Coffee Nameh

Author's name: Abdullah Al-Nasser

It was amazing what I found in the bag: rare documents about coffee, copied from many museums and libraries around the world, including the National Library of France, the Library of Congress, the British Library, and countless scraps of anonymous origin. Since I found the bag, I became addicted to coffee and learned to walk. Thus, I walked the streets of historic coffee houses in the Hejaz, Cairo, Damascus, Istanbul, Vienna, London, Paris, Berlin, San Francisco, Boston, New York, and the Viking capitals. I climbed the mountain of coffee, as a reader and a lover, then a student in its schools, a waiter on short vacation days, then a roasting teacher, and even more so a walker in the cafes of the universe! During that journey, which lasted several years, my insides roasted coffee (as Balzac says). During that journey, I studied the chemistry of coffee and water, and my soul was girdled by the cosmic belt that surrounds the waist of the world's coffee trees. I read the history of love and war, beliefs and philosophy, geographical discoveries and revolutions, music and arts associated with coffee. I read everything to learn about coffee, and I learned everything, and I became certain that no one can reach coffee.


We learn with Thiong'o the value of knowledge, which colonialism withheld from the Kenyan people. He tells us about the emergence of formal education and independent, rebellious schools in Kenya. His dream, which he promised his mother he would spare no effort to achieve, was to learn. But how can a child cling to his dream amidst the shadows of World War II and his family crises? This childhood memoir serves as Thiong'o's testimony in defense of his right to dream, at least, despite all the difficulties, and of his mother's significant role in his life, which has led him to become one of Africa's greatest writers worldwide.