Topsy-Turvy Land | Page 6

your cup of
Mocha coffee?" Soap is a luxury in most parts of Arabia and the vast
majority of its inhabitants never use it; millions would not know it if

they saw it. Perhaps the old Sheikh, however, used a bit of soap to
wash his hands and feet early before sunrise when he went to the
mosque to pray. Now he has returned and sits in the coffee-shop ready
to take a sip of coffee and "drink tobacco" from the long pipe. The
Arabs always speak of drinking tobacco when they mean to smoke; I
suppose one reason is because they use the peculiar water-pipes with
the long stems in which the smoke passes through the water and
bubbles out to the mouth. Have you time to stop and study the picture
with me?
What a pretty window in the corner! The Arabs call a window shibaak,
which means network, because their windows are very much like a
fish-net. Glass is seldom used in Arabia except by Europeans and
Arabs who have become civilised; and so the carpenter or joiner fits
little round bars, one into the other, like marbles or beads on a string
and the result is often very beautiful. Light and air come in (not to
speak of clouds of dust) while no one can look through from the
outside; and you know how afraid Arab girls and women are to show
their faces to strangers.
Under the arch is the open fireplace where the big coffee-pots and
water-kettles simmer all day on a charcoal fire. The old man looks quite
cheerful seated on his uncomfortable stool made of date-sticks. You
will read later about our old friend the date-palm and how the tree is
used for nearly every purpose. I wish I could show you how they take
the thin branches and punch holes in them and then deftly, before you
can count ninety, build together a chair or a bedstead. I have often slept
soundly and safely on bedsteads made of these thin leaf-sticks no
bigger around than a child's finger. The sticks are full of "spring" so
one does not need a wire mattress, nor have I ever known one of them,
if made honestly, to become a folding bed under a restless sleeper as
they say happens sometimes in New York hotels!
Although the old man in our picture is waited on by the younger Arab
(who is perhaps the keeper of the café), yet I know he is not rich. Do
you notice his toil-worn hands and the patch on the shoulder of his long
overcoat? I fancy too his pretty vest, so carefully buttoned by more than

a dozen cloth buttons, is a little torn on one side; nor has he a fine
girdle like the rich shopkeepers.
[Illustration: SABBACH-KUM BIL KHEIR!]
Extremes meet in the picture and three countries widely apart on the
map are brought close together. Of course, you know the coffee is the
real Yemen article, which coming first from Mocha on the Red Sea, is
still called by that Arabian name. The curious pipe with its round
bottom, carved head-piece and long stem, is used everywhere in Arabia
and is generally called "nargeelie," which is the Indian name for
cocoanut. The bowl of the pipe is in fact an empty cocoanut shell; the
stem once grew in the jungle and perhaps tigers brushed past it; now it
is pierced to draw smoke.
The curious pipe is from India, the tobacco first came from America
but the coffee is Arabian. Let us listen to the story of the cup of coffee:
In a book published in 1566 by an Arab scholar on the virtues of coffee
it is stated that a knowledge of coffee was first brought to Arabia from
Abyssinia about the year 1400 by a pious man whose tomb is still
venerated in Yemen. The knowledge of coffee spread from Yemen in
south Arabia over the whole world. In 1690 Van Hoorne, a general of
the Dutch East India company, received a few coffee seeds from the
Arabs at Mocha and planted them in Batavia on the island of Java. In
this way Mocha coffee has become the mother of Java and of all other
kinds of coffee sold at your grocers'. Nothing can be more beautiful
than the green hills and fertile gardens in the Arabian coffee country.
The coffee berry grows on an evergreen tree of about eighteen feet high;
its leaves are a beautiful dark, shining green and the blossom of the tree
is pure white with a most delicate and fragrant odour. Each tree bears
an enormous number of coffee-berries; a single tree is said to have
yielded sixteen pounds! Arabia not only produces the finest coffee in
the world, but I