The Death of Mocha

The heat was so intense that it burned the marrow in the bones, the sword in its scabbard melted like wax, and the gems that adorned the handle of the dagger were reduced to coal. In the plains the chase became a matter of perfect ease, for the desert was filled with roasted gazelles!
Abd-er-Razak, 1442

I eat breakfast with a teenager brandishing a Kalashnikov behind me. Half an hour later I would be in Mocha, just wind-ravaged fragments of what had once blossomed to give the now world-famous coffee its name. But Al Mukha is for name-sick romantics only. And their collective hearts will tear over its wasteland that ends in turquoise waters, its landscape of plastic bags and excrement and its tattered ruins that were once villas of coffee merchants who sold beans that would brew in Europe. Now, the dull sun of the Tihama beat down listlessly over crowds of motorbike taxis that tore wildly over what would otherwise have been a ghost town. This patch, and most urbanised areas, is dry, dusty and so hopelessly poor you would have to be cruel to call it beautiful.



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