The Ottoman Café

Abstract

Our excursions in the Plaza grew less frequent when we finally found the steps that led up to a café hidden from casual view. I had heard of this place—the city’s inhabitants called it the Elevated Café—but I had never managed to discover its exact location in spite of the fact that the steps are just a stone’s throw away from one of the Plaza’s main gates. The café stood on what once used to be a bare and sandy hill that had gradually pulled the old city into its orbit. A number of tall buildings had risen around it and partly concealed it from the street below, leaving three approaches that were known only to its regular customers. The first one abuts the old city, with its antique houses and its Great Mosque. The second rises from the modern districts that spread out to the seafront, while the third leads up from the French District and the river, to the north. This artificial hill was originally created during one of the many troubled periods that succeeded each other at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was intended as a strategic military stronghold from which to command the city and bombard, if need be, the fort that towers above the old city, but this military function eventually gave way to a purely recreational one.