The Hakawati: Storytellers of Antar and Baibars in the Coffeehouses of Old Damascus

Before television and the internet, Damascus had its own nightly series: the hakawati. A man in a fez and cloak sits on a raised chair in the coffeehouse, an old book and a stick in his hands, and every evening tells a chapter of a folk hero's life. The men stay up around him with tea and narghile — and come back the next night to find out what happened.

What did he tell?

• The epic of Antar ibn Shaddad: the warrior-poet, son of a slave woman, who fought to be recognised and to marry Abla.
• The epic of al-Zahir Baibars: the Mamluk sultan who defeated the Mongols and the Crusaders and whose life became a tale full of adventure.
• Al-Zir Salem, the wanderings of the Banu Hilal and stories from the Thousand and One Nights.

The art of suspense

The hakawati was more actor than reader: he raised his voice in battle, lowered it for love and banged his stick on the table. Above all, he stopped at the tensest moment — the hero captured, the sword raised — and said: "And the rest of the story... tomorrow." Tales are told of listeners taking sides, arguing until dawn and not sleeping until they knew their hero's fate.

The Nawfara café

Behind the east wall of the Umayyad Mosque, on a stone stairway leading down to Qaymariyya, stands the Nawfara café, one of the oldest in Damascus. For decades its name was tied to the hakawati who told the epics there, until the café itself became a symbol of the art. Times have changed, but it is still a place to sit with Damascenes beneath the mosque and listen to the city.

Café culture today

The Damascene café is not only for coffee: here people play tawleh (backgammon) and cards, smoke narghile, settle neighbourhood matters and read the news. Try sitting for an hour without hurrying — that is the lesson coffeehouses teach.

Read also what Syrians drink and one day in Old Damascus.