On the second one flooring of the Shababeek cafe, overlooking the clock tower sq. within the town of Idlib, the aspect reserved for males used to be empty just lately with the exception of for 2 younger males nursing cups of Turkish espresso. The circle of relatives aspect, the place girls are allowed, used to be just about complete.There used to be no track — simply the hiss of an coffee gadget and the clinking of cups — and in contrast to cafes somewhere else in Syria, the air used to be transparent of hookah smoke. This is on account of an settlement the landlord needed to signal with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist team that has dominated for years in a lot of Idlib Province, in northwestern Syria, and which now controls lots of the nation with different riot factions.“Hookahs and track had been banned from the start,” mentioned Yahia Naeme, the landlord of the cafe, who mentioned the ban had misplaced him trade as a result of many of us used to come back to his cafe in particular to smoke hookahs. “If we will’t be offering it, they’ll lose interest and move somewhere else,” he mentioned.Different cafes in Idlib have skirted the legislation by means of providing hookahs in speakeasy-type environments in the back of closed doorways. However Mr. Naeme didn’t wish to possibility working afoul of the realm’s rulers.
