Culture
Four paintings from the coffee table and the wedding hall.
In Eritrean and Ethiopian homes, coffee is roasted, ground, and poured three times in one sitting. Abol, Tona, Baraka. The third cup is called Baraka, blessing, and it reaches whoever is still sitting. The ceremony takes the time it takes, and the women who lead it hold a family together in that time.
Those women are rarely the subject of the portraits that hang in museums. Hanan puts them in gilded frames anyway: a mother at the jabana, a room of women in matching colors, one quiet cup kept for herself.
A question to sit with
Who in your family kept the traditions, and did anyone ever paint them?
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