The most famous maqha coffee house has been serving coffee with a puff of shisha smoke for some 250 years, just east of the Umayyad Mosque. In many ways, Al-Nawfara is the living room of the city, with a beautiful open porch offering seating with a view of the crowds spilling down the narrow street and an elegantly cluttered indoor room. The raised chair is for the hakawati storyteller, a rare surviving tradition from the days before Instagram, television and radio; he often orates in the evenings, speaking of epic legends and forlorn lovers, waving his sword to make a point.