What’s in a hookah, asked the traveler to the Middle East?

By Jim | April 21st, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Used to be water pipes in public cafes suggested the scenes of an Eastern landscape. Not so in many of the larger cities and college towns of the U.S. and Europe, where a combination of Middle Eastern restaurants, trendy cafes, and specialty smoking pubs feature the now fruity, inviting tobacco smells of apple, banana, and molasses. That is, until local smoking ordinances drive the practice underground. But more than a decade ago, hookahs were associated mostly with the Arab world. Even in nearby Turkey, the hookah (called narghile there) has had to undergo a fairly recent resurgence in popularity. Though it may not have gone away in the provinces or in certain Istanbul neighborhoods, the success of cigarette-smoking—and the associations of the practice with indolence in a society undergoing the mania of modernization in the Republican era—appear to have put it almost out of commission, until narghile became cool with the kids. In much of the Arab world, to my knowledge, the hookah, called sheesha in Egypt, never went away. One contributor to Encounters with the Middle East certainly harbors no complaints about that. Hookah smoking can be a portal into the warm social company of locals throughout the Middle East.

In her story “Confessions of a Water Pipe Smoker,” contributing writer and Egyptologist Carolyn Theriault describes the anxious moments before taking in her first hookah at a café on the streets of Alexandria. The clientele were decidedly local, male, and unreservedly welcoming. Understandable questions Theriault asks herself about cultural propriety—can I just walk into the café and smoke, seeing as I’m the only Westerner and woman here? Will I disrupt the harmony of the place?—demonstrate why many Western travelers, male and female, hesitate or even take a pass, rather than diving into the hookah café scene, come what may. Time and again though, the hookah seems like a splendid ice-breaker. It was for this narrator, who appears to have come to know Egypt through the chambers of its hookahs:

From Alexandria to Aswan I whiled away many the hour in swank coffee houses, impromptu tea stands, hotel patios—wherever a sheesha glowed and the kettle was clanking on the fire. Men unquestioningly shared their water pipes. With the exception of that first sheesha in Alex (you always remember your first), none were sweeter than the sheeshas I shared with the site caretakers and staff at our excavation site. In their gracious company, we talked and laughed, and smoked languidly at the door of the dighouse after their evening prayers. (Encounters with the Middle East 63)

Hookah, sheesha, nargile, water pipe. Call it what you will and smoke where you wish—Damascus, Luxor, Istanbul, Tel Aviv—the friendly fumes of the now flavored smoke, the anchored architecture of the object, the inviting spirits of the locals have long made it irresistible to travelers to the Middle East. Here’s hoping the hookah’s success as a global commodity doesn’t diminish its appeal in bringing together people of different lands. Who says a little more indolence isn’t good for the soul now and then…