If the whole affair seems vaguely familiar, it should. Who has gone to a business meeting where coffee is not offered? Its use as an intellectual lubricant, along with its ability to “swell our wealth” per the Garri prayer, has made having a pot ready for consumption an international business norm. Looked at this way, a modern business office is nothing more than a “tribe” camped out about its own sacred pot, and the bun-qalle is nothing less than man’s first coffee klatch, archetype of the world’s most common social ritual.
Two things about the bun-qalle mark alle it as probably the earliest use of coffee as a mind-altering or magical drug. The first is that the beans are fried and then eaten, a practice clearly derived from the coffee-balls chewed by Oromo warriors near Kefa. The Garri, who live a few hundred miles south of Harrar, are related to the Oromo and share their language. The second part of the ceremony, where the roasted beans are added to milk and imbibed, indicates it predates Islam (A.D. 600) because Islamic alchemists believed that mixing coffee and milk caused leprosy (a belief that lies at the root of the disdain many Europeans have for coffee with milk).
Further indication of the ceremony’s extreme antiquity is the fact that the Garri associate bun-qalle with the sky god Waaq. His name may sound uncouth to us, but the worship of this sky god is thought to be among the world’s first religions. Whether the eating of coffee beans was performed in the original Waaq ceremonies is beyond knowing. One can say, I think, that since the Garri were doubtless among the first to taste our favorite bean, and since primitive people who discover psychoactive drugs tend to worship them (a penchant today denigrated as mere substance abuse), it seems likely that consuming the beans was added to the Waaq ceremonies at a relatively early date.
In the Oromo culture of western Ethiopia, the coffee bean’s resemblance to a woman’s sexual organs has given birth to another bun-qalle ceremony with such heavy sexual significance that it is preceded by a night of abstinence, according to the work of anthropologist Lambert Bartel. Oromo elder Gam-machu Magarsa told Bartel that “we compare this biting open of the coffee fruits with the first sexual intercourse on the wedding day, when the man has to force the girl to open her thighs in order to get access to her vagina.”
After the beans are husked, they are stirred in the butter with a stick called dannaba, the word for penis. Some people replace the stick with bundles of living grass because a dead piece of wood cannot “impart life” or impregnate the beans. As the beans are stirred, another prayer is recited until finally the coffee fruits burst open from the heat, making the sound Tass! This bursting of the fruit is likened to both childbirth and the last cry of the dying man. The person stirring the beans now recites:
Ashama, my coffee, burst open to bring peace
there you opened your mouth
please wish me peace
keep far from me all evil tongues.
In being eaten the coffee bean “dies,” blessing new thought and life, a tradition the Oromo say goes back as far as anyone can remember. After the bean has spoken, the assembly moves on to the matter at hand, such as a circumcision, marriage, land dispute, or the undertaking of a dangerous journey.
One important point about the bun-qalle. The beans are simply added whole to the milk, not pulverized. True infusion, where crushed beans are added to a neutral liquid like water, thus completely releasing the bean’s power, is reserved for the darker acts such as laying a curse or, as in tonight’s ceremony, the exorcism of an evil spirit.
“SOUNDS LIKE YOU’VE BEEN RIPPED OFF,” SAID AARON.
Aaron was an American health-care expert I met while waiting for Abera to take me to the Zar ceremony.
“Forty birra,” he said, referring to what I’d given Abera for the present. “Lot of money. I hope I’m wrong.”
Aaron had a particularly low opinion of Ethiopians and, like any good bureaucrat, had found some studies to back up his point of view. According to these, the massive influx of international aid during the famines had made begging from foreigners the social norm. It was as natural as breathing, according to Aaron. True or not, there was no denying that urban Ethiopia was filled with a type of begging I’d only previously encountered in America—that is, people obviously in no real need striking up mock friendships merely to cadge a few birra.
“No, you’ll never see your friend again,” Aaron assured me. “Why don’t you come up to my room and check out these baskets I bought? They were only seventy dollars each.”
Abera appeared, right on time. Everything was arranged. I could attend.
“But don’t give them any more presents!” he instructed again. “It is enough. And don’t drink anything they give you at the ceremony.”
The only disappointment was that he would not be going. He had a test to cram for. Instead his friend, a devout Catholic, had agreed to take me.
“Catholic? Will he show up?” I asked.
“He promised.” Abera sounded uncertain. “Stewart, I have to ask you something. Will you be wearing your hat?”
Abera was referring to my old straw hat, the one that the first kati lady in Jiga-Jiga had found so amusing. You know how it is when you get so attached to a particular article of clothing that you just can’t bear to throw it away? Well, I’d become very fond of this hat, a K-mart Australian-style number, and over the last year of travel it had suffered considerable trauma. By the time I arrived in Ethiopia, it was little more than a crumpled piece of straw held together with half a dozen black patches. And dirty— I didn’t dare wash it lest it dissolve. I loved it all the same. People in every nation reacted in a different but characteristic way. Nepalese facetiously offered large sums of money for it. Indians laughed and praised its “unique quality.” The Ethiopians merely thought it unhygenic.
“You cannot wear that hat,” said Abera. “Not tonight. It would be disrespectful.” He pulled out an Islamic-style scarf. “Wear this. I will tie it on for you.”
“Okay.” I knew he was right. Besides, the scarf, white with blue and red fleur-de-lis patterns, was rather stylish. Abera tied it on, turban style.
“It looks good,” he said. “You look like a Muslim.”
“So I’m in disguise?”
“Maybe. Not a bad idea when you walk in Harrar late at night.”
We chatted for a while. He refused my offer of dinner and, after a final exhortation to send him copies of Cosmopolitan Magazine (he rewrote the articles for the university paper), he departed. I sat down to wait in the hotel lobby.
Eight o’clock came and went. Then nine. Ten too. The hotel guard was spreading out his sleeping roll when there came a knock on the front door. It was Abera’s friend. I thanked him for coming but asked if he thought the ceremony might be over, since we were running two hours late. No problem, he said. Nonetheless, we hurried through Harrar’s darkened alleys. Squatting men called out greetings. The women, more diffident, smiled hello.
“They think you are Muslim,” my friend commented, pointing to my headpiece.
As we moved out of the town’s center it grew quiet. My companion fell silent. Harrar’s streets are said to be haunted by spirits from all the tribes that have been enslaved here. Its hyenas, traditionally believed to be hermaphroditic, are said by some to be spirits of the poor boys castrated and sold as eunuchs. According to the eighteenth-century French traveler Antoine d’Abladie, hyenas were thought to be a type of werewolf called buda that attacked and ate Zar spirits.
As we approached the house where the Zar ceremony was to be held, I heard singing. The exorcism was already in progress. My companion indicated silence, and we slipped into a long, narrow room lit by a single lamp. A crowd of perhaps twenty people squatted near the door. Halfway down the room hung a dirty white sheet through which we could see the silhouette of the sheykah reclining on a huge brass bed. Before the sheet stood the first patient. Since we had arrived late, I was never quite clear as to the nature of this man’s ailment. But the sheykah had already identified the possessing spiri
t and convinced it to leave the man in peace if he sacrificed three cocks with certain colored feathers about their necks.
A glass of pale liquor was passed around the room. People chatted in low voices. I was pleasantly surprised to be ignored. Apparently my “disguise” was working and I was being taken for some sort of foreign Muslim. Some of the people crouching by the wall began to rock slowly back and forth and sing a curious syncopated melody over and over. Incense was thrown on a brazier.
The traditional way to begin these exorcisms may include sacrificing a pair of doves or the taking of ganja or alcohol. All involve the roasting of green coffee beans, which are then chewed and brewed, thus “opening the box” and releasing the power of the sheykah so he can communicate with the Zar spirits, described as being toeless and having holes in their hands that, if you look through them, reveal another world. They are also said to be beautiful and come in a range of racial archetypes like Arab, white, and Chinese. The word Zar is thought by some to be a corruption of Jar, which in the Cushitic language of the Agaw tribe is the name for Waaq, the sky god.1 Ethiopian Zar priests traditionally come from a tribe called Wato or Wallo, the name of the lake where tonight’s priest was trained and Ethiopia’s most ancient holy spot. The Wallo tribe claims to be the descendants of the original Oromo coffee chewers and at one point were so feared for their magical powers that other tribes dared not molest them. Until recently it was customary to plant a coffee tree on the graves of particularly powerful sorcerers, and the Oromo say that the first coffee tree grew from the tears of the sky god as they fell on the body of a dead wizard.
I’ve called this ceremony an exorcism, but it’s really a negotiation between the Zar and the sheykah, who alone can communicate with the Zar and, if necessary, bargain them down to more reasonable requests. The role of coffee is perhaps comparable to the peyote “allies” popularized in Carlos Castaneda’s Way of Knowledge trilogy, inasmuch as the “spirits” within the bean can only function according to the abilities of the person who has taken them into his or her body.
A girl came forward and placed more gifts on the ground before the sheykah’s silhouette. She suffered from headaches, it seemed, terrible, horrible headaches that would last for days. As she talked, the sheykah’s silhouette could be seen shivering.
The girl stopped and stood mute while her narration of woes was picked up by a male relative. From his description, it appeared her difficulties were more serious than headaches.
“It is a problem in the head,” whispered Abera’s friend.
She’d been having fits and strange, violent seizures in which she destroyed furniture. The family had decided to consult the Zar priest when she had tried to bite off her mother’s finger. The audience moaned as her tale unfolded. Her symptoms indicated classic evil Zar possession. The Zar tend to inhabit women, whom they mount like a horse and force to perform unnatural acts, including self-mutilation with iron bars, the scars of which invariably disappear by morning.
Suddenly the girl threw herself to the ground and started yelling, clutching her head, and shivering as if in great pain. It grew more and more pronounced as the sheykah questioned the evil spirit within her. During all this, my Catholic friend shook his head in disgust. Finally it was decided the girl’s family would donate a calf. Then the girl’s Zar made a highly unusual demand: she must cut off all her hair and go alone to scatter the strands in the fields where the hyenas waited.
A pair of scissors was fetched. But when they began to cut, the girl pointed to where we sat. Apparently my disguise was not as good as I’d thought. She did not want a foreigner to witness her shearing.
As we trudged back to the hotel, Abera’s friend explained things I had not understood. He had a low regard for the proceedings. I mentioned that in America we had similar healers on TV.
“They too use coffee beans?” he asked.
“Well, coffee is certainly popular among them,” I explained. “But for payment they generally prefer credit cards.”
I was told the next day that all traces of the girl’s hair had vanished from the fields by sunrise.
ONCE THE ETHIOPIANS DISCOVERED COFFEE’S PSYCHEDELIC powers, it was only a question of time before their neighbors caught on. By some accounts it was the pharaonic Egyptians to the north who first got hooked, with some overexcited scholars speculating that Egypt’s legendary nepenthe, consumed by Helen of Troy to “ease her sorrows,” was an early form of the Frappuccino.
But the main direction the coffee bean headed from Harrar was east to the Red Sea, then by boat to the port of al-Makkha, also known as Mocha, in what is today the nation of Yemen. There was a fair amount of trading going on between Harrar and al-Makkha back in the first millennium. Mainly ostrich feathers, rhinoceros horn, and tortoiseshell. The essentials. And slaves, of course. The Arabs were notorious slave traders and roamed this area in search of the victims they called zanj. The zanj were fond of the Arabs, or at least of their sweets. “The zanj held the [Arabs] in awe, prostrating themselves and calling out, ‘Greetings, Ο People from the Land of Dates!’” according to the medieval Arab writer Kitab al-Agail al-Hind. “For those who travel to this country steal the children of the zanj with sweet dates, luring them from place to place [with sight of the sweets] and then taking possession of them and carrying them off to their own countries.”
A thousand years ago it took the slave caravans up to twenty days to travel from Harrar to the Red Sea coast. Boys destined for the Turkish harems were castrated on the roadside. At least half of the captives died. The coffee trees sprouted from their leftovers.
My own journey to the Red Sea took only three days. I hitched from Harrar to the town of Dire Dawa near the country’s sole railroad. The train was a day late in arriving, but worth the wait; a baby blue, turn-of-the-century French chemin de fer with old-fashioned reclining seats (at least in first class) whose upholstery had disintegrated into filthy shreds. Mechanical failures turned the twelve-hour journey into a two day ordeal. As I had just spent a year in India, these kinds of delays seemed perfectly natural; I merely closed my eyes and pretended to be dead (or maybe I was just wishing).
We finally disembarked in the port of Djibouti, a town the thirteenth-century Islamic pilgrim Ibn Battuta described as “the dirtiest, most disagreeable and most stinking town in the world,” whose citizens had a taste for camel flesh. Today Djibouti is technically a nation. In reality, it’s a glorified French military post bursting with bars and brothels. My first stop was a café for a cold drink.
“You speak English?” A big-bellied man in a plaid skirt, a kanga, had seated himself at the next table. “Tu parles français?”
“Yes.”
He studied my hat. “Ah—an American man. Good! I speak twelve languages,” he informed me. “I have sailed to every port in all the world—Cairo, Alexandria, Venice, New York, Athens, Sydney, Hong Kong…”
The list continued. He was a retired sailor.
“And so I have returned to ‘Jibouti. You like?” I raised my eyebrows in a grimace of pleasure. “Why have you come?” he asked.
I explained I was looking for a boat going to al-Makkha.
He looked at me in surprise. “Al-Makkha? Why do you go there?”
“Coffee.”
“You go to Yemen for coffee?” he translated for the crowd at the bar. Everybody burst into laughter. “Not many boats are going there today, my friend.”
He explained that just yesterday Eritrea had invaded a group of Yemeni islands located midway between the two countries. The Red Sea was crawling with armies from both sides, and the Yemen air force had reportedly been bombing suspicious-looking vessels.
“But you are lucky. My friend’s boat leaves today. Some people, they have waited two weeks and will not worry about the bombs. But you must hurry!”
His friend’s boat turned out to be a thirty-foot long vessel whose brightly painted hull had long ago faded to gray. There was a hut, of sorts, toward the rear, and a rudimentary
mast (no sail), but not much else. There was no radio, no light, and no emergency equipment of any kind. The toilet was a box hanging over the ocean. There wasn’t even a deck, just a jumble of crates covered with a green tarp, across which were scattered fifteen Somali refugees.
But it floated. Captain Abdou Hager and I quickly settled on thirty dollars. I hopped aboard, and five minutes later the Qasid Karin shook the rats off its lines and set off. It was that hour in the evening when the sun sinks out of sight, sending thick, buttery golden rays across the sky. The sea turned dark purple. Tomorrow, I thought, I’ll be in Yemen. As we reached the harbor mouth, the ship slowed. There was a splash, and the engine went off.
“There is too much wind,” explained a fourteen-year-old Somali boy next to me. “We go tomorrow.”
His name was Mohammed. He and his sister were being sent to live with relatives in Yemen until the war ended. He was beautiful, I suppose, slender and tall with incredibly large feminine eyes and pouting lips. If he’d been dressed in a woman’s clothes, I would have taken him for a young girl. He asked if America had warlords like the ones in Somalia. Oh yes, I said, all the big cities had warlords. He and his sister, Ali, seemed surprised. Did the American warlords have tanks and guns? they wanted to know. Not so many tanks, I said, but lots of guns. I assured them that many neighborhoods in America were indistinguishable from Mogadishu.
After a few minutes of chatting, Mohammed, who spoke very limited English (though better than my Somali), gave me a present.
“I want you to have this,” he said, placing a wad of Somali money in my hands. “Take.”
I objected. Somali refugees shouldn’t give cash to American tourists. Quite the opposite. And I had absolutely no intention of handing out handfuls of American money in return.
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