Hookah Smoking In Public Places Will Be Prohibited In The UAE

Hookah smoking has been prohibited in public places, including parks and quays, on the territory of one of the UAE administrative units, the emirate Ras al-Khaimah. The hookah will be allowed in the coffee houses that have the corresponding license.

Severe measures are caused by the fact that municipal authorities receive many complaints from the population which are indignant with wide circulation of tobacco smoking in their city. The infringer of this prohibition will be punished financially. The sizes of penalties are not known yet.

The hookah - a tube with the water filter and long flexible chibouk - is traditionally very popular in the Arabian world and some other Muslim countries. Its Arabian name has the Persian origin and in the old days it meant a small pot, in which east women stored their jewelry and aromas.

They use special tobacco (usually flavored) for a hookah and instead of water (as a cooler) quite often various nonalcoholic and alcoholic drinks are used.

The most popular tobacco is mu' essel. This tobacco differs from the cigarette one, as well as from any other tobacco. Very strong black tobacco is used for its manufacturing. It passes complex processing to become hookah tobacco. They soak it many times, sweeten, and add fruit chips, honey, treacle, aromatic oils.The secret of preparation lies exactly in the order of laying and exact dosage of its components.

The resulted tobacco differs from all other tobacco and suits only for a hookah. It consists of 30 % of tobacco, 50 % of treacle and 20 % of fruit and spices on average. Hookah tobacco should be damp. Sometimes it is even not damp, but juicy. Externally good hookah tobacco looks like jam - large leaves of tobacco, translucent and sticky, are stuck together in one continuous mass.

Recently hookah extends worldwide like a shot - in parallel with tourism increase. So, according to the observations of some Polish travel company, each tenth tourist coming back from Egypt brings this smoking set together with other souvenirs.

Iuri Tarabanov writes about interesting travel experiences. His Travel offers site is http://www.travelime.com