Blowout Samaritans
By Ronald W. Hull
It always happens on a Saturday. It was about 6 o’clock in the morning when the gun went off. Scared Beh half to death, because it was only about 6 inches from her right ear. It wasn't a gun that went off, it was a blown tire.
It was 1997, and I only had my first electric wheelchair, an Invacare Action Arrow with 16 inch balloon bicycle tires, five years with only four years of heavy use all day both at home, work and going to and from work, with all kinds of hazards along the way.
I could still get around the house on my wheeled office chair, but I could no longer walk. I really needed my wheelchair if I was going to go back to work on Monday. What to do?
Immediately, I thought of Ben. Ben Khayal owned National Auto Repair a half mile away on Bissonnet. When I first bought my house in 1982 and my 1973 Monte Carlo needed a tune up, he ran a franchise Tune Up Plus. When I stopped there, Ben told me that he was buying the shop next door that had been a body shop owned by an Egyptian immigrant who was selling it to build a much larger shop nearby.
Ben bought the place and brought his best mechanic, Mike, to help him do all the work. I started taking the Monte there often, keeping it until 2003. As well as my other vehicles. While I was waiting for repairs, we talked a lot and I found out that he had come to the United States from Gaza. When he learned of my deteriorating condition, he often sent Mike, or came himself, to my house to fix a tire or a battery recharge, at no additional cost. The kind of local businessman that is rare these days.
The shop opened at 7 am. I called Ben, and hearing my plight, came right over. The wheelchair, parked alongside of where Beh was sleeping, had mysteriously blown an inner tube. In all my years of dealing with inner tubes, both on bicycles and when cars had them, I never heard of an inner tube blowing out without some sort of trauma first. It remains a mystery.
Ben sized up the problem immediately and said he would go get an innertube. The bicycle shop he went to was 15 miles away, so it was some time before he came back and put the inner tube in the tire and then began pumping it up with my hand pump. Before he had finished pumping, that tube blew out! He had to leave again. The next time he came back he had two tubes, just in case. I never had another problem with that wheelchair’s tires and tubes and used it in the house until 2020 when I retired it. The second set of batteries lasted 16 years – perhaps a record for an electric wheelchair that’s used every day.
Over the years, I learned that Ben’s mother was still in Gaza and that he bought a farm in Egypt – perhaps to retire – he didn’t say. He put his daughter through pharmacy school and decided that he wanted to provide for his son in the auto repair business. When his mother died, he went to Gaza and sold all their properties, he told me, for about $500,000. He sold the shop to an Iranian immigrant Monsour, who was a master mechanic and a great guy to talk to about when he drove truck in the dangerous mountains of Pakistan.
Monsour sold the shop to another Iranian immigrant, Mustafa. Said that he wanted to get into buying and selling cars. Mustafa was at Columbia University finishing a degree in electrical engineering in 1979 when Iran fell to the ultra-right wing Ruhollah Khomeini and the dream of the Mohammad Reza Shah to Westernize the country was over. He was trapped here without financial aid like so many other students that I knew during my times at Marshall University and Atlanta University.
Ben built a state of the art auto shop for his son off the Grand Parkway. He wanted me to join him in his neighborhood of $500,000 homes that I couldn’t afford.
One day, I was crossing an intersection with my 2006 Ford Freestar when the engine stalled and I quickly pulled into a shopping center. The man who came walking across the parking lot was none other than Monsour!
He asked me, “Ron, can I help you?”
About that time, I got the car started again and it was running smoothly without stalling. I answered. “No, I’ll take it to the shop and have it checked out. What brings you here?”
“Oh, I’m working part time in the shop over there helping a friend out. Just got off work.”
I took the van to Mustafa and it wasn’t a vapor lock or crushed fuel filter like happened on the 1998 Windstar. Both of those vans required many Samaritans if only to use their cell phones to call AAA or push me out of traffic.
During these times of trial in their home countries, I’m glad that Ben, Monsour and Mustafa and their families are all safe and prosperous in the sanctuary city of Houston. But I wonder what they must think about their family and friends back in their home countries with what is happening. Caused primarily, only by outdated religious zealotry and accompanying hatred. Somehow, we have to stop it.
Copyright 2025 © Ronald W. Hull
6/19/25
