Ice Cream Parlour

So there I was soaking up the ambience of the souq...

When I noticed someone walk past me with a lovely looking ice cream, dripping in crushed and whole pistachio nuts.

Wow. Where had he got that from?

But I couldn't see anywhere so I kept walking; browsing in the windows; not looking too interested in any one thing in case the proprietor went off on one Marrakech-style; politely batting away enquiries about my level of interest in anything from tractor parts to brass coffee pots and women's lingerie.

Then I spotted a few more people walking past me, ice cream dribbling down remarkably generous sized waffle cones.

I looked past the mobile tea and coffee sellers; breathed in the exotic scents of the brewing cardamom and tried to look past the fezes of the guys standing in front of me. They do actually wear fezes in Damascus. But why not. Fezes are cool.

The numbers of people walking past with pistachio enhanced ice creams were now so large that I was able to see crushed and whole cashews dripping down the sides of the ice creams too.

And then as if in the eye of a hurricane they stopped. Suddenly there was no one walking towards me with an ice cream. And as I stopped to wonder what happened someone overtook me, carrying their ice cream, and I turned and realised I had just gone past the ice cream parlour.

Though how I could have missed it with the deafening clamour for ice cream and the queue strecthing out the door, I am not at all sure!