ISLAMABAD: Abdul Malik Abdullah, Wail Wasil and Fahim Hassan Khan had three things in common when they met for the first time in Islamabad earlier this year: They were all born and raised in Gulf countries, they all were stranded in Pakistan because of coronavirus travel restrictions and they all loved Arabic coffee.
Now there is one more thing that has brought the three young men together. They are co-owners of a small cafe called KAF that opened in the capital last week to serve up what they describe as a taste of home — authentic Arabic coffee.
In the outdoor seating area of the coffee shop, customers are greeted with a mural showing a beverage being poured from a curvaceous pot into a heart next to the calligraphed words: “For the Arabs, the law of love is coffee.”
“We’ve missed home, we’ve had this bad homesickness for a while,” Abdullah, a fourth-generation Pakistani living in Saudi Arabia, told Arab News at KAF, which is located on the ground floor of Islamabad’s Roomy hotel.
“Arabic coffee is like our daily routine. To us it is like roti,” he added, referring to a type of bread that is a staple of Pakistani diets.
The golden, cardamom-infused Arabic coffee, or qahwah, is the most popular kind brewed in the Middle East. Abdullah and Wasil said that they use varieties imported from Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Ethiopia, and serve them up at KAF as they would at home — in ceramic shot glasses with a side of Saudi dates.
“It’s authentic Arabic coffee,” said Wasil, who like Abdullah came to Pakistan in 2019 to pursue higher education but became stranded in Islamabad due to the pandemic. “We drink it day and night, it’s a part of us.”
“We are sharing it with our customers, and we are making sure it is how we like it also,” he said. “The dates I serve here, I eat at home.”
The idea for KAF was born when the brothers met Fahim Hassan Khan at a local coffee shop and the three decided to go into business together. At the time, Khan, whose parents moved to the UAE at least four decades ago, was on a visit to Pakistan that was indefinitely extended due to coronavirus travel bans.
“We became brothers fast and all had a common goal to start something of our own. And, boom, there it was, the idea to bring authentic Arabic qahwah, culture and music to Islamabad,” Khan said.
His love for qahwah grew from time spent around the nomadic Bedouin people of the UAE. “On our weekends we would drink Arabic qahwah and listen to old folk music,” said Khan, who now plays traditional Arabic music at the cafe “to give it a feel of home.”
“Even till this day, when you visit an Arab residence they greet you with authentic Arabic coffee and dates,” he said. “They say: ‘The language of love in the Arab land is qahwah.'”