Limelight:
Coffee Cantata
By
Lubna Abdel-Aziz
Now that the autumn breezes are vigorously chasing away summer's last rose, it is time for us to relish another warm, crisp, strong cup of coffee, café, kaffee, or qahwah. In fact any season is the right season for this millennial elixir, one of the most valuable exported legal commodities on earth.
The rich flavourful coffee beans were put to good use by man, as a food, as a wine, and as a medicine, before that beautiful shrub with glossy evergreen leaves settled into being the favourite hot beverage in almost every country in temperate or cold climes.
It is only fitting that Africa "the cradle of humanity" would give us humanity's favourite brew. Legend has it that members of a certain "Galla" tribe in Ethiopia discovered a remedy for lethargy by mixing up certain berries with animal fat. A dose of that concoction was all the "shot in the arm" they needed, just as a strong cup of coffee can perform today. That "pick-me-up" power is the caffeine found in colas, teas and coffee, a substance that has been controversial for decades. Considered by some as a drug, caffeine has proven to be more addictive than other drugs including tobacco, alcohol and marijuana. Coffee accounts for 75 per cent of all caffeine consumption. Taken in small amounts, caffeine expands blood vessels, stimulates body and mind, and is harmless for most people. When the French philosopher Voltaire (1674- 1778) was informed that "coffee was considered a slow poison," he responded: "I think it must be so, for I have been drinking it for 65 years and I am not dead yet!"
Coffee provides more than an energy jolt. Judging from the thousands of coffee houses popping up everywhere specializing in gourmet coffee tastes, it is an all encompassing major social activity. "Starbucks" is a glaring example of humanity's needs for coffee consumption. The Seattle based company has more than 6,400 stores, 1,400 of which are in 30 countries outside of the US. A phenomenal growth story, the company envisions a future of 25,000 worldwide. The future of coffee never looked better.
Its past is even more enchanting, mysterious and exotic, full of daring adventure and intrigue. A rapturous saga, much like the Arabian Nights, it unfolds a panoramic tale of epic proportions, "of how coffee trees came to girdle the globe in countries that lie along the equator between the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn".
Once upon a time about 1,000 years ago, on the upland plains of Ethiopia in "Kaffa", a goat herder, Kaldi was grazing his flock when he noticed they were becoming frisky and frolicsome hopping gleefully around a shiny dark-leafed shrub with red berries. Curious Kaldi tried the strange berries and was soon romping and rollicking with his goats. Sheikh Omar, in exile from Mocha, noticed the exhilarating effects of the berries and on his return to Yemen experimented with them. That began the coffee age. When coffee beans reached the Christian world, an Abbot threw them in the fire believing them to be the work of the devil. Pope Clemens VIII blessed the roasting beans when they released their heavenly aroma, and his monks learned how to make the hot black brew that has had the Western world under its spell ever since.
Coffee has been part of Arab culture for centuries. The word "qahwah" is found on mud tablets that go back 1,000 years BC. It was the Arabs who first made a coffee drink out of the coffee berry as soon as they learned to boil water. Coffee moved from Arabia to Turkey in the 1500s, and it was Turkey that built the first coffee shop "Kiva Han" in Constantinople in 1457 AD. Turks flocked to coffee houses not only to enrich their senses with the juice of the bean, but to listen to music, play games, discuss current affairs much as we do today. By 1543 it was getting more recognition than the Sultan of the great Ottoman Empire liked, so coffee was outlawed. Like any forbidden commodity the appetite for coffee only grew. At first Turkish women were pleased but then they too wanted that coffee fix. This resulted in the strangest law in history. It became legal in Turkey for a woman to divorce her husband if he failed to provide her daily quota.
The US was introduced to the magic spell of the bean in 1607, and is the largest consumer of coffee per capita. Coffee houses sprang up throughout Europe in the 1600s. The French made coffee drinking the height of European fashion because King Louis XIV loved the brew. But coffee was rarer than gold, grown only by Arabs in Ethiopia and Yemen, so the supply was limited and the demand limitless.
Europeans tried to grow the plant for decades but the berries could never survive the cold. However it did grow in India. One day Baba Budan had the courage to smuggle seven seeds from Arabia in his belt and planted them in the hills of Chikmagalgur in South India. They flourished. The French King's passion for the brew had him constructing the first greenhouse in history to preserve the precious gift of a seedling plant from the Dutch. Seedlings were soon sent to French colonies like the Island of Martinique (1720).
Like the Arabs, the French guarded their seeds carefully but the Brazilian envoy to French Guinea Francesco de Mello, charmed the wife of the French governor, who in turn sent him some coffee seeds buried in a flowerpot. That is how they first came to make an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. Today Brazil exports 40 per cent of the world's coffee, and nine other countries in South America are major coffee producers. The total number of coffee producing countries in the world today is 53.
This long and rich tale of 1,001 years, with its intoxicating perfume, its exquisite flavour and its invigorating effects is one that changed the history of the world. Novels have been written, friendships cemented, romances sparked, revolutions planned, businesses sealed, over a cup or two of this potent brew.
Is there a downside to this millennial romance? Scientists oscillate between the good and bad effects of coffee but the latest findings are encouraging for all its faithful lovers. People who drink coffee on a regular basis were 50-80 per cent less likely to develop Parkinson's. Habitual coffee intake does not reduce bone density or increase spontaneous abortion in women. A recent study from Scandinavia concludes that women can safely drink coffee during and after pregnancy, without risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Moreover (The Journal of the American Medical Association) JAMA found that drinking 2-3 cups of caffeinated coffee a day reduces the risk of gallstones among nearly 40 per cent, more coffee reduced it by 45 per cent. The protection is in the caffeine. Decaffeinated coffee does not count, and in case you are avoiding coffee or tea for fear of myocardial infarction, well, there is no such risk. Moderate caffeine consumption does not pose a risk to heart health. Studies at Harvard Medical School concluded that 4 or more cups of coffee a day lowers the risk of colorectal cancer by 24 per cent.
Coffee, which makes the politician wise,
And sees through all things with his half shut eyes,
does so now, as it did then when Alexander Pope (1688- 1744) wrote those lines. Blended with vanilla, cinnamon, or chocolate, in a demi-tasse, cup or mug, before or after a meal, of Arabica or Robusta beans, a Turkish "mazbout", French "au lait", or Italian "espresso", the mystical magical coffee drink deserves the hearty toast from mankind and none could deliver one better than Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) in his Kaffee Kantata (1732). We raise a toast to him as we share it here with you!
Lovelier than one thousand kisses,
Sweeter far than mystical wine
Ah! How sweet coffee tastes!
Indeed, how sweet it is!
