Until my friends returned from America with a new and strange drink called iced tea, to my mind tea could only be a black powder sold in boxes — which you boil in water or add boiled water to — making it red. In the forests of Thailand I was later to realise that iced tea was not an American invention at all, but it was another new and much healthier hot drink called green tea that eventually caught my attention. More recently, I discovered quite how serious the business of drinking tea could become. Tea that requires a suit and tie, indeed: I arrived 15 minutes early to the tea ceremony I had been invited to at the Japanese Ambassador Toshiro Suzuki's residence to find the tatami mat set on the floor with an enormous kettle in one corner. The Italian made chair I sat before the ceremony started came apart only minutes after my weight settled on it, and the ambassador explained, with a diplomatic smile, that this kind of chair was made with “the light-weight Japanese” physique in mind. Ah well... When the guests arrived Suzuki said he was no expert, that he would let the experts speak, and added that what was about to happen was called simply “making tea” — the concept of the ceremony being a Western invention — apologising for the fact that we had been left so long without refreshments. I had read up on the subject, having found a wealth of stimulating, not to say confusing material — one artist says his work is “as feminine as the tea”, for example — and what I understood was that green tea (called matcha in its fine powdered form) was first imported from China where in the 10th century under the Song Dynasty it was served with salt, with the Japanese way of serving it, the ceremony, developing in Buddhist temples. Matcha is now a popular ice cream flavour, and it goes into many other sweet and savoury menu items besides, including the delicious wagashi confectionary we were now served as per tradition with the tea. A man (who looked more Upper Egyptian than Japanese, though he did have some Far Eastern features) together with two women in kimonos approached the tatami, taking off their zori (or flip-flops) before stepping onto the mat. (Zori sounded strange to my ears, but little do the Japanese know that the Egyptian Arabic word for the same thing is even stranger: shebsheb.) The two women were walking without lifting their feet — a technique used in Japan to preserve the silence, although it also exists in the Hindu tradition as a sign of female modesty — while the man, an Egyptian named Tarek Sayed who, as it turned out, is the first Arab to become a qualified teishu or tea master (the word means simply “host”), headed to the kettle. At a traditional Egyptian cafe, where tea is somewhat less of a big deal, Tarek later referred to the common Egyptian greeting, Eshrab shai (or “Drink tea”, practically synonymous with “Welcome” or “Come in”) to explain what is supposed to have happened in Japan. The first teishu wanted to gather together the Samurai warriors from different tribes without weapons in their hands and so he instituted this form of peaceful and silent sharing. To this day it is meant to refine the personality and encourage moral rectitude. The guests at a Japanese tea ceremony are not equal. The shokyaku or first guest is the only person allowed to talk to the teishu, according to a specific etiquette — in a clear voice, at the right time, with the proper “pleases” and “thank yous” — of course. Then there is a second guest, and other guests. Tarek had a wooden ladle and what looked like a shave brush as well as bowls and sun-dry objects. He apologised for using an electric kettle as coal was not available. The water was heated and the matcha mixed into with the brush — actually a bamboo whisk, newly made for every ceremony and then thrown away — in the bowl. It made a pleasant sound. Next, the teishu asks the shokyaku permission to hand him the bowl, the shokyaku asks the second guest's permission to drink first and, holding the bowl exactly between his knees before raising it to his mouth in two hands, the guest drinks with enough delicacy to calm even the most ferocious Samurai, spreading an atmosphere of peace in the silence. Everyone can talk once they are done drinking, but conversation is restricted to topics of beauty and utility (including elements of the tea drinking, of course) but nothing that might cause any kind of disturbance. Kneeling as I was, I could not really taste what little drink was in the bowl. It was my friend Hideaki Yamamoto, the Director of the Information and Culture Centre at the embassy, who took me to a separate room where I could drink at my leisure. It was a thick liquid the colour of cantaloup juice. It seemed tasteless at first, but the more I drank of it, the more peaceful I felt — for sure.
