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Travel | Turkey | Gaziantep
Finding My Future in a Cup of Coffee
Experiencing the art of fortune telling in a Turkish coffee house
I am staring into a cup of two-tone coffee in one of the oldest neighborhoods in one of the oldest cities in the world — Gaziantep, Turkey.
It was here in the early 1500s that an obscure bean, native to the Horn of Africa, made its way to the Arabian Peninsula, into Damascus, Syria, and north into Gaziantep, a major Silk Road trading center.
It was here that the first coffee houses, some still in continuous operation, were established and coffee culture as we know it today first took root before being transported in 1555 to Constantinople, then the crossroads of the world, and from there exploding into global human consciousness.
As I stare into my cup, I puzzle at how the barista here at Kahveci Seddar Bey — Turkish for Mr. Seddar’s Coffee House — achieved this effect, my cup perfectly bisected with one half a frothy brew the color of light cocoa and the other the dark hue of espresso.
I later learn, after speaking with Seddar Bey’s son, that this is dibek coffee, prepared in the same traditional method used in Gaziantep for half a millennium.