Beduin capuccino

by Carolina Godoy Sanchez (Spain)

Making a local connection Jordan

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The sun was beaming through the gaps between the houses built of mud and wood. I was standing and letting those rays of light warm my face while my adventure buddy, Carlos, was, as always, looking for remnants that gave him more information of that isolated village with no tourists in Dana reserve area in Jordan. I guess these are the collateral effects of being the partner of an archaeologist, I sometimes feel like Agatha Christie and Carlos is my Max Mallowan. We both have this romantic love for the Middle East. Perhaps, unconsciously, influenced by our Andalusian genetics. However, we have different approaches to cultures: his, more historical and mine, more social. So there we were, in a remote village in Jordan, three years after the Arab Spring in Syria, which has deeply affected the country’s main source of income, its tourism. But luckily for us, it was a chance to enjoy the country without the tourist buzz. Besides it was Ramadan and no one wandered the dusty streets, so we felt free to go around checking the houses and their architecture, which resembled, according to Carlos, a bronze age village that he had recently excavated in South East Spain. My interest in the houses was brief and I let Carlos go around by himself. I sat, this time in the shade, I closed my eyes enjoying the gentle warm breeze while listening to the birds chirping. All suddenly, I distinguished a familiar sound in the distance, a sound from my childhood, like the flute that the blade-sharpener man used to play so you knew he was in the street and you could bring him the scissors and knives that needed to be sharpened. I opened my eyes, and to my surprise, I saw a dog staring at me from the top of a roof. Quickly, I called Carlos so he could see it, we love dogs. But by the time he arrived, the dog had disappeared. We went after him, to the back of the house and we saw the dog in the distance gathering sheep and goats and under a tree, taking refuge from the sun, the shepherd sat playing the flute. It was such a bucolical image, as extracted from a biblical manger, and, at the same time, it was curious to think that, actually, we were in biblical lands. The dog started to bark at us causing the shepherd to look at us in surprise. He made with his hand a gesture for us to approach him. And as we got to where he was, we saw that this shepherd, with a budding moustache, wearing Nike shoes and the traditional Jordanian koofiyyeh (headscarf) was, in fact, a teenager, around fourteen. He seemed very pleased that some random foreigners could speak his language and asked us: “Do you want a Beduin cappuccino?”. Carlos and I looked at each other wondering where he was going to get the cappuccino from. The teenage shepherd took out from a leather bag a shabby teapot; made a fire and poured water from a plastic bottle with some tea leaves inside. When the tea was brewing, he took three glasses and poured some tea and then poured it back into the teapot and repeated this, like it was a ritual, three times. He exclaimed, “wait! I will get milk.” And, in a blink of an eye, he came back with a goat. I have a sensitive stomach so I told Carlos, ”I am gonna get diarrhea!”. After all, one cannot refuse an invitation from a Beduin because it would be considered an offense, so I had to cope with the consequences. I thought, “At least, he will boil it”. Then, he turned the goat around, took a glass of tea in one hand and the goat’s udder in the other and squeezed the milk directly into the glass forming a foam. Then, he did the same with the other two glasses and said: "Here you have it, a Beduin cappuccino!”. I looked at Carlos and drank it and what I expected to be a disgusting and strong flavor turned to be a sweet and warm experience that I will always remember.