Every sofa, every table in the Café Mesale is full because it's a warm evening, the slim minarets of the Blue Mosque stand against a cloudless night and three local musicians are on stage. There are plenty of other travellers here, but there are many Turks too.
Tonight, as on every other night we have started the evening with black tea in tulip glasses - there is no alcohol served here - "out of respect to the mosque" says Salim, the maitre'd.
But there is nagileh, hubble-bubble, my weakness, my shameful vice as an otherwise fervent non-smoker.
Last night we smoked apple tobacco, tonight Salim says we should try "flower" which turns out to be rose-flavoured.
The nagileh bubbles as I inhale, the charcoal glows, the air is perfumed, what is happening to my lungs I will worry about tomorrow.
Salim returns to our table with a menu and from behind his back, a vase of white roses.
I blush, so does he. We order chicken kebab and potato stuffed pancakes just as a Sufi dervish glides on to the stage in his full white skirt and tall cylinder hat, his shoulders draped with a long camel-coloured coat.
He stands, arms crossed, left hand touching right shoulder and vice versa. He begins slowly to spin to the music.
Salim is back with more tea, paper-thin freshly baked bread and a dish of aubergine dip.
He points up to the mosque. A seagull is gliding around the floodlit minarets. It is joined by more and more birds. They circle the spires, catching the light, whirling like the dervish beside us.
"Come back," Salim says, as we leave, drunk on tea, tobacco, the music and the spinning birds.
"I will, I will," I tell him.
And I mean it because travel is an addiction stronger than nagileh. I'm like a gull, destined to spin through light and dark, to fly wherever the wind takes me.
