Cosmic Coffee

"Missing Orders" list

As usual, the rebellious, infidel, heretical "Read" entered, carrying his mocking cup, and stood amidst the supplicants and said:

"O you who are drowning in your illusions! Have you ever seen a waiter in a cafe who takes the price of the coffee and then leaves you thirsty and tells you, 'I will give you the cup in the next life'? If a cafe owner in our neighborhood did that, you would beat him with shoes! So why do you accept it from the owner of this tower?"

One of them shouted: "But our supplication to Him is the essence of worship!"

Read replied: "It is 'the drug' of worship! Look... that man prayed for sustenance, so he worked day and night, and money came to him, and you attributed the credit to the prayer and forgot the sweat of his brow. And that woman prayed for healing, so she went to the doctor and took medicine, and you said 'the blessing of the prayer' and forgot the doctor's intelligence. Prayer is the 'percentage' that the owner of the cafe steals from your personal effort to fill his narcissistic account!"

Heavenly "customer service"

Suddenly, a voice came down from the sky (or so it seemed to them): "My dear, virtuous, and distinguished believer in the Heavenly Cafe... I have answered your request, but I will postpone the request to be a 'surprise' after your death."

Read laughed so hard he fell back: "What ingenious customer service! Receiving the package after the body has been damaged! Is there a more sophisticated scam than this? Selling people goods that can only be received after they have passed away, where there is no 'consumer protection' and no right to return!"

Bitter certainty coffee

The café owner went up to his terrace, looked at millions of people raising their hands like withered trees, begging him to lift from them a plague he had created, and a poverty he had decreed. He shook his head with delight and said: "How beautiful this humiliation is! It gives my coffee an irresistible flavor."

As for Read, he poured what was left in his cup onto the ground and said: "I will rely on my hands, on my mind, and on the bitterness of my reality. I will only raise my hand to the sky to block the sun from my eyes so that I can see my way clearly. The owner of the cafe is preoccupied with his 'ego,' and I am preoccupied with my 'now.'"

Finished. / Manal Khalil

Cosmic Coffee Conclusion

When the reader turns the pages of Celestial Coffee, they feel as though they haven't read separate stories, but rather sat in a timeless café, sipping from a cup that stretches from beginning to end. Each story was a sip, and each sip unveiled a new illusion, and each illusion was the froth covering the bitterness of the black coffee.

We sat with the women who said "no," and saw how they pierced the froth to reveal the truth.

We accompanied scientists and philosophers as they debated the very meaning of coffee: Is it a brain of pleasure or a drink of knowledge?

We watched the guests jostle in the Celestial Café, believing they were guests when in reality they were in a merciless grinder.

And in the end, we realized that all these stories are but a reflection of one thing: that humanity prefers froth to coffee, illusion to reality, pleasure to reason.

Celestial Coffee is not a drink, but a mirror. It is a cup that the reader places before them, in which they see themselves, their society, and their illusions. The foam covering the surface is nothing but a fragile veneer, melting with the first sip to reveal what lies within: black, bitter, hot, but real.

And so, when the reader closes the book, he has finished his last cup. He lets the foam dissipate, the bitterness lingers on his lips, and leaves the café wondering: Was he truly a guest, or merely a customer in a café selling illusions?

The celestial coffee ends here, but it doesn't end in the reader's mind. It's not a book to be read and then forgotten, but a cup to be sipped, its trace lingering in the brain, like a long, lingering, ironic echo, an invitation to reflect.