Drink Your Coffee

Al Mansef

********************

I awoke to glorious sunshine. Cold still crimped the edges of the morning but light flooded the landscape, transforming Jordan into a hymn of radiance.

Nazeeh appeared promptly as I dawdled over my coffee and diary notes.

“Let me downstairs your suitcase,” he said. “Today we go to Wadi Rum and Aqaba.”

I smiled. “Downstairs” was Nazeeh’s all-purpose word, flexible enough to be nouned or verbed at will, for everything from the bottom of a valley to the lobby of a hotel.

As we set off into the sunshine, the inevitable question came up at last.

“Where is your husband?” asked Nazeeh.

Perhaps because it was so unexpected, intruding into the brightness like a shard of ice, tears gathered – sudden, unbidden – in my eyes and threatened to run down my face.

“He died last year in China,” I replied, brushing away the tears with my fingers.

Nazeeh was horrified. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should not have asked that question. I make you cry. Never should I ask such questions. I not forgive myself. I am very bad man.”

“No, no,” I said. “Please don’t be upset. It’s a normal question to ask.”

“But I make you cry.”

“Not any more. See? I’m fine. Just a few tears. It’s part of the grieving process. And it’s good, really. I have to get through it. I can’t go the rest of my life never talking about my husband.”

Nazeeh eventually accepted that he hadn’t blighted my day and the little contretemps led to a description of Jordanian courtship and marriage rituals.

When a young man decides he’s ready to marry, he tells his mother and oldest sister who scout around for a suitable bride. They hold discussions with neighbours and low-key meetings with families to whom they’re allied by business, previous marriages or friendship. When a decision has been reached, there’s a big formal meeting in a tent or hall, presided over by the respective sheikhs (male elders) of each family.

The lady’s womenfolk prepare coffee and the lady’s sheikh sets it before the man’s sheikh. He doesn’t touch it. He acts as if it isn’t there.

“Why do you not drink this coffee I give you?” asks the lady’s sheikh.

“Why do you give me this coffee?”

“It is to greet you and welcome you.”

Still the man’s sheikh doesn’t touch the cup.

“Why do you not drink this coffee?” the lady’s sheikh asks again.

“Because I do not yet know if I should. We are here for a reason.”

“And what is the reason?” inquires the lady’s sheikh.

“We are here to know if there is an agreement between us, if our son shall marry your daughter. You must tell me whether or not we have such an agreement.”

A dramatic silence falls over the tent as everyone waits for the lady’s sheikh to speak.

“Drink your coffee,” he announces slowly, syllables resonating. Joyful noise breaks out and jubilation reigns.

The wedding occurs a few days later – of, if the man’s house isn’t ready, a few months later. The lady’s family needs time to prepare sweets and the bridal gown, as well as “to kill sheeps and goats” to make Al Mansef, a special nuptial stew.

On the big day, the woman wears white to symbolise her purity. The man wears black because it’s the colour of the hardest rock and indicates he will be strong and true, protecting and sheltering his wife so long as they both shall live, just as a tent nestles confidently at the base of a tall cliff.

There is no ceremony, no service at the mosque. The couple simply appear before a judge who questions them – the woman about her untouched state and her domestic skills, the man about his ability to care for a wife and children. Then they go to a great feast where there is music and dancing and tables groaning under the weight of wedding delicacies.

Finally the newlyweds head off to spend their first night together. In the morning, The Ritual of Blood on White Sheets is enacted. The bride’s mother and the groom’s mother arrive to make sure there’s proof of the girl’s virginity and the man’s virility.

Nazeeh sighed. “These are the good ways. The old ways. But week by week and day by day they’re changing. I do not know why. Young people get divorced. Some of them do not even care if the wife is a virgin.”

I made sympathetic noises. Then I said a very stupid thing and came closer to being killed than at any other time during my foreign adventures. I don’t know what possessed me to say it. It just popped into my head and fell off my tongue.

“In Canada,” I remarked, as absent-mindedly as casting off junk mail, “We’ve just legalized gay marriage.”

Nazeeh’s mouth fell open. “You mean two mens? Together?”

I nodded.

The steering wheel went slack under Nazeeh’s hands and we slid to the edge of the road, perilously close to plunging over the 200-metre drop off. My heart leapt into my mouth and I wondered when I’d ever learn to shut up.

At the last possible moment, Nazeeh regained control and we slithered back onto the highway.

“Two womens, too?” he asked, voice rising to a squeak.

I nodded again.

“This is too much.” He shook his head like a dog with a bee on its nose. “Not here. In Jordan, two mans go to judge and ask to get married? The judge say, ‘No, no, no. You go straight to jail.’”

He drove in silence for another few minutes. My heart was still racing.

“This is too difficult.” Nazeeh cleared his throat. “I cannot think about it. I must put it out of my mind.”

And so he did. The sun shone down and we continued on our way to Wadi Rum.

I made a resolution on the spot and have kept it ever since. When asked about Canada, I give a standard response: Canada is extremely big and there’s lots of snow. We are a peaceful nation of vegan hunter-gatherers and we’re very kind to our sled dogs.