Cup

Last week my husband had a birthday. The kind you only have once every half a century. Part of my gift to him was breaking out my coffee supplies from Eritrea days and making him some jabana, a strong, sweet, spicy coffee made by the Beja people. I am out of practice (it’s an art to make it well) and my coffee was a little weak, but it still tasted “right” and brought back great memories for us! (The picture above is my make-shift set of coffee supplies for here in Asia.) The experience reminded me of a something I wrote from the perspective of a jabana cup.

Here it is:

I’m nothing special really, just a little cup in the hands of a young nomad woman.

She has six other cups just like me.

I don’t have a handle and I am not very big at all. The gold paint on my rim is already fading from use.

Finjaan is what I’m called, and I hold coffee for my owner five times a day.

That’s how many times a day the Beja drink coffee, and each time, I am filled with the dark brew five times.

The young nomad woman sets me and the other cups on a little metal tray.

Clink…clink…clink

She sets the tray on the dirt beside her little charcoal stove.

She fans the burning coals with one hand and shakes a metal cup of coffee beans over the heat with the other.

Rattle…rattle…rattle

Green turns to brown and brown to black. The beans begin to smoke and the aroma fills the round dome-shaped tent of the nomad woman.

The smoke and aroma of the coffee beans mix with the smoke and aroma of the incense that she has placed with a live coal in a tiny clay bowl at the entrance to the tent.

Laughter fills the room; deep chuckles and throaty voices of old men.

They are reclining on blankets and mats in the tent as they wait for their coffee to be served. 

The man with the big grin and missing teeth is the nomad woman’s husband. He is old, but he is kind. She has borne him a child already, so he is very proud of her.

Her tiny baby boy is sleeping in a bundle on her back. She has tied him there and he is quiet and peaceful.  The nomad lady puts the coffee beans in a thick wooden cylinder and pounds the beans with a heavy metal rod.

Thump…thump…thump

The beans are pounded in the cylinder, along with a large piece of ginger.  Then they are poured onto a small round woven fan, the same one used to charm the coals. 

The nomad woman examines the mound of coffee grounds mixed with the gnarled stringy pieces of mashed ginger. 

When she is satisfied, she rolls her fan into a funnel and coaxes the grounds into the long thin spout of her red clay coffee pot. It is ball shaped at the bottom and resembles a clay gourd. 

She expertly pours water in and sets the pot on the coals.  The drops of water that escaped down the sides of the pot now sizzle on the fire.

Ssss…ssss…ssss

The nomad woman turns to us, the finjaans. Her hand dips each of us into a bucket of water to clean us.  She works carefully, almost lovingly.

When the coffee bubbles, she knows it is almost ready. She removes the pot before the dark froth bubbles up the long spout and spills out onto the coals.  She sets the round clay pot on a ring made of reeds that keeps it sitting upright while the coffee grounds settle to the bottom. 

She takes something that looks like a wad of crumpled string. It is really a tangled ball of camel’s tail hairs that she has crafted into a filter. She stuffs it into the spout of the clay pot. The camel hair keeps the coffee grounds and ginger threads from pouring out with the coffee.

Not much coffee will be poured into me, however, because the nomad woman has already filled us up more than half-way with sugar.

She holds the clay pot of coffee high over the tray and begins to pour the dark liquid in a tiny stream, like a brown ribbon, into each of us cups until we are filled to the rim with the steamy beverage.

And now it is my turn to serve the men in the tent.

The young nomad woman lifts the tray with me and the other cups of coffee. She offers us to the men.

Dark leathery fingers reach toward us as the old men lean forward and take us by our rims. The boiling liquid will not burn them. Many years of holding hot coffee have calloused their skin.

The conversation wanes and is replaced with satisfied sounds of approval as the men sip the coffee and feel the strong flavor of ginger burning their throats as they swallow.

Mmmm…mmmm…te’uum buun!

They say to the young nomad woman.

She smiles shyly and looks at down at the ground. This is her lot. She is not a pop star or a princess. She is simple. She builds her tent, she milks her camel, and she makes coffee five times a day for her husband and his friends. She has her lot and she does it well.

Her cup is full.

I am like her. I am nothing special really, just a little cup in the hands of a young nomad woman. She has six other cups just like me. I don’t have a handle and I’m not very big at all. But five times a day I make my owner’s guests happy.

Five times a day my cup is full.