Oliver Benjamin
small cups of coffee and chatting about the day’s events. They were a
raggedy bunch, dirtier than the goats they had brought with them.
But as they walked past Roy noticed their bright eyes. Roy wondered
if they weren’t the very Lotus eaters, imbibers of the sacred drink he
had come to find.
The doorway was low and narrow. Roy entered the coffeehouse,
and simultaneously, a strange parallel universe.
Behind the shattered wooden counter a thin, handsome man of
Roy’s age poured coffee for his patrons. Seated next to the counter sat
a chubby and filthy farmhand, his pants failing to adequately cover
his grimy underpants which failed to cover the abysmal crack in his
bottom. Roy looked around. In the corner of the room sat a lone
dabtara, tall, noble and alone. He was not even drinking anything. He
was staring at the window, next to which stood a murderously lovely
Harari prostitute. She was cradling a baby in a beaded goatskin sling
while conversing softly with a young boy who was speaking too
loudly. The boy wore a purple “Just Do It” T-shirt. His face registered
some vague disconsolation.
“Are you okay?” Webele said to Roy. Roy had not moved.
He nodded to Webele and walked slowly up to the bar, asking the
proprietor in broken Amharic if he had the original coffee. The first
coffee that ever was. The proprietor looked at him strangely and then
laughed. His patrons did too. Abora tried to explain that his friend, a
dabtara, had specified that the original coffee could be procured
there, and this only generated more laughter from the room. The
men from outside entered to see what all the hubbub was about. But
Roy would not abide the barman’s mockery.
“Efellegallo,” he demanded. I want it.
The man replied something that Abora had to translate. “He says
he has the original coffee. It is the mother of all other coffees that
have come since.”
“Will it kill me?” Roy said to Abora. Abora asked the man, who
replied smiling.
“Yes,” Abora translated, “A little bit.”
Roy nodded and the man set to work brewing a special cup as
Roy waited impatiently for the most important moment of his life, a
moment fraught with portent. Here, at last, could be the climactic
line, word, syllable that would pass backwards over his lips and
tongue and hurl him back into undivided communion with the holy
spirit. This place. These people. The breasted house. The fat, clefted
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