The Vagabond Café and Jerusalem's Prince of Idleness Salim Tamari
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The Vagabond Café and Jerusalem's Prince of Idleness Salim Tamari The return of Khalil Sakakini from his American sojourn in the autumn of 1908 was an occasion for contemplating the creation of a new kind of cultural space: the literary café; a public meeting place to accommodate his newly-formed circle of literati, the "Party of the Vagabonds" (hizb al-sa'aleek). For Sakakini and many like-minded intellectuals of the period, the time was ripe. The new Ottoman constitution had just been declared and calls for decentralization, Arab autonomy and freedom of press and assembly were spreading throughout Syria and Palestine. Sakakini was penniless and heavily in debt. To supplement his teaching income he became a copy editor in two Jerusalem newspapers, al-Quds owned by George Habib, and al-Asma'i, a literary paper that had just been published by the al-Issa family in the Old City.1 In 1911, the al-Issa brothers, Dawood and Issa, moved to Jaffa where they launched Falastin, the newspaper that became an instrument of the national 23 October19.p65 23 09/08/24, 10:30 Õ An Arabic café at the seashore in Jaffa. Source: J. Benor-halter. 24 October19.p65 24 09/08/24, 10:31 Õ movement and often clashed with both the rather Islamic) response to the taverna; that Ottoman and British Mandate authorities. is, a site for secular socialization that did not serve proscribed substances.2 Ralph Mattox In this essay I will attempt to trace the argues that the absence of a restaurant appearance and demise of a literary café, tradition in the early modernity of Middle Maqha al-Sa'aleek ("Vagabond Café"), and Eastern towns (except for the traditional its association with Sakakini's circle of merchants' khans for overnight stays) made vagabonds in Ottoman Jerusalem during and the coffeehouse a necessary instrument for immediately after World War I. Sakakini's receiving guests outside the more intimate philosophy of pleasure (falsafat al-surur) and confines of the house. The domestic the cosmopolitan atmosphere that prevailed atmosphere of the house was too restricting, in Jerusalem during and immediately after the and the new public space of the café allowed war years constituted the social milieu for the host to forgo issues of rank and prestige, this café-circle. I will also introduce Maqha which had permeated social interaction in al-Sa'aleek in the context of the earlier family-controlled environments. "This would evolution of similar cafés in Ottoman Syria imply," according to Hattox, "a subtle shift in and Egypt. the relationship of host and guest, and a break, if only symbolic, with old values."3 It A New Kind of Public Space was this break that created a café atmosphere that was both informal and potentially Jerusalem, as all medium-sized Arab cities of dangerous. The danger did not come from that period, had two kinds of public spaces coffee as a drink (which was attacked early where urbanites engaged in celebratory on by some ulama as potentially events. These were the major family revelries intoxicating),4 but from the atmosphere associated with weddings, births, associated with the coffeehouse, and the circumcisions, baptismals and the like - all of recreational activities that were soon to be which were celebrated within the confines of hosted in it. the household; and religious ceremonials involving ritual celebrations and processions. By the late Ottoman period Levantine Those included Ramadan processions, Sabt coffeehouses served a predominantly en Nur ("Saturday of Fire," following Good transient population. Initially they served Friday processions), Nebi Musa, Purim, and three kinds of clientele.5 In areas surrounding al-Khader. Although obviously religious in public buildings (land registries, courts, character, many of these ceremonials had police stations) they received clemencers, acquired a clearly worldly, if not mundane, applicants, and people waiting for official character by the turn of the century. Some, redress of grievances. Those cafés usually like the Nebi Musa processions, were included a katib adiliyyah, or public scribe, religious occasions that became almost who filled out official forms and petitions for exclusively nationalist in character. Nabi a fee. A second type of café began to Rubeen celebrations in the south of Jaffa, in proliferate in mid-nineteenth century which Jerusalemites participated, had entirely provincial centres, serving the travellers lost their ostensible religious character by the discharged from carriages and motor vehicles end of the nineteenth century. in the local square. A third type of café evolved in port cities and served mainly In earlier periods - probably around the sailors, travel agents, and customs officers. sixteenth century - coffeehouses emerged These last two brands of cafés branched into elsewhere in the Arab world as an Arab (or other economic and social functions, 25 October19.p65 25 09/08/24, 10:31 Õ becoming hang-abouts for porters, café, and hang about, passing from stevedores, and other itinerant workers table to table.8 seeking work and poste restentes for those In a study of public morality in turn-of-the- bearing letters and packages to be picked up century Beirut, Jens Hanssen argues that it later by other clients. was not until the 1840s that the public's But it was as a place for spontaneous and perception of cafés and their clients changed. often anonymous encounters that the café Until mid-century, most coffeehouses were began to serve a wider recreational and located inside the walled city by the port area, entertainment function. The imbibing of where merchants, soldiers and sailors gave alcohol, small-scale gambling (with cards and them a disreputable, if not dangerous, dominoes), music in public places (cafés reputation.9 boasted the earliest gramophones and radios), Only the increased security brought by prostitution (pick-up areas), and the sale and Ottoman city planning and street lighting consumption of tobacco and hashish were all enticing coffeehouses inside the city walls components of the cafés recreational (particularly in the Zaytuneh, Ras Beirut and function.6 The relative anonymity of the café Corniche areas) "allowed" patrician family milieu permitted the emergence of political members to patronize cafés and other and literary groups who found them recreational centres. Suddenly, cafés became convenient for unscheduled meetings, and respectable. easy escape when necessary.7 The transgressive nature of coffeehouses was In his social history of coffeehouses, Ralph particularly felt in port areas (Jaffa, Hattox offers a rather different reading of the Alexandria, Beirut), where the consumption origins of café society in the Middle East. He of proscribed substances (alcohol and later rejects this distinction between "respectable" hashish, which was initially more tolerated) and "ill-reputed" cafés, which is implied by combined with dissenters' political activities, Hanssen, and suggests the main divide to be gave cafés their early subversive character, as between bars and cafés. While the former viewed through official eyes. were associated with gambling and drunkenness, "the coming of the coffeehouse In Palestine, Jaffa's Manshiyyeh quarter was signalled the beginning of an entirely new an ethnic border area between Jaffa and Tel phenomenon. Perfectly respectable people Aviv where such cafes proliferated. Café went out at night for purposes other than Baghdadi was one of several cafés on piety."10 But in Cairo and Istanbul, the public Shabazi Street observed by the Mandatory café tradition had a much earlier pedigree. police: Jabarti chronicled the co-existence of wine Without a doubt this place is the main taverns and coffeehouses in Cairo during the attraction of Shabazzi Street. All hours late eighteenth century, before the French of the day it is crowded with very shady Expedition. During Ramadan, coffeehouses characters, who sit and gamble, were major centres for public entertainment playing all manner of card games and and arghileh-smoking. What seems to have dominoes. Here too, the 'chalk and given cafés an aura of respectability was their slate' system of scoring is favoured, patronage by Al-Azhar scholars and sheikhs, although on a few occasions players who supported their own coffeehouses.11 have been apprehended in flagrante These different perspectives about the origins delicto passing money. Many women, of Levantine cafés suggest that local undoubtedly prostitutes, gather in this 26 October19.p65 26 09/08/24, 10:31 Õ conditions provided different responses to the with its cosmopolitan and imperial new institutions, and that often, the foreign influences, but it followed the same trends. In presence, as in Napoleonic Egypt, elicited Jaffa and Jerusalem, a multiplicity of new unfavourable responses in some major Arab newspapers were launched to take advantage cities but not in others. This suggests another of the new Ottoman press laws after the important distinction in nineteenth century constitution of 1908. Public cafés and cafés. The main dividing line among late newspapers became linked together in the Ottoman cafés was between popular cafés public conscience. It was customary around (maqahi sha'biyyah) and the subsequent World War I for a "reader" to alight a modern cafés (maqahi franjiyyah), which had platform and read the commentary to the distinction, from the turn of the century, customers of these cafés. In a recent study on of catering to female and mixed clienteles. To the diffusion of literacy and reading in these options, Abdel Mun'em Shmais adds Palestine, historian Ami Ayalon discusses the the artistic café-cabaret (maqha al-'awalem) role of the public café in this marriage which began to proliferate in Cairo during between newspapers and coffeehouses. He (and possibly before) the French Expedition, suggests that coffee and tea acted as and spread from there to Alexandria, Beirut stimulants for reading and discussion, while and Jaffa.12 A further distinction is to be made proprietors of coffee and teahouses enhanced between 'Awalem cafés that offered stylised patronage by subscribing to a number of "belly dancing", which had an aura of journals.