Yasmine Fathy explores an anti-shisha campaign that raises questions about the image of women in Egyptian society "Women who smoke shisha [water pipe] don't realise how bad it looks." Thus Gamal Shanan, the artistic production studio director at the Ministry of Health, displaying the image of a "fallen" young woman wearing tight pink jumpsuit and racy makeup as she straddles a chair next to a large shisha -- the work of Al-Akhbar cartoonist Mustafa Hussein. "That's why we created this poster -- to help show them how terrible they look, or rather how men see them, when they're holding a shisha to their mouths." The poster is just one part of an anti- water pipe advertisement recently screened on local channels. It opens in a smoke-filled café with young men and women smoking the evil hookah. An appropriately authoritative male voice describes the health hazards of shisha. As the advertisement ends, the poster is displayed, with the slogan "Smoking is a disease that also looks bad" underneath. Broadcast infrequently for two years now, the advertisement has gained momentum since Ramadan. An age-old Levantine tradition, the shisha is a complex smoking apparatus that involves tobacco soaked in molasses -- and often, more recently, flavoured with apple, strawberry or other fruit essence -- whose smoke is filtered through water and into the flexible, hose-like pipe through which it is inhaled. Always popular among the adult male population, particularly its working-class sectors, in the last decade shisha smoking spread voraciously among middle- to upper-class young men and women. According to Fatimah El-Awa, a WHO physician, the trend was observed not only in Egypt but throughout the Middle East, notably in Syria and Lebanon. The Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) fact sheet for Egypt indicates that, of the large proportion of Egyptian students under 21 who use some form of tobacco habitually, 18-20 per cent smoke shisha. "They leave school after class time," El-Awa conjectures, "and spend hours at the café smoking shisha." Rather than reflecting disinterested health concerns, however, negative reactions to the spread of shisha smoking seem to be more about class- and gender than health. More than anything else, it is the rise of shisha smoking among young women that Shanan finds particularly disturbing. "All of a sudden this seriously perilous business is everywhere," he says. "All those pretty girls spending hours at [traditionally exclusively male] cafés. To men they are no longer feminine, let alone respectable. How on earth will they find a husband?" According to Ali Fahmy, a National Social Research Center sociologist, young people take up the relatively harmless practice of shisha smoking as a way of experimenting with various modes of behaviour -- a normal tendency for this age group. "So why not let them experiment?" he says. "Advertisements like [the aforementioned one] reflect a rigid and inflexible perspective, and will most probably backfire. Without some degree of tolerance we could break all communication lines with the young." Fahmy is of the view that that female shisha smoking is restricted to the very rich in Cairo and Alexandria, a tiny fraction of the female population. "Maybe one in a thousand girls will be smoking shisha -- a negligible number to which we should not be paying too much attention," Fahmy says. He believes the government should focus on the social, political and economic factors that have contributed to shisha smoking -- the reasons behind idleness, frustration and stress. "It is these and similar questions that we should address," he warns, "rather than spending so much money and time on what amounts to a war on women." Fahmy points out that the use of shisha among women is not as new as it seems; it has in fact been in evidence for at least four centuries. In the past aristocratic women smoked a small shisha called a shabak, a dainty, bejewelled affair cast in gold, silver or both. Only 20 years ago, he adds, a shisha was an essential part of the wedding paraphernalia with which Suez brides were provided. Iman Bibars, the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women chairwoman, finds the advertisement and its accompanying poster tasteless and unduly suggestive. An anti-smoking advertisement, she says, should focus on the health hazards of tobacco, not its impact on gender- biased notions of image. "Yet the message is not that smoking is unhealthy," she goes on. "The message is if you smoke you are not to be respected -- which is not everybody's opinion and certainly should not be the proclaimed view of a supposedly objective ministry." She believes the campaign is a backlash triggered by the rights women are gaining in areas like divorce and nationality. Men like Shanan are directing the resulting discomfort at shisha smoking, she says, because it is a tangible, less controversial issue. "They can no longer say women should not be judges, the Grand Mufti said they can. Attacking shisha smoking, by contrast, is far easier in a male-oriented society like ours. It's simply a way of controlling women, just as bad as Female Genital Mutilation." El-Awa, on the other hand, does not see the campaign as an assault on women's rights: "I'm all for women's rights, of course. But we must realise that, in our society, woman defines the moral standards of every household. If she smokes, her children are far more likely to follow suit -- something that doesn't hold true in the case of the man smoking. And this is why women's smoking is seen as a wide-ranging danger." Anti- smoking campaigns that target women, she points out, are not waged solely in male-dominated societies, they also exist in the West -- where there more male than female smokers. Many of those interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly on the streets agreed. "If my daughter smoked shisha I would break her neck," Mohamed Ezzat, an electrician, exclaims. "I totally agree with this advertisement -- a woman who has enough nerve to sit and smoke shisha in public will have the nerve to do anything at all, however immoral." Omar Fathy, an accountant, believes a woman with a shisha is an instant turnoff, but disagrees with the way the advertisement tackles the issue. "The advertisement basically says that a woman who smokes shisha is a slut -- which is not fair," he insists. Mai Samir, a Ain Shams University student, finds the advertisement ludicrously judgmental. "Women who smoke shisha are not necessarily indecent -- in the same way as women who stay home all day are not necessarily decent," she says. "I smoke shisha because I like it, and these advertisements are more annoying than deterring. Basel Mo'taz, a colleague of hers, asserts that he would not mind his fiancee smoking shisha, so long as she does not do it within sight of his mother. "I would probably advice her against it," he adds, "but only because I'd be worried about her health -- not her image." Despite objections to the advertisement, Shanan told the Weekly that even more aggressive campaigns against women smoking are planned. "We are declaring war on women who smoke shisha and in so doing we intend to hit where it hurts," he says. "Our intention is to protect the image of women. And what on earth should any decent women care about if not, before all else, her image?"
