Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

A lot of people smoke here.  It is strange to us Americans who have gotten used to living in a relatively smoke-free environment.  Here, hotel lobbies, restaurants, and even university buildings are smoke-filled.

When I walked through the halls at one of the university buildings recently, I felt like I had been transported back to 1978.  I remember sitting in my first college class ever watching the barefooted teacher smoking a cigarette as he told us about sociology.  What a difference 30 years makes! OK, so it's 32 years--but who's counting!

But, I digress . . .

Here in Jordan, in addition to the ordinary cigarette smoking, there is hookah smoking.  Hookah, also known as "hubbly bubbly" and "shisha" and "argeela" and "nargeela," is basically a water pipe through which flavored tobacco is smoked. Hookah is served in cafes and restaurants, and sometimes in special "hookah bars." This is a highly social activity, and seems to replace alcohol consumption as the thing many people do to socialize. Smokers each get their own new plastic mouthpiece (to avoid passing germs), but one hookah is commonly shared by two or more people at a table.

To give you an idea of how important hookah smoking is to the culture in the Middle East, consider what William Hickey wrote in his Memoirs upon arriving in India in 1775:

"The most highly-dressed and splendid hookah was prepared for me. I tried it, but did not like it. As after several trials I still found it disagreeable, I with much gravity requested to know whether it was indispensably necessary that I should become a smoker, which was answered with equal gravity, 'Undoubtedly it is, for you might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. Here everybody uses a hookah, and it is impossible to get on without.' . . . [I] have frequently heard men declare they would much rather be deprived of their dinner than their hookah."

Hookahs range in appearance from the very ornate to the very plain. To operate a hookah, one simply fills the glass jar at the bottom with water. The bowl at the top is filled with flavored tobacco and then covered with aluminum foil with small holes poked into it (as if you were covering a jar containing lightening bugs). Then, a red hot charcoal is placed on top of the foil.  The heat from the charcoal begins to warm and evaporate the tobacco, which creates smoke that passes down and settles on top of the water in the water jar. When the smoker inhales through the long hose that attaches to the hookah, the water bubbles and pushes the smoke up into the neck and through the hose into the smoker's mouth and lungs. The smoker's inhalation through the hookah also pulls additional heat from the charcoal through the tobacco, making more smoke and repeating the process.

Unfortunately, despite popular belief to the contrary, the negative health effects from smoking tobacco from a hookah are the same as or worse than those from smoking cigarettes. In fact, the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society report that hookah smokers consume 100 to 200 times more smoke and 70 times more nicotine in a one-hour hookah session than they do by smoking one cigarette. In addition, studies show that hookah smokers are five times more likely than non-smokers to get gum disease, and five times more likely than non-smokers to get lung cancer. As with cigarettes, health risks become greater with longer hookah sessions and more frequent hookah smoking.