Bob Newhart and an introduction to shisha

To three of the people around the table in a Lebanese restaurant in Abu Dhabi, smoking from a shisha pipe seemed a jolly enough wheeze. A strawberry flavoured joint was duly ordered, and soon the wheezing began.

My colleague Laura Koot (seen above) is a fit and healthy Canadian who has never smoked cigarettes but appears as a chain smoker in a recurring dream of hers. After a few puffs, she was coughing. One of the others admitted to feeling a little odd. The third reported no greater sensation than that produced by a thin vapour.



"Do you have any idea," Lizzie, our seasoned expat, asked gravely next morning, "how many cigarettes a shisha is the equivalent of? Seventy-five."
That's more than twice as many as I smoked at the peak of my smoking career. Because I also have a recurring dream, in which I have taken it up again and crept back towards 20-a-day while assuring myself I can stop any time I want to, I resisted the invitation to join in.

Laura and Rob McKenzie, (also pictured), and our third shisha debutant will doubtless experience no further effects of their brief encounter with Middle Eastern tradition. None of them has the least intention of abandoning present abstinence from tobacco.

But here in the Emirates, devotees may also need to contemplate life after shisha. In a refinement of the anti-smoking legislation enacted in Britain and Ireland, and being introduced in stages even in Gitane-powered France, a draft law would restrict shisha smoking to private homes. One of the federal components of the UAE, Sharjah, has already banned the common practice of smoking outdoors.

Lizzie may be right or wrong with her estimate of one shisha equalling 75 fags. But there seems broad agreement that while it may come in all sorts of flavours - apricot, mint, apple and grape among them - it is not terribly good for you.

But should it be banned?

Ex-smokers frequently become the most fervent of prohibitionists, but I harbour no such militant zeal. As a smoker who no longer smokes, I have avoided pious condemnation of those around me who wish to light up.

I draw the line at inconsiderate oafs who blow smoke across the table at you during a meal, and I certainly used to find it vile, even when I was still hooked, to travel in the smoking carriages of trains or upstairs on buses. But I have never particularly wanted to see a ban on smoking in all public places, and would probably allow smokers' corners in pubs and restaurants.

Owners of some UAE establishments where shisha is traditionally taken fear for their commercial survival. In our restaurant last night, most tables ordered shisha and the smokers included local women. A ban would hit such places hard.

The proposed law is currently being examined by justice ministry officials. Anti-smoking campaigners are already preparing a fallback position to cover the possibility of defeat: a call for strict regulations to include the banning of shisha being smoked in the presence of children.

But if only because Rob has suggested that I remind him a little of Bob Newhart - which he insists is a compliment - I cannot help thinking back to the hilarious Newhart sketch about Sir Walter Raleigh calling head office from the West Indies with news of his discovery of tobacco.

How would he have tried to sell shisha? "Remember that shipment of leaves that you roll up, stick it in your mouth and set fire to?" he might have begun his pitch. "Just you wait until you see this pipe I've found to make it a whole lot simpler. Only down side is that it's 75 times more likely to kill you."