Sterile room, fluorescent lights, it’s freezing too. Agent Fields across the table, a face you wanna punch. Tell me about Zahid, he says.
We met on Lan Kwai Fong Street, aka LKF. A cluster of cobblestone alleys that make up Hong Kong’s de facto party district. A belligerent combination of white tourists, mainland Chinese money, and local hustlers. All under neon lights. Most locals avoid LKF at all costs. It’s for outsiders.
I pop into a dim lounge with radioactive goldfish and take a seat at the bar. I caught the Patek first, then the unibrow. Zahid Ahmed. Sup dude, he says.
We have a lot in common. We’re both 20. I’m Black from Atlanta, Zahid’s Indian from Norway. I’m studying abroad, he’s here on business. We’re outsiders who refuse to be kept out. Only difference is, Zahid’s making big moves. The guy invented a solar panel iPhone charger. We send a group of girls a bottle of champagne and party with them the rest of the night. He’s a nonstop name-dropper. As soon as the DJ drops the Weeknd, he goes, You know…I met Abel one time? The girls think it’s cringy, but he swipes for everything so it’s chill.
The next day we caught the train to Shenzhen, where the forecast is always gray skies with a good chance of depression. The atmosphere is poisoned from the factories. If it says MADE IN CHINA, they made it in Shenzhen. We pull up to Foxconn, a sprawling dystopian city with checkpoints, armed guards, and lab coats everywhere. This is where Apple makes the iPhone. We signed 100 NDAs. Yellow nets are fastened to the buildings. One of the lab coats calls them safety measures. Last year they had 14 worker suicides–they all jumped. Why they don’t do it at home? It’s cleaner, more polite, no? Zahid asked.
Agent Fields stirs his coffee and stares. After China, you two keep in touch? We did. I helped him pick out designer clothes and taught him proper Instagram DM etiquette for pulling girls. In a few months, Zahid’s success explodes. The Scandinavian press are calling him Norwegian Mark Zuckerberg. He raises crazy tech money and dives into high society with a vengeance. He’s even working the political angle, finessed a White House Clean Energy ambassador role.
One day in Atlanta, he scooped me in a yellow Porsche. He had a crush on the Princess of Jordan, and wanted to send her 10 dozen roses. I told him to calm down. We’re racing down Northside Drive. He zig-zags, overtaking every car with F1 precision. Life’s a video game and Zahid just knows how to play. I tell him I want in on whatever he does next. He tells a story.
At 11, his family moved to Norway from India. Zahid’s father abandoned a heart surgeon career to run a small shop outside of Oslo. Zahid couldn’t speak English or Norwegian. They taunted him: brown boy, brown boy. He forged an application and got accepted into a top boarding school. They ask why he lied? 13 year-old Zahid says, I don’t lie, I win.
Weeks later, he hit me about his new startup. The business plan is 60 pages. An old professor said it’s legit, so I made an investment. A bit of cash I stashed from student loan refunds and flipping sneakers. Wait, you gave him money? I nod. Agent Fields gulps. Zahid scammed tens of millions from some of the world’s most powerful people. I’ll never get my 4 g’s back. I was last in a long line of well-capitalized white men and Saudi royals. They sentenced him to 14 years. The prison is somewhere in South Georgia.