I place my lips on the mahogany tip and breathe in deeply. I hear only a peaceful bubbling sound as I draw in an apple flavor. After a thoughtful pause I blow a billow of wavering smoke in the air. I sit back, pass the mouthpiece to the next person and enjoy the slight buzz that comes from smoking a hookah.

For those unaware of this sublime device, the hookah — also known as a narghile or hubble bubble — is a Middle-Eastern water pipe used for smoking flavored tobacco. In the past decade, it has taken the Western world by storm, particularly on college campuses. Indoor smoking bans, scathing medical claims and sketchy stigmas be damned — this pipe’s allure continues unfettered because of its soothing nature and social appeal.

In the United States, 200 to 300 hookah bars have opened since 2000, according to SMOKESHOP Magazine. Forty-five percent of colleges and universities are near one. In Lawrence, the closest thing to a hookah lounge is Aladdin’s Café, 1021 Massachusetts St., which lets patrons puff away on its patio for $10.

If you don’t want to brave the outdoors when hitting the hubble bubble, you’ll have to move on to Kansas City, because it has not yet jumped on the smoking ban wagon. Jerusalem Café & Bakery, 431 Westport Rd., turns into a hookah bar at night. The café has 25 hookahs, which are all in use on the weekends, says manager Murad Alrishq. He says that since the place opened three years ago, the popularity of hookahs has quickly increased.

“It has really caught on with young people and tourists,” Alrishq says. “It’s a great social thing. You can play board games, drink coffee or tea and smoke the hookah.”

While its popularity is catching on in the states, the apparatus has long been a traditional centerpiece of Arab social activities. Hookahs originated more than 500 years ago in India and were fashioned from a coconut shell, according to The Turkish Daily News. Its popularity spread to the Middle Eastern countries and then to Egypt, where the current style finally evolved.

Hookahs now come in all shapes and sizes, but all have the four essential parts: the base, which holds the water; the bowl, which contains the tobacco with the heating device on top; the pipe, which connects the bowl to the base; and the hose, which pulls air from the base. Shannon Cline, employee at Miss Fortune’s Creation Station, 726 Massachusetts St., sells a variety of pipes at her store, ranging in cost from $45 to $175. She says buying a hookah is an investment that can last a lifetime.

“As long as you don’t throw it at a cement wall and take care of it, you can have it as long as you’d like. I know people who have their parents’ old hookahs,” Cline says.

There are as many things to smoke in a hookah as there are styles of it. The tobacco, or shisha, used for the hookah is shredded tobacco leaf with sweeteners. This sticky, saccharine substance comes in a range of flavors, from various fruits to coffee and even Coca-Cola. And while Arab custom dictates that each flavor have its own pipe, Westerners indiscriminately smoke a mix of flavors from a single pipe. Americans also have included personal touches, like adding ice to the water to cool the smoke or using liquids besides water, such as wine or coffee, to add flavor to the tobacco.

The pipe’s ability to produce pleasant, non-irritating smoke leads most people to believe it is not harmful to one’s health. Medical professionals say otherwise.

Smoking a hookah can be just as dangerous, if not more, than smoking a cigarette, says Lida Osbern, pulmonary physician at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. A person can actually get higher concentrations of nicotine, tar and heavy metal, she says, because they smoke it for much longer than they would a cigarette. Osbern also refutes the claim that the water can filter out cancer-causing carcinogens.

“Overall, it poses a significant health risk. Even sharing the pipe opens up the possibility for sharing infectious diseases,” Osbern says.

Woods Denny, an avid hookah smoker, compares the habit to eating a Big Mac. “You know it’s not healthy for you, but you do it anyway,” the Topeka junior says.

Smoking sessions can last for 45 minutes to two hours, depending on the amount of tobacco and coals. Denny, also a wholesale hookah dealer, says what he enjoys about smoking the narghile is the soothing effect it has on him. Done correctly, he says it is like breathing: You don’t feel the smoke; you only taste the flavor of the tobacco.

Denny currently owns what he calls the “Riding Spinner,” a 36-inch hookah with three patent leather hoses, hand-made clay handles and a circular globe base with ball bearings on the bottom that allow it to spin 360 degrees. He says this helps prevent the pipe from getting knocked over when people jerk the hose too much.

But falling hookah casualties aside, Denny says there’s nothing he likes more than smoking his hookah with friends. “I enjoy sitting on our porch with friends. We would sit with a drink and listen to Jack Johnson and laze out,” Denny says. “It has a very soothing effect.”

RING OF FIRE

HOW TO BLOW SMOKE RINGS

The secret to this method is to push the smoke in your mouth out with your tongue, while making the slightest inaudible puff from your lungs. This will push some of the smoke out, creating a ring. This method requires much more control in order not to push too much smoke out, as well as incredible tongue control. The overall experience should feel like you’re trying to swallow a walnut whole, by contracting your throat muscles to exhale a tiny puff of air.

Source: smokedot.org