we sat there. I’m not sure anyone else in the room realized it, including me, but I was breaking down inside. In fact, it remains a bit of a mystery to me why that moment touched me like no other. Though, I’m sure it was not an isolated event in my mind, especially considering my experiences in Petra and even before that in Southeast Asia and Mongolia. They were all connected somehow, and I even saw semblances of my own father in Fatima’s husband. Fortunate for me, we had finished our coffee and bid farewell before I cried. That would happen long after Alex had walked me back to my hotel and I sunk down into my bed before drifting off into a long nap.

  CHAPTER 5 | reunion

  Alex said he was meeting friends later for drinks, and I assumed it was the last I would see of him. So, I was startled when after I’d showered and made my way to the open-air deck of the restaurant for Sarah and Mark’s party I saw him standing at the bar in a black sport coat, chatting with a few people. At first, I had been looking around to see if I could spot Sarah or Mark, but once I saw Alex I charged up to him.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” I responded.

  “My friend Sarah is getting married.”

  “Well, my friend Mark is getting married to another friend of mine, and her name just happens to be Sarah,” I retorted with a laugh. The three young men standing next to him all smiled and shot us looks of curious marvel. Alex introduced me to them, though it was obvious that he didn’t know them all that well. As this was happening, I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around to find Mark and Sarah beaming at me.

  “Harry!” Sarah half jumped into my arms. She was radiating joy. Even Mark’s taciturn manner was on holiday, and he slapped me on the back with a broad smile.

  “So glad you could make it, my friend.”

  “I see you met Alex,” she interjected, “I was planning on introducing you two since Alex works in microfinance as well.”

  “I know, we met yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” She gave me a quizzical look.

  “Yeah, the Fates threw us together in a taxi at the Allenby Bridge. If it weren’t for him and his Arabic, I’d probably be wandering around in some Bedouin village out in the desert.”

  “Unbelievable! Oh, I’m so glad. So, so glad you two are here. Oh, Harry. We really missed you after you left Manila. Such good times. How is Indonesia? You sounded so happy in your emails.”

  “Amazing.” That’s all I could say about the last year or so, and all I could get in before both she and Mark were accosted by someone else who swept them up. She gave me her hand and a deep look of satisfaction before being pulled away, promising that the three of us would hang out sometime over the weekend, for sure.

  From the restaurant deck, I could see out over the city of Jerusalem and a large building with a rounded roof of gold not far off. I drifted away from Alex and the others towards the railing. There must have been about fifty people, and I yearned to catch my breath from the small crowd jammed into an even smaller space. It’s a good thing we were outside. On my way, I bumped into Stefan and we had a short chat to get caught up, though he was a prolific blogger with a knack for poignant tales of life in Mongolia and I’d read every one of his postings since I met him. He was touched when I mentioned this, looking portly and jolly as ever. I reveled in the idea of spending the next few days steeped among the people who’d introduced me to my new life. I wandered over to the railing, gazing at the gold dot out there among sandstone rooftops vis-à-vis tree dotted hills in the background.

  “The Dome of the Rock,” I heard a female voice say to someone else who asked her about it. “Seventh century. Ironic, how in a city known for its links to Judaism and Christianity, it’s a Muslim shrine that outshines everything else.”

  I let her comment hang in the air as I continued to look out there, pondering my life since I left the bank. The old one long gone. I had expected tragedy somewhere along the way, especially that first month on Java where all I wished for was death–anything to remove me from the pain of being human–but it never happened. I
have a lot of people to thank for that. I spent the next three days in long, deep conversations with old friends and new ones, before traveling around the Middle East and back to San Francisco. “The end of the beginning,” as Churchill once remarked.

  I have continued down the path of devoting the rest of my life to financial services for those left out of a system designed to keep them out–though not in the way I expected. I wound up going to work for Sarah and Mark in their crowd-funding startup, and so did Alex and a few others from that weekend. Their public website helps people around the world that need access to finance get a low-cost loan from everyday people like you and me. Organizations like the Center in the Philippines can now post a picture of one of their clients on the site, along with a story about them and why they need support. People visiting the website can browse through these pictures and stories and decide whether they want to chip in and finance that person. Mark made the site simple and easy to use, and now anyone with a computer or smartphone can send a few dollars to someone who needs it, knowing that they’ll get their money back when the person is finished using it.

  After helping to set up their credit policies, Sarah asked me to head up their educational loan program–something dear to my heart after my experiences on Java. I ran that for a few years and still help on a part-time basis, while teaching a course on ethical finance two nights a week at a local business school. The rest of my nights I spend working at a homeless shelter. Never thought I’d be doing all that, but I love it. I suppose it all keeps me from jumping off that cliff.

  My one lament is never having gotten to know Mark in a way that I’ve wanted to–despite our deepening friendship over the years. I guess that’s how it is with some people, they influence us in ways we never expected, yet the story in their heart remains forever wrapped in a mystery.

  One last thing…

  Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this book, I’d be very grateful if you’d post a short review on Amazon. Your support really does make a difference and I read all the reviews personally so I can get your feedback for future editions of this book.

  If you’d like to leave a review then all you need to do is to visit the book’s page on Amazon. You can also find links to this and my other books here: amazon.com/author/looft

  Thanks again for your support!

  Michael Looft

  Also, please visit me on the web! I would love to hear any questions or suggestions you may have or if you are interested in engaging me as a speaker at your next event. Happy to help!

  Email: hola@michaellooft.com

  Website: michaellooft.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMichaelLooft/

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank everyone who helped in the making of this book. First, I am very grateful to my initial readers who provided valuable feedback: Margaret Kelly, Cindy Lelake, Nancy Finston, Sharon Taylor, and Mark Barrett.

  I would also like to thank the folks at Kiva and Lendahand, for providing me with years of support and showing me ways of helping families that truly make a difference in the lives of people around the world. This book would not have happened without you.

  Finally, I would like to thank the inspirational people I met while traveling in the following places and countries over the years that appear in the book: Mongolia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Jordan, West Bank/Israel, San Francisco, and Baltimore. My life would not be the same without you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michael Looft has lived a storied life. A globe trotter by nature, he’s worked and traveled in upwards of 50 countries around the world. He has spent over a decade working in financial services for the poor (microfinance) and speaking publicly on ethical finance.

  Michael holds an undergraduate degree from San Francisco State University, and graduate degrees from both St. John's College and Harvard. He has published two non-fiction books on ethical finance: Inspired Finance and Social Impact Finance (both published under Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

  When he is not writing or traveling the world eating exotic foods and meeting interesting people, Michael can be found either trail running through the mountains of Northern California or camping with his son.

  Contact Information

  Email: hola@michaellooft.com

  Website: michaellooft.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMichaelLooft/