Cafe Sufi

So today I thought I'd be productive and find a peaceful place to write. I ended up at a place called Cafe Sufi, which though located on El Camino was virtually unnoticeable from the street because of how tiny it was. It's got a such an entrancing vibe that I hardly noticed the cars driving by outside on El Camino. But the owners, dude. The owners were weird - in an other worldly sort of way. I'm almost afraid to write about them because I suspect that they're somehow going to find this blog, kill me, and serve my bits and pieces in their coffee.

I walked in and greeted them sweetly (I try, I try) - a young woman, maybe a little older than me, and a white-haired dude who looked like he was her father. They looked obviously Middle Eastern, but I was extra curious about where they were from because I was wondering who the hell would name their cafe after a religious movement, and have printouts of poems and quotations by Walt Whitman and William Blake hanging alongside Sufi art on the walls. It's the sort of shit that a white person would pull, not a couple of first generation Iranian immigrants (although, who am I to know what crazy Persians are wont to do). So I asked the lady where she was from, and she promptly replied, "it's not the kind of information I give when I first meet people."

What? It's exactly the sort of thing one asks and divulges during an introduction. I am routinely stopped on the streets and asked where I'm from, probably because I look weird and have this ambiguous skin tone that has now gotten so orange that I look like a Jersey Shore reject. That aside, I'm never offended when people ask where I'm from (unless they're from the department of Homeland Security, but that's neither here nor there....). I was really taken aback by this woman's response. Couldn't she tell that I was Middle Eastern, too? I get it, lady. Arabs are private people, too. And I'm not usually one to ask strangers where they're from, but I was really curious in this case because a) this cafe was pretty batshit crazy and b) when I see a homie who looks like they're from my part of the world, I wonder what their experience of being in the US is like. I get lonely sometimes (ok, all the time) and seek out connections that make me feel a little less disconnected out here. But anyway, after seeing my look of confusion, she told me to look around the walls to figure it out myself. I guessed Iranian - Farsi hugged the walls and there was a big ol' Persian rug on the floor.

I didn't get to speak to her father, or whoever that white-haired fellow was. He shuffled around the room quietly, like a phantom, and occasionally spoke softly to the lady. I was the only other person in the cafe, aside from the two of them, and admittedly did feel slightly nervous at times when I heard them whispering to each other.

Later, when I sat there sipping my (pretty awful) Turkish coffee, I saw a sign on the wall that said something along the lines of "the sign of a good business is one where the relationship between owner and patron is polite without getting personal." Though I was really taken aback by the lady's brusque response, I did learn that perhaps looking around before speaking first would be a wiser way of getting to know something about someone new - she certainly did remind me of this valuable lesson. And although the coffee I had wasn't particularly good, I think I'll be going back to this place - its vibe is enchanting enough to make it feel far removed from most places I've encountered in the Bay Area.