Not enough success stories are made known from this part of the world. The other day an exception was witnessed. Elia Costandi Nuqul, the chairman of Nuqul Group, launched his book about his life and achievements. “A Promise Fulfilled - Elia Costandi Nuqul and His Business Odyssey” is a good, easy read, written and edited by Andrew Wheatcroft and Christina Z. Hawatmeh. The mission of the book, according to Nuqul, is to let young people learn from his experiences in business and life.

“A Promise Fulfilled” takes the reader from Elia’s boyhood in the Palestinian town of Ramleh through the escape in 1948, to Jordan and the subsequent building of what has become a business empire with 5,500 employees and operations in 45 countries. The reader witnesses the daily struggle of a family that initially was not well off but whose drive, faith and motivation created one of the business miracles of the Middle East.

The story of Nuqul is also the story of Jordan and Palestine and the many difficult moments their people have had to overcome.

Having finished the book, three observations stands out about Nuqul’s path to success. They can be summarised into education, adaptation and ingenuity.

Throughout the book one can sense, the Nuqul family’s extreme emphasis on the need for education and schooling in order to succeed.

Due to political events Nuqul did not get the full formal education that he wanted, but from reading about how meticulously he prepared interventions into new business sectors and sought out new investments it is safe to say that he has never stopped learning.

From early on - and with almost no financial means - he pushed his younger brother to continue his education instead of securing a job to provide for the family. This line of thinking has marked his whole life and to this day he is sponsoring other less fortunate children so that they can receive high quality education.

The proceeds from this book will serve the same purpose through the Elia Nuqul Foundation.

In order to grow a business, a manager has to be flexible and able to adapt to changing circumstances. Where other businesses saw political developments in the region as a hindrance Nuqul saw the opportunity. But the most crucial adaptation came when the Nuqul family fled the Palestinian hometown of Ramleh. Eventually, the family ended up in Amman where it had to start all over.

Without forgetting his roots for one single moment Nuqul took the decision that the future of his business and his family should be build in Jordan. There was no reason for sitting idle and waiting for better times to come.

As with all successful businessmen, there has to be an element of ingenuity and creativity - an ability to see new ways of producing, transporting, selling or marketing. And to understand the needs of the customers and find ways to satisfy their demand.

There are a number of examples in the book about how this ability made the Nuqul business prosper. One of them concerns Nuqul’s first business trip abroad in 1955, when he went to my country, Denmark. He was dealing with a Danish chewing gum producer “Dandy”. Chewing gum in the Middle East was a sellers market, but it took too long to get a shipment from Denmark to Jordan by direct shipping, which was problematic for the business model Nuqul was applying at that time. But he looked at the problem with creativity and found new ways of transportation that reduced delivery time from 90 to 20 days at constant costs.

If one looks for criticism of the Nuqul way of doing business, of governments, of national or international figures, one is reading the wrong book. It is understandable; Nuqul must have had a big say on the text.

That said, there are some remarkable statements about former business partners that Elia had to deal with including some who did not live up to the standards that Nuqul had set on corruption and customers.

The book emphasises Nuqul’s high moral and his total refusal to participate in anything that resembles corruption. His business motto is “Fair deals last longest”, which within diplomacy is an age old maxim - because who wants to do business again with someone who is not fair?

Politics is also almost absent from the book. As Nuqul says “Politics at arm’s length”. Nonetheless, Nuqul touches some core questions that might be sensible in some circles. One is his statement about Arabs being their own worst enemy: “Unless we grow up politically and economically, we will continue to be targeted and attacked.”

The other - more political - statement regards a future independent Palestinian state and Jordan, where Nuqul believes that “... the future state should be tied with Jordan in some form or shape: Perhaps a federation, or a confederation, that entails two governments, two parliaments but definitely one state... .”

The book concludes with looking into the future of the Nuqul Group. As all family businesses, the Nuquls will be faced with some though choices to make. As a second generation company, they have not yet ran into transition problems, but it seems that Nuqul and his sons, Ghassan and Marwan, are very much aware of this issue.

In the future, the Nuqul Group might end up going public. It will mark, if not the end then, a substantial change in this Middle Eastern business adventure - but on the other hand it will make it possible for all of us to be a part of this fantastic history.

Thomas Lund-Sørensen, Danish Ambassador in Amman