Living the Luxe Life

The Secrets of Building a Successful Hotel Empire

Mark Bego, Efrem Harkham

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781510740877
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Industrial Management
• Index: Business

For Efrem Harkham, hospitality isn't just a job—it's a way of life. And that attitude is evident when you walk into any of Harkham's one-hundred-plus luxury hotels. In a true, rags-to-riches American success story, Harkham built a renowned international hotel brand that is synonymous with comfort and refinement. Part memoir, part business-success book, Living the Luxe Life is the story of Harkham's success, detailing the secrets behind his accomplishments. Taking a philosophical approach to business, Harkham describes his commitment towards maintaining excellence in all aspects of his life, succeeding in a constantly evolving marketplace, and mentoring employees. He firmly believes that this method is the best way to provide his customers with a superior product. Additional chapters expand on Harkham's business model, touching on his belief in the importance of philanthropy, education, and patience in building a strong and successful business. Profound and insightful, Living the Luxe Life is a must have for any reader who aspires to one day succeed in the business world.

PILLAR ONE

FAMILY

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

—Henry David Thoreau

Chapter 1

GENESIS

THE TOMB OF EZRA

My mother’s family is from Al-Uzair, a city in Iraq located on the western shore of the Tigris, approximately sixty miles north of Basra. For generations, they were the caretakers of the tomb of the prophet, Ezra (480–440 BCE), who died there after completing the reconstruction of the Second Temple. According to several ancient texts, the prophet Ezra selected 24,000 Jewish men from Iraq, and with the approval of Cyrus, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire, he brought them to rebuild King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Once it was completed, Ezra left his men there to encourage the repopulation of Jerusalem. But Ezra didn’t want to die in Israel; he wanted to go back to his roots in Iraq. On his journey, he passed away in Al-Uzair, a site where people continue to make pilgrimage to his tomb for prayer and inspiration. That same Tomb of Ezra is still there to this day. Amazingly, the Iraqi family in whose care my grandfather left his entire enterprise, land, and home are still there to this day, maintaining the property and the tomb.

My mother came from an affluent family. In addition to keeping up the Tomb of Ezra, the family attained their wealth by establishing a factory exporting bricks to Europe. Another source of revenue came from their date tree orchards, which were located on the same property.

My father also came from a wealthy Iraqi family. His father, who was born in Turkey, was a successful and well-respected doctor, who also filled in as the community rabbi. There was a room in his house where he performed medical procedures and surgeries. He would recall how people came through each day for a multitude of medical issues.

On many occasions, my grandfather would not charge patients who were unable to afford his services, an act for which the Muslims in his community honored him. People would bring him food, chickens, or other items to pay him for his services. My dad would often tell me and my siblings how he used to worship his dad, my grandfather, and would strive to emulate him or just get close to him.

My father was educated and was sent to a modern American school in Lebanon. My father married my mom at the age of twenty-one and went to live with her family. He basically “changed tents,” and moved in with his new wife and her parents.

FROM RICHES TO REFUGEE CAMP

After all these years, I have finally distilled the story my family has told me of that time and place in Iraq over the years. I’ve also confirmed their stories by my own research of Iraq between 1930 and 1950, as well as my knowledge of the 1948 founding of Israel. My parents and grandparents made it our generation’s duty to tell their intricate and deep-rooted story.

What follows is a condensed sequence of events pertaining to why Iraq has been embattled for thousands of years. Historically, the area was called Babylonia, or Mesopotamia. This is the birthplace of Abraham, who began a movement of deep religious faith and kindness toward others’ welfare. He was recognized and revered by the Judaic, Christian, and Muslim faiths. He taught that serving God and offering hospitality to others were not two separate things, but one. Prior to Abraham’s revelation of monotheism, people used to sacrifice children and worship forces of nature, like the stars and the sun, as gods. God was beyond nature. Abraham is one of my favorite characters in the Bible. His teachings about seeing a trace of God in the face of a stranger had a major impact on me. This learning has perfected my capacity to respect and appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of the thousands of people my hospitality team and I host every day in our groups of hotels.

Abraham received a divine calling to uproot himself and his wife Sarah from his birthplace in Mesopotamia. He blindly accepted the divine power’s instruction to go to the Promised Land—Canaan, which was later to be called Israel.

Approximately 1,500 years later, Abraham’s descendent, King Solomon, built a majestic first temple to house God’s shekinah (divine presence) in Jerusalem. In 750 BCE, the Assyrians destroyed this temple. All Jews who inhabited Canaan were driven out. Many sojourned to neighboring Babylon, which became the center for Judaic wisdom and learning.

King Cyrus of the Ottoman Empire acquiesced to the request of the prophet Ezra, who was living in Iraq, to rebuild the holy temple in Jerusalem. Ezra selected 24,000 men to trek back to accomplish this task. The mission was accomplished, and the governor appointed by Rome’s Caesar, King Herod, made the finishing touches.

In 70 CE the temple was burned and destroyed by the Romans. Again, all those Jews living in the area, now renamed by the Romans as Palaestina, were exiled once more to many surrounding countries. My ancestors resettled in the ancient city of Basra in Babylon, with a population of approximately 200,000 Jews.

Fast-forward to modern-day Iraq. Iraq was established after WWI in 1919 by the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire fell on the losing side of the war. Turkish Iraq was then placed under the authority of the British, with a monarchy established in 1921. Faisal I, who fought alongside the famed Lawrence of Arabia, was designated king of Iraq. Under Faisal’s rule, the Jewish population was given full rights as Iraqi citizens. This social status of the Jews continued even after Iraq gained independence from the British in 1932.

When Nazi propaganda reached Iraq, Hitler’s Mein Kampf was translated into Arabic. Pro-Nazi youth movements soon became more visible in public places, gaining traction and gradually influencing the political climate in Iraq.

A pro-Nazi cleric, Haj Muhammad Amin Al-Hussein, came to Iraq in 1936 from Palestine to collaborate with Nazi Germany on a plot to overthrow the Iraqi king. This cleric promised Hitler oil in exchange for the destruction of all the Jews in Iraq, first, and eventually in the entire region of the Middle East. Despite the warning signs, my parents, like a large portion of the Jewish community in Iraq, did not believe that Hitler’s Nazi regime would have the capability of uprooting them after living there for over two thousand years.

In April 1941, a nationwide anti-British coup took place. It was short-lived, however, since within one month, the British Army was able to restore order and put down the takeover and reinstate the British-backed king.

Frustrated by the failure of the coup, nationalist Iraqi soldiers and civilians were soon exposed to a barrage of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda on the streets, on the radio, and in the mosques. Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini accused the entire Jewish community in Iraq of being spies. Suddenly, a bloody uprising erupted against a delegation of Jewish dignitaries, who were en route to greet the homecoming king. This unleashed thirty hours of constant barrage against the Jews of Iraq, an attack which was eventually called Farhoud.

The pogrom took place on a Jewish holiday called Shavuot and lasted two days. Hundreds of Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were broken into and looted. Before it was over, 180 Jews were murdered and over 200 were maimed or wounded. My father and his family members locked themselves in one of their houses, where they witnessed the horrible atrocities. Luckily my entire family and their holdings were unharmed.

The community continued with their lives after this episode, hoping that things would return to normal. Neighbors assisted their fellow Jews who were impacted by the riots and helped to rebuild Jewish schools and synagogues.

The community breathed a collective sigh of relief in early September 1945 when the war came to an end. It began to feel like the community could once again co-exist.

On November 29, 1947, a resolution was miraculously passed by a majority at the UN to terminate the British mandate and allow for an independent Jewish and Arab state to be recognized. After 2,000 years of Jews being forcibly exiled from their beloved land and disbursed to the four corners of the globe, they were going to have a land to call their own. People kept the faith throughout the dispersion and never stopped praying and hoping for their return. In implementing the 1947 UN resolution, a secret invitation was sent to 200 guests to attend a ceremony at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, May 14, 1948 announcing the declaration of Israel’s independence. This was done in secret because they feared that the British or the Arabs might thwart the occasion. On the same day, my mom gave birth to her fourth child, my brother Uri. The joy over the simultaneous birth of the state and a baby boy was overshadowed the next day, on May 15, by a joint declaration of war against Israel by Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

Miraculously, Israel succeeded in pushing back the Iraqi and other forces, despite its meager military arsenal and limited infantry. This defeat was a major embarrassment to the Iraqi royal family and the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

The Iraqi government took measures to take away some of the privileges previously given to the Jewish population in Iraq. An incident took place at this time that shocked the Jewish population; it is a story my dad has repeated to me on numerous occasions.

Shafiq Ades, an Iraqi Jewish businessman who imported Ford cars to Iraq, was a very close friend of the king and other influential politicians. Thus, Ades was chosen as a convenient target for the Iraqis who were venting feelings of revenge toward Israel and the Jewish population. Local newspapers, which were supported by the people, began a horrific smear campaign against Ades. He was arrested on false charges of shipping arms to Israel. At his trial, he was found guilty of treason. All his assets were confiscated by the government and he was be sentenced to death.

King Faisal signed the court ruling after three days of uncertainty and painful deliberations. (After all, Shafiq was a supporter, confidante, and a personal friend to the king.) My dad recounts the exact wording of what Prime Minister Sayid Mohamed told the king: “Either you hang this Jew and save your chair, or you lose your chair for the Jew’s sake.” On hearing these words, King Faisal signed the document, approving the death sentence.

The trial and hanging of Shafiq Ades was a major blow to my father and the Jewish community as a whole. My dad recalls that the hanging was turned into a spectacle in the city square. The crowd was so large that the executors had to hang Shafiq twice on the same day, first at 8:00 a.m. and then again at 10:00 a.m.

This was to be a major signal to the Jews that they were no longer welcome. There were massive layoffs of Jewish government employees. Rather than undergo the trauma ahead, many preemptively decided to convert to Islam. Others changed their names slightly to sound more Arabic. Dad proudly says that it never crossed his mind to just assimilate.

The environment for the Jewish community in Iraq in 1950 and 1951 was a state of mayhem. They were scrambling to make sense of the situation. The government began to nationalize businesses owned by Jews that were registered to emigrate from Iraq. Approximately ten thousand Jews per month were leaving the country—many by trains and buses via Iran. The Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, struck a deal with the Iraqi prime minister to land its planes in the Basra airfields and bring its new citizens to safety, at a price of fifty pounds sterling per Jew. The community began to crumble around them. Their hope that everything would eventually change and go back to the way things used to be was no longer a reality.

My parents were among the last groups of Jews to leave Iraq in April 1951. The departure experience left emotional scars for many. At the airport, every individual, adults and children, were body searched to ensure they were not smuggling cash or jewelry out of the country. My older sister Sue, approximately six years old at the time, recalls arguing with an Iraqi airport official who noticed a gold ring on her finger. She had no choice but to hand it to the guard.

Departure rules were extremely strict. Every passenger was allowed to bring on board only five pounds in weight, which was to include only personal effects, such as clothes and photographs; there were no exceptions to this law. My parents, Sue, brothers David, Ben, Uri, and Terry, both grandmothers, and my grandfather boarded the plane. They then watched as the plane took off, realizing that their lives would never be the same again. The land that had been their home their entire lives, the place that they loved so much, had turned into a chaotic environment from which they had to flee. It was a devastating and shocking event for all to endure.

The Promised Land of Israel, despite the longing to be back to the land from which our ancestors were expelled by the Romans over two thousand years prior, was unattractive to my parents and they were even uncertain whether Israel could survive this huge migration of people. Being forced to give up their history, belongings, professions, and the life they loved created an overwhelming sense of frustration and anger in my parents and their community.

As they approached Israel, my parents did not anticipate the mayhem they encountered upon landing. The first order of business was to spray all new arrivals with DDT, a commonly used pesticide for insect control. Then nurses began a lice check. This airport experience threw my mother into a state of silence—she became depressed and lost her desire to talk with anyone. Israel had become increasingly crowded.

In the five years prior to my family’s arrival in 1951, Israel had already absorbed over 700,000 Jewish refugees. Israel’s population prior to this influx was approximately 600,000 people. This was a huge undertaking for a newly created nation. Insufficient housing and food shortages were major problems, and the Iraqi authorities had hoped Israel would simply collapse under this pressure.

After my dad completed all the bureaucratic details at the airport on behalf of the entire family, they were directed toward rows of trucks awaiting their arrival in the middle of the night. The young and the old grandmothers clambered onto the uncovered trucks for a two-hour journey, all the while not knowing where their destination would be. They finally arrived at Binyamina, where I was born. It is located out in the hinterlands of Israel, in a mountainous area, just south of Haifa and north of Tel Aviv. Nowadays, it is regarded as a lush and desirable area, but back then it was essentially in the middle of nowhere.

My family and over 100,000 other refugees were placed in old British military camps. Here, they erected tents and ramshackle corrugated, sheet-metal huts. In the years after, my mom would often speak of the muddy conditions, the chaotic environment, the unseemly outdoor communal toilets and showers. My mom, who loved to cook exotic and complicated dishes, found herself dealing with ration coupons for eggs, milk, and bread...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface: Meet Efrem Harkham, Rock Star Hotelier by Mark Bego
• Introduction: Showing Up Is Everything by Efrem Harkham
• Pillar One: Family
• Pillar Two: The Art of Hospitality
• Pillar Three: Settling Down & Parenting
• Pillar Four: Inspiration
• In Closing: Lessons for a Luxe Life
• About the Authors
• Photo Insert