Turkish Coffee and Fortune Telling

Let's begin with a lovely quote from an anonymous poet (probably of Turkish origin): "Not the coffee, nor the coffeehouse is the longing of the soul. A friend is what the soul longs for, coffee is just the excuse."

I would add: "Yet sometimes, in yonder Turkish lands, not the friendship, nor the coffeehouse doth the body long for, but the sweet drug called caffeine, especially whilst the traveler is jet-lagged."

So yesterday, I had my first cup of Turkish coffee with one of my colleagues, Beture (pronounced Bet-oo-ray). Worry not, readers, I'll write more about her later. Let's stick to coffee for now.

Turkish coffee used to be a much bigger part of the Turkish gastronomical experience, until World War 1, when Turkey's economy made coffee an expensive and often unaffordable import. Ataturk, the nation's founder, encouraged tea as a local industry, and tea has since become the most common beverage of choice. Another popular beverage, I must add, is actually that old Filipino favorite, powdered Nescafe, but let's avoid commenting on that culinary blasphemy, shall we? (That said, I am kind of craving some Nescafe right now...)

Anyway, Turkish coffee has a very special preparation that is too detailed for my little blog post here. In fact, I should clarify that the phrase "Turkish coffee" refers to the process, not the coffee, which is simply imported.  I really like this website's description of the process, because it has lots of pretty pictures: http://www.ineedcoffee.com/04/turkishcoffee/. I just have to laugh for a moment though, because that website recommends a coffee called "The Turkish Blend from Natasha's Cafe," which is funny, because in Turkey the word "Natasha" is a synonym for whore. Ah, the irony.

Turkish coffee is made using a special instrument known as an cezve; the Turkish coffee blend of choice; sugar if you like it (you can ask for bitter, medium sugar, or sweet--I like medium); and sometimes a bit of cardamom. You boil all of this using a process laid out on that website, Making sure that your concoction foams. Beture said that if there's no foam on the coffee, then they didn't do it right. You can choose to have the foam or not, of course, but it must foam during the process. If I haven't said "foam" enough times in this paragraph, I will say it once more: FOAM.

Turks serve the coffee with a glass of water, usually; Beture wasn't sure why. My hypothesis is that it might be because the coffee has lots of grinds at the bottom and throughout, really, and the water washes them down so you don't cough unceremoniously when the grinds stick in your throat, as I did till I drank my water. The result is a yummy, almost chocolaty demi-tasse of coffee goodness. You also get to feel very delicate and cultured as you sip it and talk about Virginia Woolfe, Sylvia Plath, and Turkish culture.

But the BEST part (or one of the best parts) is that you can tell your fortune with the finished grinds. Beture knows a little bit about Turkish fortune telling and also has a highly recommended Turkish coffee fortune teller (yes, I'm going to go and check her out.)

So, how's it done? I'm going to quote this website to save some time:

When the coffee is finished, the saucer is placed on top of the cup, and a wish is made. With the saucer still covering the top, the cup is held at chest level and turned counter-clockwise a few times. Following this, the cup is turned upside down onto the saucer, and left to cool. Sometimes a coin may be placed on top to make the cup cool faster and to dispel bad omens that could be read from it. When the coffee cup is cool enough, someone other that the person who drunk the coffee opens the cup, and starts interpreting the shapes for divination.

The coffee cup is divided into two halves. The upper half refers to the future, and the lower half refers to the past. Shapes on the right usually are seen as positive images, and shapes on the left as signs of bad events. Another tradition states that the coffee cup can only tell the future of the next forty days. Also, if the coffee cup and saucer are stuck together and it's hard to separate them, then it's a sign that the fortune shouldn't be read--it's a good sign actually, that indicates that you're lucky.

Once the shapes in the coffee cup are read, you then read the saucer. The saucer is generally interpreted as representing the home of the person whose fortune is being told, and tells about their domestic life.

Beture did a mini-reading for me. She said that a large, river looking symbol (basically a blank spot that looks like a little river in the cup) means travel (hey! It's true!) and that since there were no "lumps" of coffee at the bottom that all my concerns are melting away (which is also true!). Anyway, it wasn't much, but I'm going to go for a professional reading, and I'll report back.

All this talk about coffee is making me crave some Nescafe...(no coffee in the guesthouse! Only tea!)

p.s. Here's another website that talks about Turkish coffee but also describes what some of the symbols indicate. It's kind of like seeing shapes in clouds, except that you can tell fortunes with it.

p.s.s. The lovely picture at the beginning was taken from an intriguing website called Turkish men vs. Italian men. Not sure that it'll suit my interests entirely, since it's about Turkish vs. Italian fashion for men, and written for a gay readership, I assume, since the author is male and there's a post called "Some Sweeties in Turkey." That said, I'll have to read it sometime.