Something about coffee. A must.
A delicious authentic cupful while waiting for yet another takeoff, feeling especially exposed in the surplus personal space of a cabin now even emptier save for you, a devout African Muslim and one green-clad airline employee hitching a ride, triggers a wave of emotions.
The rush of vitality such a simple cup brings is frightening in its intensity. It arouses suspicion. Just some water and the essence of ground brown beans, yet the tears bubble up, the breath deepens and chops at the same time, and you are filled with a superwoman desire to be all places at once, all places where you know perfectly well that love for you is available in abundance – bruised and battered in some places, pure and untainted in others – but keep avoiding or distancing yourself from. Expressed or unexpressed, simple or complicated, you know you could turn around right this minute and find it right where you left it, instead you keep finding yourself at the opposite end of wherever it is. Every time.
So you pour your self-inflicted isolation into a cup of airline coffee – the best there is to be had anywhere, no doubt – and blame it on it’s potent, ancient properties. You complicate a simple drink with unnecessary tizita and work yourself into a heavy, hidden, silent crying spasm, imagining what you should have said, what you should have done with and what you should have done for all that love spread out and around you. And the only one stopping you is you.
Rebecca Fisseha, Writer. 