WITH the gentle Red Sea waves rolling on the shore, the ocean air indolently swirls with the apple-flavoured shisha smoke coming from a tiny tourists' shop in Dahab. Here, 17-year old Phil Hilditch's first shisha experience in Egypt takes place. “When I first tried shisha, I was in Cyprus at this random house party,” says the Irish tourist while gesticulating to show that it was not a particularly interesting experience. “When I tried it in Egypt for the first time, it was quite a different experience due to a bunch of cultural aspects.” Indeed, many such tourists seek shisha bars as a means of experiencing Egyptian culture. They are not wrong in doing so. Smoking together in itself is a unique form of social interaction among Egyptians, including cigarettes and shisha (a water pipe). To share a cigarette is to express a social bond. To gather with friends at a shisha bar and share the same smoking instrument is to demonstrate friendship. With this, cigarettes and shisha both have, indeed, become a national and cultural habit. It has been implanted so deeply into the Egyptian society that despite multiple attempts to curb such behaviour by the government and other great organizations, smokers continue to puff away. Shisha bars continue to thrive, and cigarettes continue to sell. As if to confirm such statements, 45- year-old contracting company employee Mosaad Ahmed, too, leisurely sips at his cigarette outside a tool shop in downtown Cairo. Having smoked for 30 years, Ahmed believes cigarettes enhance conversations among people. Waiting for his turn to make a deal, he says: “Sometimes cigarettes play a major factor in finalising business deals. When I buy things from any shop here, I always start with presenting a cigarette to the seller. I later notice that the seller does not give me things for high prices.” It is obvious, however, that both cigarette and shisha smoking are harmful. With this, the Egyptian Government attempted different techniques to curb smoking throughout the populous nation. In 2007, the Government imposed laws that required all tobacco companies to post warning signs on their products' packets. Soon, pictures of a grim patient's masked face, a fetus and presently the bent cigarette symbolising male impotence grew ubiquitous in kiosks, markets and shops. Other efforts in trying to show that cigarettes can cause respiratory and circulatory conditions, including lung cancer and heart attacks, followed. According to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey in 2009, at least 90 percent of the Egyptians are already aware of the harms of smoking. Despite this knowledge, 4 out of every 10 people smoke, and around 41 per cent of that smoking population has attempted to quit smoking. The gruesome pictures, thus, simply served as uncomfortable reminders of their failures to keep health. As a solution, disturbed smokers began covering the packets with pictures of their own or carried their cigarettes. Several companies used this fad to their advantage and produced pleasantly decorated cigarette packet covers of their own. With this, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, a State-run agency, reported that cigarette sales or the smoking population in Egypt have not decreased, even with the warning signs. No matter what is said about the detrimental effects of tobacco, people continue to use it as a conversational tool. Ahmed jocosely says: “In Egypt, guests may not complain if you donot offer them food or drinks. But they would take a bad impression about their hosts if these hosts do not offer them tea and cigarettes.” As for shisha, the second-most popular tobacco product in Egypt, debates over illegalising it in Khan El-Khalili, a famous bazaar market in Islamic Cairo, were held. Soon, a decree banning indoor shisha smoking displeased the shisha bar owners, locals and tourists. For the most part, café and shisha bar owners made most of their living through the shisha sale, and locals enjoyed it. As for the tourists, they believed that by smoking shisha they were truly experiencing the Egyptian culture. When told about this ban, Phil reflected upon his shisha experience in Cairo. “It was a very enjoyable experience,” he said. “The ban will be genuinely regretful,” he told The Egyptian Gazette. The Government had no choice but to withdraw this ban. Being the largest tobacco consumer in the Middle East, it is common in Egypt to see men of all classes holding conversations through wisps of their spiralling cigarette whiffs or sharing shisha pipes while surrounded by the aromatic smoke clouds. Eradicating the smoker population, thus, will be as difficult as constructing a bridge over the Pacific Ocean. “Cigarettes constitute a language only smokers can understand,” says Ahmed, grounding the butt of his finished cigarette with his toe. “They add a touch of sharing and commonality among people who talk to each other.”
