Is there any tourist who returns from India or Turkey without bringing this unusual pipe as a souvenir, which looks more like the bottle of the genie from 1001 Nights? Whoever goes to these countries and visits a typical house or a café-tobacconist, will probably be invited to take a little pinch in this section, in which a hose snakes that can have two cigarette holders. In these cases, the subject smokes and passes the other nozzle to his friend. Thus, it also works as a peace pipe – also reminding us Brazilians of the chimarrão ritual. “It’s one of the oldest Arab traditions, a pastime that everyone practices,” says Sheikh Jihad Hassam, from the Islamic Center and Abu Baker Sadik Mosque, in São Bernardo, SP.
There are many versions for the origin of this curious technology: some scholars believe that it emerged in America, from where the Europeans would have taken it to Asia and Africa. Scientists who defend the thesis that Africans lived in America long before the discovery bet that this is how the hookah went to Africa. The Indians, on the other hand, guarantee that 2,000 years ago it was already sprinkled there, having been slightly modified by the Ottoman Empire. The Persians, in turn, claimed to be the inventors of the apparatus, used by them to pinch dokka (the marijuana of the time); and the Turks, in 1600, were already snorting opium and other mucho loca substances in this section. The name comes from the Turkish arguil, which simply means pipe – and the origin may be unknown, but fame comes from afar: artists such as the painter Ingrès and the writer Honoré de Balzac confessed to being fans of the hookah. Balzac, by the way, had a hippie cote: he liked to inhale patchouli-scented smoke. Not to mention the unforgettable caterpillar created by Lewis
Carroll in Alice in Wonderland (1865), who relished his hookah languidly and psychedelicly over a mushroom.
1 – At the top is the bowl, in clay or metal, where the herb is lit. Just below, around her, a small dish collects the ashes.
2 – Here begins the body, made of glass, similar to a decanter. In it is the liquid – water, flavored teas or even fruit juices
3 – To lead the smoke from the bowl to the liquid and then suck it up, there is a hose, traditionally made of amber, although today the most common models are made of rubber. The smoke passes through the liquid to be cooled and have its flavor accentuated.
4 – At the end of the hose is the nozzle, or cigarette holder, almost always made of varnished wood. What to do with it you already know…
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