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To do business, he zigzags around the world on his jets the way others hop in a car to run an errand, because he must be there face-to-face. He believes that through the force of his personality, he can broker a billion-dollar merger or patch up a domestic tiff. Recently, in a conversation with a woman he had just met, she confided to him that she was in the final stages of divorce. "Stop!" he said excitedly. "Let me reconcile you! I am good at it."
Born in Mecca, Khashoggi grew up with the confidence that comes from being the firstborn son in a country where the eldest boy is the prince of the family. His father, Dr. Mohammad Khashoggi, was the chief physician to King Abdul Aziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia. From his father, Khashoggi says, he learned the difference between compassion and realism, as well as the value of giving as a prelude to receiving. Khashoggi recalls that one oppressive summer afternoon when he was eight, he discovered a beggar asleep on the front steps. Knowing of Islam's emphasis on charity, Adnan brought the man inside, gave him some food and said he could sleep in the hall. When his father returned that evening, Adnan expected great praise but got a lecture instead. "You've ruined this man's life," Dr. Khashoggi said. "He'll never be able to sleep on the sidewalk again." The incident, Khashoggi recounts, taught him that compassion must be tempered with logic, and logic with compassion. "It was the first time that I was touched by the reality of life."
Saudi Arabia was then a poor and barren desert kingdom, lagging far behind the West in development. But Dr. Khashoggi was determined to give his son a modern education. Through a timely investment, he was able to send Adnan to Victoria College, a British-run school in Egypt that was the cradle of leadership for the elite of the Middle East. Khashoggi's classmates included two princes who would become Kings, Faisal II of Iraq and Hussein of Jordan. There Khashoggi learned the rudiments of dealmaking. He found out that a Libyan schoolmate's father wanted to buy sheets and towels; he knew that an Egyptian classmate's father manufactured them. He introduced buyer and seller, and it yielded his first commission, about $1,000.
Khashoggi wanted to become a petroleum engineer and enrolled in the Colorado School of Mines. But Colorado was too cold for his desert blood, so his father arranged for him to go to the California State University at Chico, a school of 2,000. Set in a conservative rural town, it was an oasis for wealthy Middle Eastern students seeking an American education. When his father sent him $10,000 to buy a car and rent a better apartment, Khashoggi purchased two trucks that he leased to the owner of a small construction company for $125 a month. "I used to get $225 a month from home," he remembers. "So, my income rose to $350 a month. I became a rich student." He promptly moved to a hotel, hired a female student to do chores and type his papers, and began to give elegant soirees, replete with polished silver, pressed linen and fresh flowers.