Aga Ben Dragore: Now I will show you how to make coffee in the desert…by the native stars. Miss Kaney: You don’t make it yourself, do you? Aga: No, of course not. A Circassian slave, lovely as sin, cooks it for us, kneeling. And if it is not to our liking… Kaney: She is stripped to the waist and lashed for miles across the Sahara. Aga: Where she is finally eaten by locusts. Kaney: That’s the last time I’ll ever try to make coffee in a strange house.
-The Ghoul, 1933, starring Boris Karloff as Professor Morlant, in whose haunted mansion a group of thieves attempt to steal an ancient Egyptian jewel
Hajj Bashir asked if we’d need anything special for our trip. How about bunn, coffee beans? we said. We must have mixed up our deserts because no one drinks coffee in the Sahara. They don’t even know how to make it there. Our first night on the trail the drovers wouldn’t let us use the tea pot, and rightly so, to make our qahwa, because we wanted it qawwi, strong, and they said they’d never get the taste out again. So we made it in the aseeda pot and they grumbled we wasted too much water and sugar. The grounds didn’t settle after it had boiled so we spit them and that night’s aseeda crumbs from our teeth at every sip. We joined the drovers for tea soon after and gave up the bunn.