All About Coffee, William H. Ukers [short story to read .txt] 📗
- Author: William H. Ukers
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When your coffee is ready it is poured into an after-dinner coffee-cup or into a miniature bowl, and brought to you on a tray with a glass of water. A foreigner can almost always be spotted by the manner in which he finally partakes of these refreshments. A Turk sips his water first, partly to prepare the way for the coffee, but also because he is a connoisseur of the former liquid as other men are of stronger ones. And he lifts his coffee-cup by the saucer, whether it possess a handle or no, managing the two together in a dexterous way of his own. The current price for all this, not including the water-pipe, is ten paras—a trifle over a cent—for which the kahvehji will cry you "Blessing". More pretentious establishments charge twenty paras, while a giddy few rise to a piaster—not quite five cents—or a piaster and a half. That, however, begins to look like extortion. And mark that you do not tip the waiter. I have often been surprised to be charged no more than the tariff, although I gave a larger piece to be changed and it was perfectly evident that I was a foreigner. That is an experience which rarely befalls a traveller among his own coreligionaries. It has even happened to me, which is rarer still, to be charged nothing at all, nay, to be steadfastly refused when I persisted in attempting to pay, simply because I was a foreigner, and therefore a guest.
There is no reason, however, why you should go away when you have had your coffee—or your glass of tea—and your smoke. On the contrary, there are reasons why you should stay, particularly if you happen into the coffee-house not too long after sunset. Then coffee-houses of the most local color are at their best. Earlier in the day their clients are likely to be at work. Later they will have disappeared altogether. For Constantinople has not quite forgotten the habits of the tent. Stamboul, except during the holy month of Ramazan, is a deserted city at night. But just after dark it is full of a life which an outsider is often content simply to watch through the lighted windows of coffee-rooms. These are also barber-shops, where men have shaved not only their chins, but different parts of their heads according to their "countries". In them likewise checkers, the Persian backgammon, and various games of long narrow cards are played. They say that Bridge came from Constantinople. Indeed, I believe a club of Pera claims the honor of having communicated that passion to the Western World. But I must confess that I have yet to see an open hand in a coffee-house of the people.
One of the pleasantest forms of amusement to be obtained in coffee-houses is unfortunately getting to be one of the rarest. It is that afforded by itinerant story-tellers, who still carry on in the East the tradition of the troubadours. The stories they tell are more or less on the order of the Arabian Nights, though perhaps even less suitable for mixed companies—which for the rest are never found in coffee-shops. These men are sometimes wonderfully clever at character monologue or dialogue. They collect their pay at a crucial moment of the action, refusing to continue until the audience has testified to the sincerity of its interest by some token more substantial.
Music is much more common. There are those, to be sure, who find no music in the sounds poured forth oftenest by a gramophone, often by a pair of gypsies with a flaring pipe and two small gourd drums, and sometimes by an orchestra so-called of the fine lute—a company of musicians on a railed dais who sing long songs while they play on stringed instruments of strange curves. For myself I know too little of music to tell what relation the recurrent cadences of those songs and their broken rhythms may bear to the antique modes. But I can listen, as long as musicians will perform, to those infinite repetitions, that insistent sounding of the minor key. It pleases me to fancy there a music come from far away—from unknown river gorges, from camp-fires glimmering on great plains. Does not such darkness breathe through it, such melancholy, such haunting of elusive airs? There are flashes too of light, of song, the playing of shepherd's pipes, the swoop of horsemen and sudden outcries of savagery. But the note to which it all comes back is the monotone of a primitive life, like the day-long beat of camel bells. And more than all, it is the mood of Asia, so rarely penetrated, which is neither lightness or despair.
There are seasons in the year when these various forms of entertainment abound more than at others, as Ramazan and the two Bairams. Throughout the month of Ramazan the purely Turkish coffee-houses are closed in the daytime, since the pleasures which they minister may not then be indulged in; but they are open all night. It is during that one month of the year that Karaghieuz, the Turkish shadow-show, may be seen in a few of the larger coffee-shops. The Bairams are two festivals of three and four days respectively, the former of which celebrates the close of Ramazan, while the latter corresponds in certain respects to the Jewish Passover. Dancing is a particular feature of the coffee-houses in Bairam. The Kurds, who carry the burdens of Constantinople on their backs, are above all other men given to this form of exercise—though the Lazzes, the boatmen, vie with them. One of these dark tribesmen plays a little violin like a pochelle, or two of them perform on a pipe and a big drum, while the others dance round them in a circle, sometimes till they drop from fatigue. The weird music and the picturesque costumes and movements of the dancers make the spectacle one to be remembered.
Christian coffee-houses also have their own festal seasons. These coincide in general with the festivals of the church. But every quarter has its patron saint, the saint of the local church or of the local holy well, whose feast is celebrated by a three-day panayiri. The street is dressed with flags and strings of colored paper, tables and chairs line the sidewalk, and libations are poured forth in honor of the holy person commemorated. For this reason, and because of the more volatile character of the Greek, the general note of his merrymaking is louder than that of the Turk. One may even see the scandalous spectacle of men and women dancing together at a Greek panayiri. The instrument which sets the key of these orgies is the lanterna, a species of hand-organ peculiar to Constantinople. It is a hand-piano rather, of a loud and cheerful voice, whose Eurasian harmonies are enlivened by a frequent clash of bells.
What first made coffee-houses suspicious to those in authority, however, is their true resource—the advantages they offer for meeting one's kind, for social converse and the contemplation of life. Hence it must be that they have so happy a tact for locality. They seek shade, pleasant corners, open squares, the prospect of water or wide landscapes. In Constantinople they enjoy an infinite choice of site, so huge is the extent of that city, so broken by hill and sea, so varied in its spectacle of life. The commonest type of city coffee-room looks out upon the passing world from under a grape-vine or a climbing wistaria.
Coffee-houses of distinction are to be found also in the Place of the Pines overlooking the Marble Sea, on Giant's Mountain, in the Landing Place of the Man-slayer, and along the rivers that flow into the Golden Horn.
Originally the Turkish method of preparing coffee was the Arabian method, and it is so described by Mr. Fellows in his Excursions through Asia Minor:
Each cup is made separately, the little saucepan or ladle in which it is prepared being about an inch wide and two deep; this is more than half filled with coffee, finely pounded with a pestle and mortar, and then filled up with water; after being placed for a few seconds on the fire, the contents are poured, or rather shaken, out (being much thicker than chocolate) without the addition of cream or sugar, into a china cup of the size and shape of half an egg-shell, which is inclosed in one of ornamented metal for convenience of holding in the hand.
Later, the Turks sought to improve the method by adding sugar (a concession to the European sweet tooth) during the boiling process. The improved Turkish recipe is as follows:
First boil the water. For two cups of the beverage add three lumps of sugar and return the boiler to the fire. Add two teaspoonfuls of powdered coffee, stirring well and let the pot boil up four times. Between each boiling the pot is to be removed from the fire and the bottom tapped gently until the froth on the top subsides. After the last boiling pour the coffee first into one cup and then the other, so as to evenly divide the froth.
In Syria and Palestine the Turkish-Arabian methods are followed. The brazen dippers, or ibriks, are used for boiling.
Oriental coffee-house keeper's costume
In the Near East, coffee manners and customs are much the same today as they were fifty or even one hundred years ago. Witness Damascus. The following pen picture of the cafés in this ancient city was written in 1836 to accompany the drawing by Bartlett and Purser, which is reproduced here; but it might have been written in 1922, so slight have been the changes in the setting or the spirit of the original coffee house that Shemsi first brought to Constantinople from Damascus in 1554.[370]
The Cafés of the kind represented in the plate are, perhaps, the greatest luxury that a stranger finds in Damascus. Gardens, kiosques, fountains, and groves are abundant around every Eastern capital: but Cafés on the very bosom of a rapid river, and bathed by its waves, are peculiar to this ancient city: they are formed so as to exclude the rays of the sun, while they admit the breeze; the light roof is supported by slender rows of pillars, and the building is quite open on every side.
A few of these houses are situated in the skirts of the town, on one of the streams, where
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