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sum by any means. Many blacks say that it is hard for them to borrow that much from banks or other financial institutions. Arabs, with their tradition of family solidarity, don’t have a similar credit problem; well-established relatives usually help new arrivals to go into business on their own.
    Relations between blacks and Arabs are often tense. “They exploit us,” said Robert Walls, a senior official in the city’s Neighborhood Services Department. We were sitting in his office one day with his boss, Cassandra Smith-Gray, and George Gaines, the deputy director of public health, talking about the lack of black commerce in the city. When the subject of Arab merchants arose, the conversation turned angry.
    â€œLet me tell you about overcharging,” said Gaines. “They operate on pure greed.”
    â€œIt is greed,” said Smith-Gray. “And it’s the way they act toward us. You can go into some stores where kids have to walk with their hands at their sides”—presumably an antishoplifting measure.
    â€œOr, only one child at a time is allowed in,” Gaines added. “If there’s another riot in Detroit, it will be against the Chaldeans.”
    No one challenged the prediction. “They came here with assumptions about blacks,” said Smith-Gray angrily. “I have been here since 1754. How dare they make assumptions about me? Their stores smell, too. I don’t like ’em. That’s my right.…”
    But like all the coins in Detroit, this one has another side. Since 1960, roughly one hundred Arab and Chaldean merchants have been murdered in their stores. Six of them were related to John Aboud.
    In April, Aboud, a man in his early thirties with hard brown eyes, a soft voice and a weight lifter’s torso, attended a mass commemorating the fallen shopkeepers at the Chaldean Mother of God Cathedral. There were speeches about gun control and prayers for the souls of the departed. A special booklet, with pictures of more than forty slain merchants, was distributed. Many were wedding photos of young men dressed in frilly shirts and tuxedos, sporting tentative mustaches and blow-dried haircuts.
    Johnny Aziz’s picture was not in the book. A second cousin of Aboud’s, he was murdered coming out of his store not long after the memorial mass. Someone ambushed him in his parking lot, stole his cash and left twenty-two bullet holes in his body.
    â€œJohnny was a weight lifter,” said Aboud. “He walked into the emergency room himself. He died there. His older brother was shot and stabbed this year, too, on Christmas Eve.” Aboud’s voice choked with emotion, and he ran a callused hand over his face. “You may not believe this, but right now my family is involved in three separate murder trials.”
    Family is the most important thing in John Aboud’s life. He and his brothers had just bought a second store, in the suburbs, and they split the work, each putting in about one hundred hours a week. “Nobody does anything out of the family,” he said. “We are all in partnership or no one is. One pocket, one heart.” Aboud is still single, but he hopes to get married soon. In the meantime he works and saves for his nieces and nephews, and to build something for his unborn children and grandchildren.
    â€œI haven’t had a day off in two years, and I haven’t wanted one,” he said. “Why do I do it? To please my family.”
    The members of Aboud’s family take care of one another. Every night at 10:45, just before closing time, Aboud’s father calls. He always has the same message—“Watch yourself,” a Chaldean warning. At precisely eleven, the brothers take their money home. “We have the same ritual every night,” Aboud told me in a matter-of-fact tone. “Just before going out we say, ‘Eyes open,’ and then the lead man goes out with a weapon and scans