When coffee is no longer brown

By Desirée Jung

With a cup of coffee in hand, we sit near a cherry tree to discuss, pacifically, the destiny of our coffee universe. He is a world traveler, a tourist, my father, and not an easy German, Northern Italian, Brazilian to convince.

Café Banjo. I start by recalling  its poster, the dark-haired bean-man with a banjo in hands, and yellow mug – hidden body of its bean identity. My great-grandfather left Lebanon more than a century ago. He arrived in Brazil after two days with one thought in mind. To seed enough coffee beans and daughters to make his life enviable. Those who stayed behind in the Lebanon, those who doubted, were unworthy of respect.

Three generations later, few people in my family like coffee as much as I do. Seems like I survived, surpassed the custom of social drinking only. Instead, I enjoy and praise the black, the thick texture (“No sugar, please”) of real coffee. I am unfair, one-sided, inconsiderate of others; there are too many others to be taken into account: my dad, who disagrees with the “Arab side of the family,” my mother’s – once his wife’s.

As we go on, I discover he is also a believer and unlike me, trusts the (Star) Buck’s family but rejects the old, black family beans. “In Roma,” he points to his finger, “espressos are measured by the finger.” His gaze drifts away, the dark brown eyes go dull as he closes, opens and takes the lid off his coffee cup.

It’s then that I realize people do not look at what they drink, its colour, its histories are unimportant once the last drop of coffee falls over the white, now brown, dixie cup. As long as the hot coffee in the paper cup is insulated, we go on recycling the old brew, overwhelmed by its new protective handler.