Hubbly Bubblies
Are tourists keeping Turkey's hookah tradition alive?
Among the fresh food and cheap gold at the market are gleaming pipes or ‘hookahs’, also known as hubbly bubblies. Tourism often speeds the demise of local custom, but here it is reviving interest in an ancient pastime.
A bottle is filled with water. Tobacco sits in tin foil, and a hot coal is Placed on top. You suck a pipe, inhaling the smoke. One seller insists “if I smoked a packet of cigarettes daily I’d be tired” but a hubbly bubbly leaves him “laughing”. Cigarettes are cheaper and therefore more popular, despite growing cancer rates. In one of the few smoking salons left in Istanbul, men smoke and contemplate life. Only one customer is under 40! But the pastime’s saviour may be the tourist –a hubbly bubbly is now trendy. Backpackers rave “it smells like apples” or “it’s like breathing air!”
Produced by ABC Australia
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