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Owen Bennett Jones presents personal stories, analysis and wit in despatches from around the world. Today, two despatches from the Arab world. Lyse Doucet sees how one Egyptian woman has had a ringside view of all the recent events in Cairo's Tahrir Square, while James Harkin meets the ice-cream kings of Damascus's famous Al-Hamidiyah souk.

Tahrir's carnival of tumult

Tahrir Square in Cairo could be a purpose-built TV set. Those who demand an immediate end to military rule arrive day by day, while camera crews from all over the world film them. It’s a vital contest for Egypt’s future – and it’s also compelling live television, filling the normally arid hours of rolling news.

But as Lyce Doucet heard, some people don’t have to switch on the box to see what’s happening in Tahrir Square – they can just look out of the window.

Ice cream and insurrection

For most of this year, foreign correspondents have been trying, and mostly failing, to get into Syria so they could report on events as they saw them. But as most had their visas denied, many have tried to cover Syrian news from Lebanon or from Turkey instead, in fact from anywhere except Syria itself. Meanwhile, hours and hours of amateur video, much of it shot on mobile phone, has leaked out of the country - but it's often been hard to interpret or understand what was really going on.

But by various means, people are increasingly finding ways in - and James Harkin was one of them. He spent a good deal of time waiting for contacts to get in touch with him - and found that one of the best ways to while away the empty hours was with one of Damascus's famous ice creams.