Posted on by dancewil

Coffee

You want coffee? Words spoken like a song. The last syllable stretched out  and rising an octave to the upward lilt of the question mark. A phrase so often heard in Palestine. You want coffee? B flat A flat  E  to the next octave A flat with the lilt. However asked, always the melody, the lilt, the welcoming warmth that implies the question is also an offer.

Palestine. How I have loved walking the concrete sidewalks of cities, the stone streets of the old towns, through the intricate stone archways connecting centuries of hand hewn stone homes to one another. They rise straight from the edges of the narrow smooth stone streets and alleyways. An archway may suddenly lead you into an airy courtyard laid with the same stone. The stone moves into stairways, passageways, patios, flower boxes, flowing seamlessly from structure to structure. The flow represents the culture. Streets, homes, businesses, a flow of life with fluid stone. The stairs behind the cashier of this tiny store in this tiny village near Bethlehem lead to her niece and family’s apartment, and her apartment. They flow above the store into dwellings with balconies hung with laundry and freshly mopped tile kitchen floors. That fruit and vegetable market around the corner,  customers shop under reclaimed stone arches that support  layers of family above. I was invited up for storytelling there one afternoon with Grandmother. The stairs lead 3 stories high, to where Great Grandmother once lived, Grandmother still lives, Mother , father, sisters, married, unmarried, children, they are here. A door on each floor. Soaring arched ceilings as if building a cathedral was the first intention.

And coffee. To sit in these sacred spaces and be invariably served the strong cardamon Arabic coffee. Lucy, the proprietress of the first mentioned store, has a platter of small porcelain cups and a silver coffee urn brought to her every day around 4 by her neighbor. It is a small afternoon social event located on and around the low counter of her check out station perpendicular to the entrance . She sits in her swivel chair and pours the coffee for those who sit on the 2 other unfolded chairs, and whoever sits on those 3 steps behind the counter. If I happened by, coffee was always poured for me. And if it was before six o’clock, Lucy might read my dregs. One day she told me (in Arabic, her niece translating)) about my children and the quality of my very soul, all quite nonchalantly amidst the conversations going on among the other afternoon partakers.

One morning walk took me to an edge of this small village. Because the topography is steeply hilly, a simple walk can quickly become arduous. This walk took me on a  horizontal route, as my apartment was already near the village peak, right next to a church and a mosque.

 A few minutes, a few multi family courtyards later, stone streets become paved and dusty.  Homes become separated dwellings with small yards. Olive as well as a few pomegranate trees line the terraced hillsides. Trash lies on the ground. Blue plastic bags, paper cups, plastic bottles, empty cigarette packs. Trash is a sore reminder of lack of certain infrastructures. An old empty dwelling has a yard of tall weeds, trash lying among bright arrays of some of the immense diversities of wildflowers of Palestine. Beautiful day, perfect weather.  Round the curve, up to the end of the street where it melts into some weeds. And there it is. I stop short. At the bottom of this hill where the street ends, there is a tall, never ending metal fence. It is a barricade Olive trees grow on this side, mostly they grow on the other side, all the way up to the top of the opposite hill, right to just below the watch tower where armed IDF soldiers do rounds of duty. There is barbed wire. An Israeli settlement has been built up there. Most of the olive trees on the other side once belonged to this village. Now they don’t.

How much staring in shock ( this was my first trip to Palestine) can one do? How do I grasp what it means to live every day with the possibility that this village could wake up and find that fence moved closer, the next row of olive trees taken with no warning, no explanation, no nothing. That climbing that fence to harvest any fruits that have been in your family for generations might mean death? I slowly turn to go back. Right then, I just wanted a cup of coffee, a moment to have something familiar as to absorb this unnatural imposition. The last house on this street is an elegant, 3 storied home. A twenty something year old man is sweeping the driveway. He calls” Hello” to me. “Hello” I call back. Then ” How are you?” This question, the last consonant always goes down, like C C A, with the ‘you’ being drawn out.” Fine” from me, then a “Can I help you” from him. I laughingly say I am going to go find coffee. Then it comes. Bflat  Aflat  E  octave up Aflat

“Wait.” he commands. Out comes his cell phone, then a brief conversation. “5 minutes” he says. back to me. “OK”. I stand , he smiles. “Where you from”..”America”…”How you like Palestine”….

Many Palestinians speak English well enough for basic communication. Then he points to another hillside to our right  where yet another neighborhood  has been ingeniously engineered to organically grow from the slopes. “My home there,” he says. “My mother making you coffee. My brother will bring it.”

Now I am smiling in surprise and so curious. Really? He made a phone call to bring me coffee? Sure enough, within 7 minutes a white SUV pulls up. The driver rolls down his window, says to me  Bflat  Aflat  E  Aflat-? and hands me a paper cup of fresh hot, Arabic cardamon coffee, complete with the layer of dark silt at the bottom. Made for me by his mom, at his brother’s request, coffee and delivery, no charge. .

I sip, look at pictures of the driver’s fiancee, politely receive an invitation to their engagement party. After a few minutes, he takes my empty cup, we shake hands all around and say goodbyes. He drives away, his brother goes back to sweeping, I head back to my apartment. This is Palestine. Now I just wanted to dance with happiness in spite of that fence, the walls, the stolen trees, the razor wire. The joyful culture of hospitality had just happened right there within the sights of a machine gun. Graciousness lives.
This is Palestine.