Name: Shisha.
Age: About 500 years old? No one knows really. It was probably invented in Persia.
Appearance: Pipes, tubes, bowls and a bit of hose, and lots of brightly coloured decorative stuff.
Eh? It’s quite simple, really. You put a burning coal on to some flavoured tobacco on top of a tube, which extends down into a container of water, above the surface of which you have a hose to suck the smoke and vapour through after it has bubbled up, and hey presto: a massive cigarette!
Sounds, um, great. Yeah. You can pass the hose around, too, making it a social experience. And because the smoke has been cooled you can suck in huge clouds of it. Plus, the tobacco comes in lots of lovely flavours: apple, plum, watermelon, apricot …
Sounds like being trapped inside a burning fruiterer’s. I suppose it is like that. But imagine being trapped inside one with your friends, watching the world go by. Shisha cafes are basically booze-free pubs, and they have recently become more popular almost everywhere.
Why “almost”? Well … You know France?
Yup. Nice place. Bit racist. Well, since April a number of mayors there have begun banning public shisha smoking, even outdoors. Four mayors in the southeast and one in Paris, to be exact.
On what grounds? Public health and public nuisance, of course. Loïc Dombreval, mayor of Vence, says the ban will “prevent disorder and nuisances which are a threat to order, security, peace and public health in some parts of the town”.
Uh-huh. Charles Scibetta, mayor of Carros, says he is just responding to demand, after receiving nearly 180 complaints.
Is this just an anti-Muslim measure? They aren’t doing any harm! Actually, by smoking shisha they may well be doing serious harm to themselves and to those around them.
All right. But that’s already covered by a ban on smoking in parks, workplaces or enclosed public spaces. Should old men be banned from gathering to play boules and smoke Gitanes? Maybe, if they behaved annoyingly.
Were these shisha smokers being annoying? Or are people picking on them? Don’t know. But I suppose anything that both improves public health and antagonises Muslims would be hard for French lawmakers to resist …
Do say: “No public prayers allowed, no public face-covering allowed, no public shisha smoking allowed…”
Don’t say: “So let’s go burkini crazy!”
