With a smoking ban looming, Barbara Nadel seeks out Istanbul’s water pipe salons and laments the end of a 400-year-old tradition
‘What is meant by ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ is still unclear,” said Ismail Beyi, purple-bearded proprietor of Istanbul’s Bread and Water nargile (water pipe) salon. ”The government still hasn’t decided.”
Bread and Water sits just outside the city’s Grand Bazaar and Ismail and I were discussing the upcoming smoking ban in enclosed spaces, which hits Turkey this July. Clearly his cosy little back rooms with open fires will be for drinking and backgammon only. But what of the cushion and carpet-draped main smoking area? It has an elaborately decorated domed roof, yet is open to the elements from the front. Is that ”outside” enough?
Ismail fears it won’t be and that his business, as well as 400 years of water-pipe smoking in Turkey, will end. ”I can see why the state might want to do this some day,” he said. ”But not with the economy as it is. Not now.”
I nodded, puffing on my pipe and sipping a delicious rose-petal tea infused with spices. Nargile smoking can be done sitting upright but, to my mind, only by leaning on cushions on the floor can you truly appreciate the atmosphere. This is louche living, straight spines optional. At R54 for the nargile and R11 for the rose tea it’s also good value, coming out at about R65 for two hours of relaxed people-watching.
I have been smoking nargile — the Persian word for coconut, the hollow shells of which were used to hold the water before the introduction of glass pipes — since the 1970s when I first visited Turkey as a young backpacker. An old woman bedecked in heavy gold jewellery befriended me and introduced me to my first salon. The daughter of an Ottoman general and wealthy German lady, she took great pains to teach me how to smoke. Thirty years on, I still love nargile salons.
I love the pipes themselves. They are things of beauty, the glass water bottle engraved with arabesque patterns, the tobacco burner encased in silver filigree. I love the way they are prepared so carefully and presented with a dignified flourish. Nargile smoking isn’t like a quick cigarette. It is slow, meditative, almost ceremonial.
Most of all I love the fact you can end up talking to people from all walks of life, from carpet dealers, pious veiled women and tourists to scions of old Ottoman military families, never quite sure where such talk will lead. I once chatted to a stranger who insisted on showing me a Byzantine cistern under the Grand Bazaar. He lowered me down into the pillared chamber through a hole in the ground while I illuminated its walls with a torch held in my mouth.
In embracing the nargile, I’m merely following a long tradition. Tobacco was an instant hit after being introduced to Turkey in 1601. The new vice was temporarily forced underground by a 1633 ban but towards the end of the Ottoman empire it had become a status symbol, smoking with the sultan considered the highest honour.
One of the most enthusiastic royal smokers was Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the late 19th century. The last autocratic Ottoman sultan, he is buried in the small imperial graveyard in Cemberlita. Today the Turk Oca Tea Garden and Nargile Salon, with its alfresco smoking tables, is situated in a corner of this graveyard. It has an edgy, intellectual feel with book-lined walls and a clientele who want to change the world.
Nargile tobacco has various flavours, frequently fruit (the most popular is apple), but also chocolate and the distinctly odd cappuccino. But the most authentic, Tombeki, uses pure leaf tobacco. It is not for the faint-hearted, but with the smoking ban looming, I made it my mission to try it.
If I was going to find Tombeki anywhere it would be Tophane. The district has so many salons it’s known locally as Nargile Central. Waiters at the Kossebasi Nargile Salon were alarmed and a little amused when I asked for a Tombeki. But they prepared it with great ceremony, packing leaves on to the pipe to form, in effect, an enormous cigar. Once it was at my side, hot charcoal was placed on the tobacco and I took my first halting puffs.
I can’t say it was my most enjoyable smoke. But in spite of Kossebasi’s modern surroundings I felt closer to the original nargile experience than ever before. A man with a vast walrus moustache puffed away in the corner and every so often street food sellers tried to tempt us with their goods.
Some of these salons will inevitably disappear but, at the risk of annoying the no-smoking lobby, I hope some, including Ismail Bey’s open-fronted salon, are declared ”outside” and allowed to continue. Come July we will know. —