The Best Cup of Coffee You Ever Had?

Would you remember it?

Mine was on the two-lane road leading out of Jordan, a short distance from the Jordan-Iraq border in February 2003. We were parked at a huge supply store that sold everything from batteries to rice to clothing to bottled water (usually sold in plastic-wrapped cases of forty-eight each).

There was also a cafeteria that, even at this early hour of four a.m. was doing a bang-up business. The place was wall-to-wall with Iraqis, Jordanians, Saudis, and Europeans all on their way either to or from Baghdad. Traders, newspersons, probably a few smugglers. It was early February of 2003. The towers had fallen, the guns were being primed, the U.S. revenge-driven insanity was in full fantod, and everyone knew the bombs would start falling soon unless a miracle happened.

(No such miracle manifested, btw.)

Our group of fifteen (including drivers) had already been on the road for six hours, sardined into three Chevy Suburbans crammed full of supplies for our multiweek stay in Iraq. We needed a stretch, a bathroom, and some food before tackling the second (and longer) part of the journey.

Already our group had started to separate. There was the main group, an affiliation of women with significant resources and a nationally known name, who were planning a series of news stunts that would look great on their news releases but would do next to nothing to benefit the soon-to-be-massacred Iraqi population. Then there was our smaller group, reporters and humanitarians looking to assess the situation, do interviews with Iraqis, soldiers if possible, various aid groups already installed, and report back in the states. I was the group photographer.

Four a.m. Six hours in a hot, claustrophobic bouncing Suburban. I needed coffee. Badly.

I was directed to a small room nestled in the concrete wall of the station, with a Judas door and serving platform, watched over by a six-foot-plus friendly Jordanian man dressed in a kaffia and robes. His dark beard and sharp eyes made him look like he could have fit into any of a dozen movies of Middle eastern intrigue.

“Salaam-aleikum,” I said.

“Waleikum salaam,” he replied.

“Qahwah, min fadlak?” I asked.

He smiled and spread his hands broadly at the dallah behind him. A dallah is a large, ornate, pear shaped vessel, often with intricate designs tapped into its sides. It has a curved handle and a tapered spout. It is said the dallah was first made in Baghdad. Arabs take their coffee very seriously.

He poured me a small cup, the size of an espresso cup. I had been hoping for a large medium roast with milk, but I realized there was one choice and this was it. The gentleman smiled as he watched me drink it. The thick, hot liquid went down my throat like espresso syrup and the aroma draped itself over every pore of my sinuses, a full-bodied sensory experience that repudiated, renounced, and denounced every cup of overpriced gourmet java I’d ever paid for. I immediately felt my body start to wake up.

This was the absolute goods. If there was better coffee than this, I couldn’t possibly dream it. The gentleman saw my reaction and smiled widely. He knew this was my first taste of real Arabic coffee. He took the cup back and poured me a second.

Arabic coffee is strong and bitter, sweetened by various spices. Cardamom is popular in Iraqi coffee.

I asked for a third. He provided it, but there was a trace of “Ummm…?” In his face. He cut me off at six. He literally said no and shut the top of the Judas door.

Turns out he knew his brew. For the remainder of the ride I was wired. Cruising. Buzzing. For the first time since I foolishly ate an entire snack bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans, I’d had way too much. Crossing the border was a nightmare. I was that guy who was desperately trying to hide how messed up he was. My eyes were two black basketballs. The Iraqi border guards were thorough, especially when they saw our legion of crusading women expecting to translate their superior American attitude into a country sanctioned to within an inch of its life, and, as everyody but most Americans knew, about to be bombed into the stone age. Their friendly attitudes changed into suspicious dislike and I shifted into official paranoid mode. Which wasn’t helped by the rest of the ten-hour ride along route 40 through endless hardpan desert, broken up only by having to dodge huge shell craters, blown-up tanks, missing road, and made even more interesting by a pair of drivers whose idea of a great time is Tap The Guy In Front’s Bumper at 95 mph.

We eventually made it safe and sound, unloaded, and got rooms in a beautiful six-story hotel with no air conditioning.

And for the next three weeks, in between interviewing hundreds of Iraqis, having US servicemen point their machine guns at my camera, talking with newsfolk from around the world, and traveling around with our Saddam-regime group minders, I probably drank way more coffee than I should have.

Image: Teapot and Flower, Eyeries, Ireland, 2023.