“Your mother is gone. Tears won’t bring her back—so wipe your face, make dinner, and don’t look like a grieving child when my guests arrive.” That was what my husband said.

I spoke not just as an heiress, but as someone who understood the values of hard work and honesty that my mother had instilled in me. While I was presiding over a meeting in a cool skyscraper, Mark was living a very different fate. In a squalid, overcrowded corner of the city, in a damp and narrow 10-by-10-foot boarding house room, Mark lay curled up on a thin foam mattress that smelled of mildew. The ceiling of his room leaked, and water from the previous night’s rain dripped onto the already cracked tile floor. There was no air conditioning, only a small, dusty, and noisy fan. Mark was awakened by loud banging on the door.