The Devil's Cup. Stewart Lee Allen

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      “THE GERMAN PRESIDENT IS COMING TO VISIT JIGA-JIGA,” Abera said when I told him what had happened. “So they made you leave.”

      But he had good news. He’d mentioned my quest to his girlfriend. It turned out her housemate knew how to brew kati, and she’d invited me over for a cup.

      There are actually two types of coffee-leaf beverage. The first, and more common, is kati or kotea, a concoction made of roasted coffee leaves. The other is called amertassa, an earlier version of the drink made from fresh-picked green leaves that are left to dry in the shade for a few days and then brewed without roasting. The market lady from whom we bought our supplies could remember her grandmother drinking amertassa. Now it was almost extinct. She did, however, have a burlap bag full of kati, broad leaves with orange and green highlights.

Kati and amertassa are strong candidates for being the first cup of coffee, for while Ethiopians have been eating the beans since time immemorial, the first mention of a coffee beverage suggests it was brewed from the plants’ leaves. Kafta was its Arabic name. Some scholars claim it was brewed with leaves from the narcotic plant qat, yet in the early 1400s Arab mystic al-Dhabhani saw Ethiopians “using” qahwa, a clear reference to coffee in a liquid form. So what were the Ethiopians drinking? Quite likely a brew made from coffee leaves: the semimythical Abyssinian Tea. Raw beans were added later in southern Yemen by the Sufi mystic al-Shadhili of Mocha or one of his disciples.2

      Whatever the case, kati is a lovely cuppa. Preparation is simple: dried leaves are roasted on a flat pan until they acquire a dark, tarry texture, then crumbled and brewed over low heat with water, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Cooking time is about ten minutes. The resultant amber-colored liquor has a delicately caramelized, smoky flavor comparable to lapsang souchong (Chinese smoked tea) but more complex, both sweet and salty, with a sensuously gelatinous texture.

It proved an especially sympathetic combination with the qat leaves Abera had bought for us to chew. Qat is the evil sister to coffee and has addicted much of southern Arabia and East Africa (it has also recently developed a following in the West). The two drugs’ histories are so intertwined that one nickname for the patron saint of coffee drinkers, al-shadhili of Mocha, is “the Father of Two Plants,” qat coffee. Qat is taken by chewing rew leaves and holding the pulp in the cheek until the juices are extracted. I’d first tried it years ago in Kenya and been unimpressed, but the stuff Abera brought that day was electrifying, comparable to low-key Ecstasy. Ecstasy, however, produces a physical and emotional high, whereas quality qat—and Harrar is said to grow the finest—gives a more cerebral euphoria, plunging the chewer into a trance-like state that makes conversation a hypnotically sensual experience.3

We spent the rest of the day lounging on the raised platform in Abera’s traditional Harrari home. Friends came to visit. More qat was chewed, more kati was brewed, and the afternoon soon lost itself in a qat haze, earnest but idle, where nothing matters so much as expression and understanding. The day was hot, but Abera’s clay house was cool and made comfortable with cushions. We talked about Rod Stewart, for whose haircut Abera confessed a great admiration. Later, during the more serious part of a qat session called Solomon’s Hour, the talk turned to witchcraft. I mentioned the Ethiopian Christian deacon who had claimed Muslims used coffee to lay curses on people. Abera had never heard of this. But here in Harrar, he said, some used it for magical healing.4

      “People come from many miles to Harrar to be healed by these people,” he said.

      “Have you ever seen it done?” I asked.

      “Once.” He shook his head. “I do not approve of these people.”

      “What happened?” I asked. “Did you see the Zar?”

      “You know about the Zar?”

      “The priest in Addis told me. It’s a devil, right?”

      “No, not exactly. It is the one that comes to the sheykah.” He asked his friend, who worked for a UN agency but spoke no English, a question. “Yes, my friend says the Zar comes to the sheykah. He knows all these people.”

      It turned out that a celebrated sheykah had just returned to Harrar after finishing four years of special training at Ethiopia’s holy Lake Wolla, He was now holding sessions in Harrar every Tuesday and Thursday. Today was Tuesday.

      “Your friend knows these holy men?” I asked.

      “Yes. Some.”

      I hesitated. “Is it possible for a foreigner to go to a healing?”

      “You wish to go?” Abera seemed surprised. “I don’t know…” He asked his friend another question. “He says he does not know. No foreigners go to these things. But he can ask.”

      It took us the rest of the afternoon to locate the sheykah, only to be told that he was still asleep. It’s a holiday, said his groupies; best to come back later. With presents.

      “Presents?” I asked.

      “Yes, that is normal. It is a sign of respect.”

      The plan became that Abera should go alone to buy the “respect” while I went back to the hotel. We’d meet again in the evening. But in the meantime I had to give him some money to buy the presents. I wondered if it was all a scam but produced the money anyhow.

      “What are you going to get them?” I asked before handing it over.

      “Green coffee beans,” he said. “That is what you always give. Two kilos should be enough. Don’t give them anything else! You’re only going to watch, not get healed.”

1 Kefa, some say, is the root for the word coffee. More contend that coffee derives from the Arabic qahwa, from the root q-h-w-y, “to “make something repugnant.” Qahwa originally referred to wine, which made food repugnant, and was applied to coffee because it made sleep repugnant. It’s interesting to note that Ethiopia is the only country in the world that does not use a word similar to coffee for the brew; there, it’s called buna, which means bean.

      The Kefans also gave us the world’s first baristas, a caste called the Tofaco, who not only brewed the king’s coffee but also poured it down his throat.

2 One theory is that coffee was created as a result of Chinese Admiral Cheng Ho’s supposed introduction of tea to the Arabs in the early 1400s. When China cut off contact with the outside world, the Arabs replaced tea leaves, unobtainable in Arabia, with qat or coffee.

3 Tea’s equivalent would be leppet-so, a pickled tea leaf chewed in parts of Burma.

4 Ethiopia is a traditionally Christian nation, whereas coffee is associated with Islam, a relationship that in the past has led to the banning of coffee for Ethiopian Christians.

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