In the Beduin culture hosting a stranger is considered as a sacred matter.Each outsider arriving the Beduin tent is invited to seat down and to have its cup of coffee. Mohammed Abu-Ajaj, my dear friend and colleague is a beduin from the Negev desert in Israel. He explains this costume in the fact that in the past coffee was very expansive and rare in the desert, and like this the host had given a precious but symbolic offering : half a cup of Saàda (bitter) coffee that was refilled constantly. When visitor was not welcomed, he were given a cup filled to its end, as a hint to drink his or her coffee and leave.The importance of foreigners was quite common in the Mediterranean culture. In ancient Greece, one of the epithets of Zeus was Xenios - the protector of strangers and preserver of laws of hospitality. The Kanun, a customary code in the tribal society of northern Albania dictateds that a guest is a kind of god or a messenger of the gods ("Ethical structure of the Kanun" by K. Yamamoto). Similar examples can be found in many other cultures. Nonetheless, it is in the modest Beduin coffee ceremony we could find some symbols that might revel a deeper layer within the concept of hospitality.

1) Entering the tent : "…The LORD appeared to Abraham by the terebinth of Mamre, as he sat in the entrance of his tent, while the day was growing hot. Looking up, he saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them; and bowing to the ground, he said: "Sir, if I may ask you this favor, please do not go on past your servant…" (Genesis, chapter 18)The story of Abraham and the three angels is a good example of both the antiquity and seriousness in which hospitality was practiced in ancient times in the middle east. The nomadic desert life establish a delicate equilibrium between the inner reality of the family habitat and the outside world. In the nomadic society there is no ownership of lands, and therefore the border between the intimate space and the infinite space around it is the tent. Inside the tent babies are conceived and born, elders choose the trail in which the tribe will go, the family sleep, eat, tells stories. Inviting a complete stranger into the tent in ancient times will be almost as inviting a complete unknown person that had just passed in the street next to you to have dinner held in your grandmother's room. So why do they do it ?I want to go deeper into the concept of a house. The house is a physical space that demarcates an important complementarity : on one side it includes everything inside it as a private microcosmos, on the other hand it excludes all the rest of the endless reality. In nomadic societies this concept is applied not in the physical space but in the temporary place in which the tent is being positioned. )In this case one can view the nomad themselves as guests of nature, and not its owners). Inviting a stranger, which is an personalized element of the outer world into the inner world (= tent) is a ceremony of opening a door into the infinity.

2) The half empty cup : "There's far many questions to ask to answer any of them tonight. And Confusion casts a shadow upon me like a great big cloud in the sky. And I pray for rain because its been so long since I let myself cry. For so long, I sang this sad ole' song, and it feels like my time is up. For she came and landed in my arms and filled my half empty cup.” (The John Butler Trio from the song Peaces & Cream)The term horror vacui (=fear of emptiness) introduced both in art and science (through Aristotle's affirmation that nature fears the emptiness in his 4th book of Pysica) can give us an insight to the negative attributes in the western world to the concept of emptiness. In the eastern world, contrarily, the emptiness is welcomed and considered even blessed. In buddhism, reaching Nirvana or enlightenment, is based on the purification of thought based on the negation of any known contents through meditation. In the Japanese Zen tradition the nothingness term Mu (?) is expressing the mind's capacity to jump over the border of content-oriented thinking.Serving the guest a half empty cup might not be a conscious act of metaphysics of the Beduin following this tradition, but still nests inside it layers of meanings. A simple meaning that can derive from this costume is that the half full cup could represent one own consciousness, while the empty half is ready to be completed by the guest (personalized figure of the outside world); when the source of expansion is not welcomed (the full cup), there is no space given to the guest to expand the self.

3) Coffea arabica was not a common plant in the Arab world :Actually, the famous ARABICA coffee origins were Ethiopia, and other east African states such as Kenya & Sudan. In the Arab peninsula, only a small growth of Arabica had took place in the mountains of Yemen.The coffee in Arabia was rare and expansive, but in addition was brought from the far-reached end of the outside world. Sharing with a stranger a drink originated from an "external" plant is for me another strong indicator of the importance of the interior/exterior complementarity in this ceremony.

A bridge towards the world Nowadays, having coffee with a friend or colleague is considered to be a standard social framework for mutual interaction between individuals.In the meantime, we are in a continuous loss of the tradition of hospitality in the western world. Great achievements had marked the 21st century in the field of communication, mainly through the development of the internet and the social networks in them (but also through more complex knowledge-oriented initiatives, such as the WIKI realities which I used also in this article). At the same time our private social interaction is narrowing. My belief is that through the other I discover myself, and by creating a bridge from one's local tradition and culture toward others, could be achieved a private identity that includes all the potential our present folds. In the path of the Beduin coffee tradition I open a door towards my close friends & family, towards my peoples, towers humanity, towards the world.