If you guessed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you'd be
wrong. No, this book was written nearly 100 years before Roald Dahl's tale of
Charlie. The book (and later movie) that gives children their first glimpse of
this curious device is Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice
in Wonderland, wrote about an inquisitive, smoking caterpillar. You may
remember Sammy Davis, Jr., perched atop a giant mushroom, asking young Alice,
"Who ... Are ... You?" The device the caterpillar was smoking is
called a hookah!
Hookahs
have been around, in one form or another, for several centuries with their
origins generally traced back to what is modern day Turkey. Needing a way to
cool the smoke that leaves a tobacco pipe, the Turkish developed a way for the
smoke to first pass through water before being inhaled. This cooled the smoke
and gave the hookah its trademark bubbling sound.
Modern hookahs have evolved in design but still perform the
same, simplistic function as the hookahs of old. The tobacco that is smoked in
the hookah has also seen evolution and change. Originally, tobaccos would be
mixed with molasses or honey and placed in the bowl-like apparatus atop the
hookah. Coals would be directly-applied to this mixture and, instead of
burning, the tobacco would be heated to the appropriate temperature to create
smoke. Today's hookah tobacco, commonly referred to as 'shisha,' is made with
modern components. Tobacco, glycerin and sugar are combined with countless
flavors to produce a truly unique smoking experience. The flavors range from
fruity apples and oranges to cultural favorites like bubble gum and cola. In
fact, there are over 50 flavors available to today's hookah smokers!
As mentioned before, the tobacco is heated rather than
burned. The hookah tobacco is generally void of the chemical additives found in
cigarettes. In fact, hookah tobacco is usually composed of only tobacco, glycerin,
sugar and flavoring. This is a far cry from the nearly 600 additives that can
legally be added to cigarettes. These additives also transform into other
chemicals when burned - a process that happens every time a cigarette is lit
and smoked.
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