A little hubbly-bubbly after lunch

Thursday, January 10, 2013 in Beirut, Lebanon | 3 comments

Smoking my first hookah after lunch. Photo by David Lansing.

About that hubbly-bubbly: It is everywhere in Beirut. You see men sitting cross-legged on big boulders in the sand, smoking while staring out at the sea. Little groups of stylish women, out for lunch at a trendy restaurant, smoke after their meal. Even teens—some no more than 13 or 14—gather around the hookah (it is estimated that 80% of 13- to 15-year-old smokers in Lebanon smoke nargilehs rather than cigarettes).

The hookah’s tobacco and molasses mix (called sheesha in Arabic) is flavored with strawberry or melon or cherry or apple; it seems apple is most prevalent. Of course, I had to try it.

What you do is choose your flavor and then the waiter brings over a hookah and helps you to get it started, periodically checking that the coals are still burning. I took a long puff, blew it out. It tasted sweet and cool. Nothing like a cigarette.

Maybe it was just my imagination, but when I finished my smoke and stood up, I was light-headed and felt slightly stoned. Pleasantly stoned.

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3 comments

  1. Allan’s avatar

    Allan on Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 12:34 pm

    Well, now the fun will be trying to get through US Customs with a hookah without getting strip-searched.

  2. Barbara Stoner’s avatar

    Barbara Stoner on Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 12:46 pm

    LOL, Allan. The last time I came home from Jamaica, I breezed through customs without a guilty thought to my name. They asked if I was bringing home any fruit or vegetables (something like that, anyway), and I airily told them that I had been eating local Jamaican food for two weeks and all I wanted was a pizza.

    I had been seeing this fella when I was there, and we spent some quality time in a hotel near Sav -la-Mar. When I got home, I spread my suitcase out on the living room floor, and when I lifted out the stack of undies, a plastic bag fell out filled with some of Jamaica’s finest.

    I stared at it in pure horror and spent the next 15 minutes arguing my case before non-existent customs officials that I had nothing to do with that baggie, that I had no idea it was there, before I calmed down and remembered that I was already safely home, past customs and nobody was actually knocking on the door.

    My friend probably still thinks I made off with his stash.

  3. Allan’s avatar

    Allan on Friday, January 11, 2013 at 2:41 pm

    So Barbara, is Stoner your real surname or just a nickname?

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