BLUE smokes rose and formed a thick layer inside this café in the centre of the Egyptian capital. Under the cover, Engy Moustafa, 20, sat with her friends and kept dragging on a water pipe and puffing smokes into the air. She did it so fondly that a particular sentiment seemed to exist between her and the water pipe …quot; in Egypt called Shisha …quot; in front of her. “This is a matter of personal freedom,” Moustafa said. “The flavours that come with the water pipe make it tasty,” she told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. Other people seated inside this café in Egypt's famous Talaat Harb in central Cairo Mall did the same. Smoking seems to have become a ubiquitous practice in this populous Arab country. There is always a bunch of smokers wherever one turns his/her eyes, whether this was on the streets, on public transport or in places of public gathering. A recent survey by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has come to bring to light Egypt's smoking world in shocking detail. The survey says 38 per cent of Egyptian males use some form of tobacco. It adds that 0.6 per cent of females in this country use smoke tobacco too. The survey covers all of Egypt's 29 governorates. It focused on the opinions of 23.760 males and females 15 years and older. “Our focus was on the highest education levels as representatives of the Egyptian society at large,” said Abdullah el-Saedy, WHO's regional deputy chief during a recent press briefing on the occasion of releasing the report. The survey, which was co-made by the Egyptian Health Ministry and the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, says 0.2 per cent of Egyptian female smokers smoke cigarettes, 0.3 per cent smoke shisha, and 0.3 per cent chew tobacco. It adds that 1.1 per cent of female smokers have no formal education or primary education. But this is not the case with Moustafa, the shisha smoker. A university student, she has smoked this water pipe for years. Equally educated females colleagues and friends smoke water pipe as well. “Smoking shisha isn't a moral statement at all,” she said. Morality was not actually the focus of the survey. It says 38 per cent of males in Egypt use some form of tobacco. It adds that 32 per cent of these males smoke cigarettes, 6 per cent smoke shisha, and almost 5 per cent chew tobacco. It notes that 52 per cent of Egyptian male smokers have no formal education and 50 per cent have only primary education. Most importantly, the survey says tobacco costs Egyptians up to 6 per cent of their monthly income. “Egyptian smokers spend around LE110 ($20) a month on smoking,” says the report. It says smoking in public places poses serious health threats to the public. “Exposure to second-hand smoke results in serious hazards to both health and the environment,” the survey says.
