Meeting Farouk

I got a call the other day from a guy with quite a posh English accent but Indian name who was a friend of the owner, Danny from Birmingham, for whose English School I worked. I’ll digress.

I had done a course on the internet where you could easily cheat if you didn’t know the answer and it gets you a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate. It means bollocks of course, but so much in life can be bought, in this case for the $300 I’d spent on this chicanery.

The interview with Danny had not been stellar, having concluded with a thoroughly unwanted teasing on my part in questioning him on why, after nine years in Bahia, he hadn’t ended up with a Bahian wife.

“The women here are exceptional, don’t you think?” This is a common thread of conversation among ex-pat men, lots of whom, like me, succumb to the charms of the female half of the population here.

He looked a bit embarrassed and may have blushed. In fact, he was much more interested in the Bahian men and was the boyfriend of the other owner. My ‘gadar’ had obviously been impaired, he’d been in the army, in Northern Ireland actually, so I had, with great prejudice, assumed he liked woman. Why would any gay man want to join an institution most of whose members actively disliked or at least were suspicious of them? It seems a little incongruous, like a black man wanting to join the Klu Klux Klan.

Initially I was excited to hear from Farouk because this could mean some work, although Howdy Doody paid much less than most other English schools. But Howdy Doody occasionally handed out large translation jobs, rewarding the most keen teachers, which meant I rarely benefited, but you never knew.

The other owner of the English school, Danny’s lover, worked for the state tax collecting agency but had special prices at the school for people who paid for their classes under the table. When in Rome. The books they used were oriented towards business, and seemed purposefully designed to be as dull as fucking possible.

Danny himself was not personable in any outward way and liked to show occasional irritation to reiterate who was in charge.

So in other words, Farouk’s path to me was not through a person I’d garnered a lot of sympathy for. And almost immediately it became clear he wasn’t a source of work but wanted to, in his capacity as a financial planner, have my money for him to invest and take care of my retirement needs.

“There are plenty of good ways to make your wealth grow exponentially and I’d love to get together and go over some details with you about how better to manage your money with immediate benefit and long term stability.”

Business shibboleth sounds as if it was invented by a computer, too hygienic. This all seemed dandy, though, and I’m always looking for new experiences. I agreed to meet him the next time he was in Salvador. But I sent him an email afterwards to make sure I wasn’t misleading him.

“I think Danny thinks because I was late collecting a couple of pay checks that I’m rich. Unfortunately, this is not the case, but if you hear of any schemes that will throw money my way I’d greatly appreciate it.”

Financial planners cannot afford to be put off by the cynicism of jaded expats who worry they’ll have to work until they die for lack of financial planning. He wrote back that he’d be delighted to meet with me and was not only concerned with rich people but interested in ‘communicating the possibilities’ for all levels of wealth.

We agreed to meet in a Coconut Highway Shopping Mall. Malls are a stalwart feature of middle class life here where consumerism, in a safe environment (with occasional lapses as is inevitable anywhere in Brazil) becomes a leisure option for many. This seems to be a phenomena around the world, depressing for those of us yet to warm to the shopping mall’s many allures. Shopping has become a noun in Portuguese, so you go to the ‘shopping.’

I arrived early and almost went into an evangelical bookstore, but chickened out for fear I’d be immediately snuffed as an imposter by someone convinced of their virtue due to their belief in Christ. Tons of enticing looking CDs and books were on display in the window, though the content of both were slightly one dimensional. Is there nothing in this world besides Jesus and God for these people?

I moved on and ordered a coffee. A text message came through.

“Was hoping for British timing but this taxi isn’t playing ball.”

The waitress, also, took her time as she served a rather rotund chap a plate of ‘bread cheese’ (as the doughy concoction shaped in a ball is called), and a coke. If you are what you eat, this guy did kind of look like rising dough; healthy was not how you would describe his appearance.

I twiddled about as one does when waiting for someone. These are the kind of situations when you miss cigarettes, the perfect filler of small time gaps.

Farouk arrived at seven after ten, very apologetic and flustered because he had ‘kept the client waiting.” I hadn’t realized we had that kind of intimacy.

Things I learned immediately were that he was from London, went to Bristol University and had been living in Brazil for the past two years. I asked how old he was and he asked me to guess. I didn’t fall into that lame trap and he divulged it to be 33.

“The age of Christ,” I said with great cultural authority. Brazilians equate thirty three with Christ’s death so getting through thirty three unblemished is better than Jesus managed. I didn’t ask whether he was married or not, I’m not a complete fool having learnt from the experience with Danny, Farouk’s friend.

He lived in a city called Vitoria, the capital of Espirito Santo, a state that borders Bahia to the south. I have never met another foreigner who lives there, but it’s referred to as the smaller version of Rio and quite pretty.

“God, the heat here is terrible.” Farouk said as if he’d come from Alaska or something. Vitoria is not that fucking far away.

We were not here to learn about each other’s favorite philosophers so we quickly moved onto financial sorcery.

He handed me a card, with his company’s name, WadeGlobal, and its logotype that looked somewhat like waves. He was a senior partner it informed me. On the back was the mission statement of the company. ‘Keeping your investments afloat’ is not that reassuring a slogan. And ‘providing independant advice where financial goals can be achieved.’ You shouldn’t have a spelling mistake in your mission statement. They had a virtual office in London to add to their legitimacy.

Farouk pulled out a couple of folders from his briefcase, a blank sheet of paper and a couple of pages with numbers on them.

He specialized on emerging markets and long term investments. China and India continued to be ‘fantastic bets’, particularly India with its human capital. I wanted to ask whether he’d read ‘The White Tiger’, which kind of exposes India’s underbelly and the other 800 million wretchedly poor people absent from the economic statistics. But he was of Indian descent so might be offended.

This had happened to me once in Heathrow airport. On one of those interminable human conveyer belts, I was behind an Indian man and his family who were trying to pass by two guys. Politely he squeezed through and suddenly one of the guys shouted, ‘Oi, you, watch it. Who the fuck do you think you are?”

This was a plain case of naked racism. A verbal raucous ensued and in my great moral certitude, I sided with the Indian, who said he was a doctor and in the United States people wouldn’t dare say that to him, not like ‘you English bastards.” After the police arrived and said they couldn’t do anything, I asked the Indian guy if he’d seen the just released film, Gandhi. My credibility with him went out the window.

From Farouk I learned that Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man were excellent and safe bets for long term investment, having no taxation. That was good to know.

Russia was presenting ‘very positive conditions for a healthy investment climate.’ I nodded my head attentively, thinking never in a million years would I put my money in the Russia of Putin, the Mafia and all that still afflicts that volatile place.

“The middle class is growing rapidly,” was Farouk’s take on it.

His company was keen on Brazil, Chile and Mexico though the latter is ‘going through a difficult period.’ That’s kind of an understatement; there’s open warfare between the government and drug dealers in the north of the country, a festering Indian problem in Chiapas, and high kidnapping rates in Mexico City.

I was informed that Mauritius, Bermuda and Luxemburg were also great places for off-shore investments. What about the Cayman Islands? I asked with a rather haughty chuckle considering that place is the synonym for financial shenanigans.

“Oh, that was just one bad case and now the government is being much more strict about whose money it handles. As they are in Panama.”

Thank goodness for that. Back to China, which was, of course, on track for indefinite growth. Here Farouk drew one of the many graphs he whipped up on the stationary of WadeGlobal. It just went up and up in a straight line like the Washington Monument. Other graphs had more of a gradient, though obviously never going down.

All this optimism was making me dizzy. According to Farouk the current economic malaise was in fact a good thing, giving the financial system a needed jolt to grow robustly in the years to come. In fact any mention of potential ill in the future was slapped down as ‘well that’s what the doomsayers might say’ attitudes, and more statistics showing how superb everything was.

His proposal was to have me pay five hundred dollars a month into some infallible fund, which he would handle. Once I had $10,000 accumulated, I then would “let the money sit and do its thing,” like it was a stew or something but have no access to it for two years. After that, however, it would be as if I had won the lottery.

“You have to start planning for your retirement and take control of your finances. With this, it’s a win, win, situation.”

I think Farouk by that point realized I was ‘like an ashtray on a motorbike’ in terms of utility to him. In one last-ditched effort he asked if I knew any English people with pensions. There was some government loophole, soon to be closed, and for those drawing government pensions, ‘the time to act was now.’ There seems to be no problem with using clichés in business speak. I said I’d put him in touch with the many English people I know drawing pensions, approximately zero.

He was a pleasant guy, though, and I wished him luck with attracting more risk-friendly people than me.

“Next time you’re in town, we should have a beer and you being a single man, can check out the girls.” I said with slightly feigned enthusiasm. His half-smile told me I’d made the same mistake again as I had done with Danny.