All About Coffee, William H. Ukers [short story to read .txt] 📗
- Author: William H. Ukers
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Nubian Slave Girl with Coffee Service, Persia
Then is often seen a contention in courtesy amongst them, especially in any greater assemblies, 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 assembly; 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 coxcomb companions within will hail him with their pleasant adulation taad henneyi, "Step thou up hither."
The astute Fukara sheukh surpass 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 niggard. 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 Fukara 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 God 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.
Gone are the "luxurious and magnificent" coffee houses of Constantinople (if they ever existed—at least as we understand luxury and magnificence) which first brought the beverage world-wide fame; such caffinets as the one pictured by Thomas Allom and described by the Rev. Robert Walsh, in Constantinople, Illustrated:
The caffinet, or coffee-house, is something more splendid, and the Turk expends all his notions of finery and elegance on this, his favorite place of indulgence. The edifice is generally decorated in a very gorgeous manner, supported on pillars, and open in front. It is surrounded on the inside by a raised platform, covered with mats or cushions, on which the Turks sit cross-legged. On one side are musicians, generally Greeks, with mandolins and tambourines, accompanying singers, whose melody consists in vociferation; and the loud and obstreperous concert forms a strong contrast to the stillness and taciturnity of Turkish meetings. On the opposite side are men, generally of a respectable class, some of whom are found here every day, and all day long, dozing under the double influence of coffee and tobacco. The coffee is served in very small cups, not larger than egg-cups, grounds and all, without cream or sugar, and so black, thick, and bitter that it has been aptly compared to "stewed soot". Besides the ordinary chibouk for tobacco, there is another implement, called narghillai, used for smoking in a caffinet, of a more elaborate construction. It consists of a glass vase, filled with water, and often scented with distilled rose or other flowers. This is surmounted with a silver or brazen head, from which issues a long flexible tube; a pipe-bowl is placed on the top, and so constructed that the smoke is drawn, and comes bubbling up through the water, cool and fragrant to the mouth. A peculiar kind of tobacco, grown at Shiraz in Persia, and resembling small pieces of cut leather, is used with this instrument.
Certainly there never was any such thing as a coffee-house architecture. It may be that up to the time of Abdul Hamid, when money was more plentiful than it has been for the past fifty years, there were coffee houses more comfortably appointed than now exist.
The coffee house in a modernized form is, however, quite as numerous in Turkey as in the days of Amurath III and the notorious Kuprili.
H.G. Dwight[369] writing on the present day Turkish coffee house, says:
There are thoroughfares in any Turkish city that carry on almost no other form of traffic. There is no quarter so miserable or so remote as to be without one or two. They are the clubs of the poorer classes. Men of a street, a trade, a province, or a nationality—for a Turkish coffee-house may also be Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Kurd, almost anything you please—meet regularly when their work is done, at coffee-houses kept by their own people. So much are the humbler coffee-houses frequented by a fixed clientèle that a student of types or dialects may realize for himself how truly they used to be called Schools of Knowledge.
The arrangement of a Turkish coffee-house is of the simplest. The essential is that the place should provide the beverage for which it exists and room for enjoying the same. A sketch of a coffee-shop may often be seen on the street, in a scrap of shade or sunshine according to the season, where a stool or two invite the passer-by to a moment of contemplation. Larger establishments, though they are rarely very large, are most often installed in a room longer than it is wide, having as many windows as possible at the street end and what we would call the bar at the other. It is a bar that always makes me regret I do not etch, with its pleasing curves, its high lights of brass and porcelain striking out of deep shadow, and its usually picturesque kahvehji.
You do not stand at it. You sit on one of the benches running down the sides of the room. They are more or less comfortably cushioned, though sometimes higher and broader than a foreigner finds to his taste. In that case you slip off your shoes, if you would do as the Romans do, and tuck your feet up under you. A table stands in front of you to hold your coffee—and often in summer an aromatic pot of basil to keep the flies away. Chairs or stools are scattered about. Decorative Arabic texts, sometimes wonderful prints, adorn the walls. There may even be hanging rugs and china to entertain your eyes. And there you are.
The habit of the coffee-house is one that requires a certain leisure. You must not bolt coffee as you bolt the fire-waters of the West, without ceremony, in retreats withdrawn from the public eye. Being a less violent and a less shameful passion, I suppose, it is indulged in with more of the humanities. The etiquette of the coffee-house, of those coffee-houses which have not been too much infected by Europe, is one of their most characteristic features. Something like it prevails in Italy, where you tip your hat on entering and leaving a caffè. In Turkey, however, I have seen a new-comer salute one after another each person in a crowded coffee-room, once on entering the door and again after taking his seat, and be so saluted in return—either by putting the right hand to the heart and uttering the greeting Merhabah, or by making the temennah, that triple sweep of the hand which is the most graceful of salutes. I have also seen an entire company rise upon the entrance of an old man, and yield him the corner of honor.
Such courtesies take time. Then you must wait for your coffee to be made. To this end coffee, roasted fresh as required by turning in an iron cylinder over a fire of sticks and ground to the fineness of powder in a brass mill, is put into a small uncovered brass pot with a long handle. There it is boiled to a froth three times on a charcoal brazier, with or without sugar as you prefer. But to desecrate it by the admixture of milk is an unheard of sacrilege. Some
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