All About Coffee Part 128

In Portuguese East Africa, the natives prepare and drink coffee after the approved African native fashion, but the white population follows European customs. In the Union of South Africa, Dutch and English customs prevail in making and serving the beverage.

_Manners and Customs in Asia_

"Arabia the Happy" deserves to be called "the Blest", if only for its gift of coffee to the world. Here it was that the virtues of the drink were first made known; here the plant first received intensive cultivation. After centuries of habitual use of the beverage, we find the Arabs, now as then, one of the strongest and n.o.blest races of the world, mentally superior to most of them, generally healthy, and growing old so gracefully that the faculties of the mind seldom give way sooner than those of the body. They are an ever living earnest of the healthfulness of coffee.

The Arabs are proverbially hospitable; and the symbol of their hospitality for a thousand years has been the great drink of democracy--coffee. Their very houses are built around the cup of human brotherhood. William Wallace,[366] writing on Arabian philosophy, manners, and customs, says:

The princ.i.p.al feature of an Arab house is the _kahwah_ or coffee room. It is a large apartment spread with mats, and sometimes furnished with carpets and a few cushions. At one end is a small furnace or fireplace for preparing coffee. In this room the men congregate; here guests are received, and even lodged; women rarely enter it, except at times when strangers are unlikely to be present. Some of these apartments are very s.p.a.cious and supported by pillars; one wall is usually built transversely to the compa.s.s direction of the _Ka'ba_ (sacred shrine of Mecca). It serves to facilitate the performance of prayer by those who may happen to be in the _kahwah_ at the appointed times.

Several rounds of coffee, without milk or sugar, but sometimes flavored with cardamom seeds, are served to the guest at first welcome; and coffee may be had at all hours between meals, or whenever the occasion demands it. Always the beans are freshly roasted, pounded, and boiled.

The Arabs average twenty-five to thirty cups (findjans) a day.

Everywhere in Arabia there are to be found cafes where the beverage may be bought.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHIPS OF THE DESERT LADEN WITH COFFEE, ARABIA]

Those of the lower cla.s.ses are thronged throughout the day. In front, there is generally a porch or bench where one may sit. The rooms, benches, and little chairs lack the cleanliness and elegance of the one-time luxurious "_caffinets_" of cities like Damascus and Constantinople, but the drink is the same. There is not in all Yemen a single market town or hamlet where one does not find upon some simple hut the legend, "Shed for drinking coffee".

The Arab drinks water before taking coffee, but never after it. "Once in Syria", says a traveler, "I was recognized as a foreigner because I asked for water just after I had taken my coffee. 'If you belonged here', said the waiter, 'you would not spoil the taste of coffee in your mouth by washing it away with water.'"

It is an adventure to partake of coffee prepared in the open, at a roadside inn, or khan, in Arabia by an _araba_, or diligence driver. He takes from his saddle-bag the ever-present coffee kit, containing his supply of green beans, of which he roasts just sufficient on a little perforated iron plate over an open fire, deftly taking off the beans, one at a time, as they turn the right color. Then he pounds them in a mortar, boils his water in the long, straight-handled open boiler, or _ibrik_ (a sort of bra.s.s mug or _jezveh_), tosses in the coffee powder, moving the vessel back and forth from the fire as it boils up to the rim; and, after repeating this maneuver three times, pours the contents foaming merrily into the little egg-like serving cups.

_Cafee sultan_, or _kisher_, the original decoction, made from dried and toasted coffee hulls, is still being drunk in parts of Arabia and Turkey.

Coffee in Arabia is part of the ritual of business, as in other Oriental countries. Shop-keepers serve it to the customer before the argument starts. Recently, a New York barber got some valuable publicity because he regaled his customers with tea and music. It was "old stuff". The Arabian and Turkish barber shops have been serving coffee, tobacco, and sweetmeats to their customers for centuries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ARABIAN COFFEE HOUSE]

For a faithful description of the ancient coffee ceremony of the Arabs, which, with slight modification, is still observed in Arabian homes, we turn to Palgrave. First he describes the dwelling and then the ceremony:

The K'hawah was a large oblong hall, about twenty feet in height, fifty in length, and sixteen, or thereabouts, in breadth; the walls were coloured in a rudely decorative manner with brown and white wash, and sunk here and there into small triangular recesses, destined to the reception of books, though of these Ghafil at least had no over-abundance, lamps, and other such like objects. The roof of timber, and flat; the floor was strewed with fine clean sand, and garnished all round alongside of the walls with long strips of carpet, upon which cushions, covered with faded silk, were disposed at suitable intervals. In poorer houses felt rugs usually take the place of carpets.

In one corner, namely, that furthest removed from the door, stood a small fireplace, or, to speak more exactly, furnace, formed of a large square block of granite, or some other hard stone, about twenty inches each way; this is hollowed inwardly into a deep funnel, open above, and communicating below with a small horizontal tube or pipe-hole, through which the air pa.s.ses, bellows-driven, to the lighted charcoal piled up on a grating about half-way inside the cone. In this manner the fuel is soon brought to a white heat, and the water in the coffee-pot placed upon the funnel's mouth is readily brought to boil. The system of coffee furnaces is universal in Djowf and Djebel Shomer, but in Nejed itself, and indeed in whatever other yet more distant regions of Arabia I visited to the south and east, the furnace is replaced by an open fireplace hollowed in the ground floor, with a raised stone border, and dog-irons for the fuel, and so forth, like what may be yet seen in Spain. This diversity of arrangement, so far as Arabia is concerned, is due to the greater abundance of firewood in the south, whereby the inhabitants are enabled to light up on a larger scale; whereas throughout the Djowf and Djebel Shomer wood is very scarce, and the only fuel at hand is bad charcoal, often brought from a considerable distance, and carefully husbanded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BREWING THE GUEST'S COFFEE IN A MOHAMMEDAN HOME]

This corner of the K'hawah is also the place of distinction whence honour and coffee radiate by progressive degrees round the apartment, and hereabouts accordingly sits the master of the house himself, or the guests whom he more especially delighteth to honour.

On the broad edge of the furnace or fireplace, as the case may be, stands an ostentatious range of copper coffee-pots, varying in size and form. Here in the Djowf their make resembles that in vogue at Damascus; but in Nejed and the eastern districts they are of a different and much more ornamental fashioning, very tall and slender, with several ornamental circles and mouldings in elegant relief, besides boasting long beak-shaped spouts and high steeples for covers. The number of these utensils is often extravagantly great. I have seen a dozen at a time in a row by one fireside, though coffee-making requires, in fact, only three at most. Here in the Djowf five or six are considered to be the thing; for the south this number must be doubled; all this to indicate the riches and munificence of their owner, by implying the frequency of his guests and the large amount of coffee that he is in consequence obliged to have made for them.

Behind this stove sits, at least in wealthy houses, a black slave, whose name is generally a diminutive in token of familiarity or affection; in the present case it was Soweylim, the diminutive of Salim. His occupation is to make and pour out the coffee; where there is no slave in the family, the master of the premises himself, or perhaps one of his sons, performs that hospitable duty; rather a tedious one, as we shall soon see.

We enter. On pa.s.sing the threshold it is proper to say, "_Bismillah_, _i.e._, in the name of G.o.d;" not to do so would be looked on as a bad augury alike for him who enters and for those within. The visitor next advances in silence, till on coming about half-way across the room, he gives to all present, but looking specially at the master of the house, the customary "_Es-salamu'aleyk.u.m_," or "Peace be with you," literally, "on you."

All this while every one else in the room has kept his place, motionless, and without saying a word. But on receiving the salaam of etiquette, the master of the house rises, and if a strict Wahhabee, or at any rate desirous of seeming such, replies with the full-length traditionary formula. "_W' 'aleyk.u.mu-s-salamu, w'rahmat' Ullahi w'barakatuh_," which is, as every one knows, "And with (or, on) you be peace, and the mercy of G.o.d, and his blessings." But should he happen to be of anti-Wahhabee tendencies the odds are that he will say "_Marhaba_," or "_Ahlan w'

sahlan_," _i.e._, "welcome" or "worthy, and pleasurable," or the like; for of such phrases there is an infinite, but elegant variety.

All present follow the example thus given, by rising and saluting.

The guest then goes up to the master of the house, who has also made a step or two forwards, and places his open hand in the palm of his host's, but without grasping or shaking, which would hardly pa.s.s for decorous, and at the same time each repeats once more his greeting, followed by the set phrases of polite enquiry, "How are you?" "How goes the world with you?" and so forth, all in a tone of great interest, and to be gone over three or four times, till one or other has the discretion to say "_El hamdu l'illah_," "Praise be to G.o.d", or, in equivalent value, "all right," and this is a signal for a seasonable diversion to the ceremonious interrogatory.

The guest then, after a little contest of courtesy, takes his seat in the honoured post by the fireplace, after an apologetical salutation to the black slave on the one side, and to his nearest neighbour on the other. The best cushions and newest looking carpets have been of course prepared for his honoured weight. Shoes or sandals, for in truth the latter alone are used in Arabia, are slipped off on the sand just before reaching the carpet, and there they remain on the floor close by. But the riding stick or wand, the inseparable companion of every true Arab, whether Bedouin or townsman, rich or poor, gentle or simple, is to be retained in the hand, and will serve for playing with during the pauses of conversation, like the fan of our great-grandmothers in their days of conquest.

Without delay Soweylim begins his preparations for coffee. These open by about five minutes of blowing with the bellows and arranging the charcoal till a sufficient heat has been produced.

Next he places the largest of the coffee-pots, a huge machine, and about two-thirds full of clear water, close by the edge of the glowing coal-pit, that its contents may become gradually warm while other operations are in progress. He then takes a dirty knotted rag out of a niche in the wall close by, and having untied it, empties out of it three or four handfuls of unroasted coffee, the which he places on a little trencher of platted gra.s.s, and picks carefully out any blackened grains, or other non-h.o.m.ologous substances, commonly to be found intermixed with the berries when purchased in gross; then, after much cleansing and shaking, he pours the grain so cleansed into a large open iron ladle, and places it over the mouth of the funnel, at the same time blowing the bellows and stirring the grains gently round and round till they crackle, redden, and smoke a little, but carefully withdrawing them from the heat long before they turn black or charred, after the erroneous fashion of Turkey and Europe; after which he puts them to cool a moment on the gra.s.s platter.

He then sets the warm water in the large coffee-pot over the fire aperture, that it may be ready boiling at the right moment, and draws in close between his own trouserless legs a large stone mortar, with a narrow pit in the middle, just enough to admit the large stone pestle of a foot long and an inch and a half thick, which he now takes in hand. Next, pouring the half-roasted berries into the mortar, he proceeds to pound them, striking right into the narrow hollow with wonderful dexterity, nor ever missing his blow till the beans are smashed, but not reduced into powder. He then scoops them out, now reduced to a sort of coa.r.s.e reddish grit, very unlike the fine charcoal dust which pa.s.ses in some countries for coffee, and out of which every particle of real aroma has long since been burnt or ground.

After all these operations, each performed with as intense a seriousness and deliberate nicety as if the welfare of the entire Djowf depended on it, he takes a smaller coffee-pot in hand, fills it more than half with hot water from the larger vessel, and then shaking the pounded coffee into it, sets it on the fire to boil, occasionally stirring it with a small stick as the water rises to check the ebullition and prevent overflowing. Nor is the boiling stage to be long or vehement: on the contrary, it is and should be as light as possible. In the interim he takes out of another rag-knot a few aromatic seeds called heyl, an Indian product, but of whose scientific name I regret to be wholly ignorant, or a little saffron, and after slightly pounding these ingredients, throws them into the simmering coffee to improve its flavour, for such an additional spicing is held indispensable in Arabia though often omitted elsewhere in the East. Sugar would be a totally unheard of profanation. Last of all, he strains off the liquor through some fibres of the inner palm-bark placed for that purpose in the jug-spout, and gets ready the tray of delicate parti-coloured gra.s.s, and the small coffee cups ready for pouring out. All these preliminaries have taken up a good half-hour.

Meantime we have become engaged in active conversation with our host and his friends. But our Sherarat guide, Suleyman, like a true Bedouin, feels too awkward when among townsfolk to venture on the upper places, though repeatedly invited, and accordingly has squatted down on the sand near the entrance. Many of Ghafil's relations are present; their silver-decorated swords proclaim the importance of the family. Others, too, have come to receive us, for our arrival, announced beforehand by those we had met at the entrance pa.s.s, is a sort of event in the town; the dress of some betokens poverty, others are better clad, but all have a very polite and decorous manner. Many a question is asked about our native land and town, that is to say, Syria and Damascus, conformably to the disguise already adopted, and which it was highly important to keep well up; then follow enquiries regarding our journey, our business, what we have brought with us, about our medicines, our goods and wares, etc., etc. From the very first it is easy for us to perceive that patients and purchasers are likely to abound. Very few travelling merchants, if any, visit the Djowf at this time of year, for one must be mad, or next door to it, to rush into the vast desert around during the heats of June and July; I for one have certainly no intention of doing it again. Hence we had small danger of compet.i.tors, and found the market almost at our absolute disposal.

But before a quarter of an hour has pa.s.sed, and while blacky is still roasting or pounding his coffee, a tall thin lad, Ghafil's eldest son, appears, charged with a large circular dish, gra.s.s-platted like the rest, and throws it with a graceful jerk on the sandy floor close before us. He then produces a large wooden bowl full of dates, bearing in the midst of the heap a cup full of melted b.u.t.ter; all this he places on the circular mat, and says, "_Semmoo_," literally, "p.r.o.nounce the Name", of G.o.d, understood; this means "set to work at it." Hereon the master of the house quits his place by the fireside and seats himself on the sand opposite to us; we draw nearer to the dish, and four or five others, after some respectful coyness, join the circle. Every one then picks out a date or two from the juicy half-amalgamated ma.s.s, dips them into the b.u.t.ter, and thus goes on eating till he has had enough, when he rises and washes his hands.

By this time the coffee is ready, and Soweylim begins his round, the coffee-pot in one hand; the tray and cups on the other. The first pouring out he must in etiquette drink himself, by way of a practical a.s.surance that there is no "death in the pot;" the guests are next served, beginning with those next the honourable fireside; the master of the house receives his cup last of all. To refuse would be a positive and unpardonable insult; but one has not much to swallow at a time, for the coffee-cups, or finjans, are about the size of a large egg-sh.e.l.l at most, and are never more than half-filled. This is considered essential to good breeding, and a brimmer would here imply exactly the reverse of what it does in Europe; why it should be so I hardly know, unless perhaps the rareness of cup-stands or "zarfs" (see Lane's "Modern Egyptians") in Arabia, though these implements are universal in Egypt and Syria, might render an over-full cup inconveniently hot for the fingers that must grasp it without medium. Be that as it may, "fill the cup for your enemy" is an adage common to all, Bedouins or townsmen, throughout the Peninsula. The beverage itself is singularly aromatic and refreshing, a real tonic, and very different from the black mud sucked by the Levantine, or the watery roast-bean preparations of France. When the slave or freeman, according to circ.u.mstances, presents you with a cup, he never fails to accompany it with a "_Semm'_," "say the name of G.o.d," nor must you take it without answering "_Bismillah_."

When all have been thus served, a second round is poured out, but in inverse order, for the host this time drinks first, and the guests last. On special occasions, a first reception, for instance, the ruddy liquor is a third time handed round; nay, a fourth cup is sometimes added. But all these put together do not come up to one-fourth of what a European imbibes in a single draught at breakfast.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NATIVE CAFe, HARAR, ABYSSINIA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLY MANNER OF SERVING COFFEE, TEA AND CHOCOLATE

From a drawing in Dufour's _Traites Nouveaux et Curieux du Cafe, du The et du Chocolat_]

For a more recent pen picture of coffee manners and customs in Arabia, we turn to Charles M. Daughty's "_Travels in Arabia Deserta_"[367]:

Hirfa ever demanded of her husband towards which part should "the house" be built. "Dress the face". Zeyd would answer, "to this part", showing her with his hands the south, for if his booth's face be all day turned to the hot sun there will come in fewer young loitering and parasitical fellows that would be his coffee-drinkers. Since the _sheukh_, or heads, alone receive their tribes' _surra_, it is not much that they should be to the arms [of his] coffee-hosts. I have seen Zeyd avoid [them] as he saw them approach, or even rise ungraciously upon such men's presenting themselves (the half of every booth, namely the men's side, is at all times open, and any enter there that will, in the free desert), and they murmuring he tells them, _wellah_, his affairs do call him forth, adieu; he must away to the _mejlis_; go they and seek the coffee elsewhere. But were there any _sheykh_ with them, a coffee lord, Zeyd could not honestly choose but abide and serve them with coffee; and if he be absent himself, yet any _sheykhly_ man coming to a _sheykh's_ tent, coffee must be made for him, except he gently protest "_billah_, he would not drink." Hirfa, a _sheykh's_ daughter and his nigh kinswoman, was a faithful mate to Zeyd in all his sparing policy.

Our _menzil_ now standing, the men step over to Zeyd's coffee-fire, if the _sheykh_ be not gone forth to the _mejlis_ to drink his mid-day cup there. A few gathered sticks are flung down beside the hearth; with flint and steel one stoops and strikes fire in tinder, he blows and cherishes those seeds of the cheerful flame in some dry camel-dung, sets the burning shred under dry straws, and powders over more dry camel-dung. As the fire kindles, the _sheykh_ reaches for his _dellal_, coffee pots, which are carried in the _fatya_, coffee-gear basket; this people of a nomad life bestow each thing of theirs in a proper _beyt_; it would otherwise be lost in their daily removings. One rises to go to fill up the pots at the water-skins, or a bowl of water is handed over the curtain from the woman's side; the pot at the fire, Hirfa reaches over her little palm-ful of green coffee berries.... These are roasted and brayed; as all is boiling he sets out his little cups, _fenjeyl_ (for fenjeyn). When, with a pleasant gravity, he has unbuckled his _gutia_ or cup-box, we see the nomad has not above three or four fenjeyns, wrapt in a rusty clout, with which he scours them busily, as if this should make his cups clean. The roasted beans are pounded amongst Arabs with a magnanimous rattle--and (as all their labor) rhythmical--in bra.s.s of the town, or an old wooden mortar, gaily studded with nails, the work of some nomad smith. The water bubbling in the small _dellal_, he casts in his fine coffee powder, _el-bunn_, and withdraws the pot to simmer a moment. From a knot in his kerchief he takes then a head of cloves, a piece of cinnamon or other spice, _bahar_, and braying these he casts their dust in after. Soon he pours out some hot drops to essay his coffee; if the taste be to his liking, making dexterously a nest of all the cups in his hand, with pleasant clattering, he is ready to pour out for all the company, and begins upon his right hand; and first, if such be present, to any considerable _sheykh_ and princ.i.p.al persons. The _fenjeyn kahwah_ is but four sips; to fill it up to a guest, as in the northern towns, were among Bedouins an injury, and of such bitter meaning, "This drink thou and depart."

[Ill.u.s.tration: NUBIAN SLAVE GIRL WITH COFFEE SERVICE, PERSIA]

Then is often seen a contention in courtesy amongst them, especially in any greater a.s.semblies, who shall drink first. Some man that receives the _fenjeyn_ in his turn will not drink yet--he proffers it to one sitting in order under him, as to the more honourable; but the other putting off with his hand will answer _ebbeden_, "Nay, it shall never be, by Ullah! but do thou drink."

Thus licensed, the humble man is despatched in three sips, and hands up his empty _fenjeyn_. But if he have much insisted, by this he opens his willingness to be reconciled with one not his friend.

That neighbor, seeing the company of coffee-drinkers watching him, may with an honest grace receive the cup, and let it seem not willingly; but an hard man will sometimes rebut the other's gentle proffer.

Some may have taken lower seats than becoming their _sheykhly_ blood, of which the nomads are jealous; entering untimely, they sat down out of order, sooner than trouble all the company. A _sheykh_, coming late and any business going forward, will often sit far out in the a.s.sembly; and show himself a popular person in this kind of honourable humility. The more inward in the booth is the higher place; where also is, with the _sheykhs_, the seat of a stranger.

To sit in the loose circuit without and before the tent, is for the common sort. A tribesman arriving presents himself at that part or a little lower, where in the eyes of all men his pretension will be well allowed; and in such observances of good nurture, is a nomad man's honour among his tribesmen. And this is nigh all that serves the nomad for a conscience, namely, that which men will hold of him. A poor person, approaching from behind, stands obscurely, wrapped in his tattered mantle, with grave ceremonial, until those sitting indolently before him in the sand shall vouchsafe to take notice of him; then they rise unwillingly, and giving back enlarge the coffee-circle to receive him. But if there arrive a _sheykh_, a coffee-host, a richard amongst them of a few cattle, all the c.o.xcomb companions within will hail him with their pleasant adulation _taad henneyi_, "Step thou up hither."

The astute f.u.kara _sheukh_ surpa.s.s all men in their coffee-drinking courtesy, and Zeyd himself was more than any large of this gentlemen-like imposture: he was full of swaggering complacence and compliments to an humbler person. With what suavity could he encourage, and gently too compel a man, and rising himself yield him parcel of another man's room! In such fashions Zeyd showed himself a bountiful great man, who indeed was the greatest n.i.g.g.ard.

The cups are drunk twice about, each one sipping after other's lips without misliking; to the great coffee _sheykhs_ the cup may be filled more times, but this is an adulation of the coffee-server.

There are some of the f.u.kara _sheukh_ so delicate Sybarites that of those three bitter sips, to draw out all their joyance, twisting, turning, and tossing again the cup, they could make ten. The coffee-service ended, the grounds are poured out from the small into the great store-pot that is reserved full of warm water; with the bitter lye the nomads will make their next bever, and think they spare coffee.

Here is an Arabian recipe[368] for making coffee as given by Kadhi Hodhat, the best informed man of his time:

Tadj-Eddin-Aid-Almaknab-ben-Yacoub-Mekki Molki, chief of all the cantons of Hedjaz, (May G.o.d have mercy on him!) I learned it when once in his company at the time of the Holy Feasts.... He informed me that nothing is more beneficial than to drink cold water before coffee, because it lessens the dryness of the coffee and thus taken it does not cause insomnia to the same degree. The poet did not forget to explain this manner of taking coffee:

As with art 'tis prepared, one should drink it with art.

The mere commonplace drinks one absorbs with free heart; But this--once with care from the bright flame removed, And the lime set aside that its value has proved-- Take it first in deep draughts, meditative and slow, Quit it now, now resume, thus imbibe with gusto; While charming the palate it burns yet enchants, In the hour of its triumph the virtue it grants Penetrates every tissue; its powers condense.

Circulate cheering warmths, bring new life to each sense.

From the cauldron profound spiced aromas unseen Mount to tease and delight your olfactories keen, The while you inhale with felicity fraught, The enchanting perfume that a zephyr has brought.