"...the book is fun, but it is more than fun. It's a meditation on a collision of cultures, and it will make you think." – Dr. Allen Matusow, Professor at Rice University
"a good read full of humorous antidotes of the author’s encounters with oil-rich Arabs in the Middle East and Houston." – Fred Hofheinz, Former Mayor City of Houston
Bumbling with the Arabs All the Way to the Bank chronicles the true story of two young, naïve Houston real estate go-getters as they rub elbows with some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the Middle East.
In 1980, Ben Koshkin and his business partner bumbled into a real estate deal and ended up with a Kuwaiti billionaire as a partner. Through this partnership, Koshkin befriended the undersecretary to the oil minister of Kuwait. For four years, if the undersecretary didn't sign the contract, Kuwait didn't sell the oil.
Throughout the eighties, Koshkin and his partner closed over 250 million dollars' worth of business with the Arabs and experienced firsthand a culture the United States still doesn't fully understand.
After every trip to the Middle East, men in dark suits, sporting sunglasses and short haircuts, would line up outside their Houston office to ask questions about their business overseas and the people they met on their trips.
Bumbling with the Arabs All the Way to the Bank documents experiences and encounters most people will never come close to experiencing in a hundred lifetimes. At times, these stories were hard for even Ben Koshkin to believe-and he lived them!
"Bumbling is outstanding, different, educational, and highly entertaining." – Clayton Lee, Clayton Lee Counseling
"Having heard the stories from [Ben Koshkin] all these years, it was nice to have them come to life on paper. [His] writing style and how the book was structured made this an easy read that kept my attention throughout. Our perception of life and people in the Middle East is certainly different from reality." – Brad Dill, BD Realty Advisors
“If I knew what my son was doing, I would never have survived to live this long.” – Naomi Koshkin Friedman, Ben’s 101-year-old mother