MUSA: I’m from Yemen. Ibb. You know, the middle city. It’s a couple hours from water. My father, you know, he came here in like the '70s. He bring my brothers, my sister, yeah, he came 1972, and he bring some of his kids. I got six brothers and sisters. And me the seventh. My father, he set up businesses. Yeah we have a couple stores.

He brought me in 1998. Me and my brother. I was like fifteen, sixteen. I went to school for a couple of years. Summer school used to be in Manhattan. High school I went in the Bronx. I still live there. My youngest brother, he come late. I work in the morning, he work in the night. I come like 7am to 5pm and then he come 5pm to 1am. You know how Yemenis do, man! Seven days a week!

Customer: “You got roll cones”?

Musa: “I got Dutch, son. Come on, man!”

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Everybody, you talk to them the way they talk...you see, like this guy...this is how you gotta run business, you know! Sometime customer, they don’t have money, I say “OK pay next time, no problem.” You gotta be nice, that’s how you get more customers. How you do business. But sometimes people, if you give them a lot of credit, $20, $40, they sometimes don’t come back. Sometimes you lose the customer and you lose the money. Too much is not good. Maybe a couple dollars. Too much, not good.

This area, you know, this area is alright. We have bad people a little because you know you got the shelter, you got the methadone clinic, a lot of crazy people, especially a store like this. But you have to take the good and the bad. I been here twelve years, never had a fight with somebody.

Actually never had violence. Sometimes people, they drunk, they act stupid. We never got in fights. Once, it wasn’t even me, it was my brother, it was a stupid thing, no gun or anything, it was a kid, he live around here actually, we know where he live, it’s stupid, you know...he was not stealing, he was rolling like weed. My brother saw him in the camera, he tell him stop, and this kid, he think he a gangster, he trying to fight. Yeah, it’s nothing. We don’t have no violence.

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In ‘04, my father bought the store from a Spanish lady. Dominican lady. We fix it a little bit. But now, you know, it’s too late. We leaving. The lease is over. We have a month, we leaving. I miss it. I kind of miss it. I been here a long time. Maybe I’ll open my own store! Yeah, why not. You never know. It could be a better life for me. More money for me. I’m here, running the business, I run the business with my father, I manage the store. So maybe I have experience, and from here, I can open my own?

