Twenty-Dollar Hookah

Smoking! A wretched, lamentable vice. I’ve never even put a
cigarette to my lips, let alone taken a puff. I’m a complete neurotic
about smoking. It’s understandable. I grew up in a carcinogenic haze;
my parents were chain-smokers. At the end of long road trips, I’d be
smoked head-to-toe like Marlboro-brand bacon. I am very fussy about
frequenting private smoking establishments today, by which I mean I
totally never frequent them. Ever.

But a hookah? That’s a bong of a different color.

A hookah is a big bong in drag, and for some reason (probably
political) it doesn’t gross me out. Hookahs are believed to have come
from India, and are deeply beloved by Iranis and Turks and other
Middle-Eastern types. What one smokes from a hookah is… well,
whatever one wants, but shisha is what one is supposed to
smoke from a hookah. Shisha is made of delightful things like herbs and
fruit essences and fragrant oils, and it is usually mixed with light
tobacco and burned incense-style on hot coals in a bowl at the top of
the pipe. The sweet, herby smoke is drawn down through a hose through
the body of the pipe and filtered through water. A typical hookah
session is a communal activity; a hookah, like any proper bong, is for
sharing. Majles Hookah Lounge—whose xeroxed advertisements you
may have seen stapled to utility poles along 12th Avenue—was to
be my very first hookah experience.

My expectations of Majles were completely outrageous and vaguely
racist. In my mind, a hookah lounge just had to be a tiled
labyrinth of dusky cavelike nooks and crannies, where poets and thieves
and fallen kings and skinny ancient sages with Fu Manchu ‘staches and
foot-long pinky nails lounged on pillows on Persian rugs and puffed
delightful opium and mumbled sweet nonsense to mogwais. There were
belly dancers for some reason, in my vision, and a camel. How could a
hookah lounge be anything less than a sandy, camel-filled
Middle-Eastern adventure?

But, no.

You are forced to enter Majles through a Diamond Parking lot, and
nothing squashes visions of the mysterious East like Diamond fucking
Parking. Beyond this lot is a very square building with a very large
and unmysterious square room. Inside this room you will find
salmon-colored walls, a high ceiling, and a bare cement floor. Dotting
this room are old and mismatched Archie Bunker recliners and
thrift-store sofas that sag together in clusters around rickety tables.
On these tables there are hookahs. Sucking on these hookahs are people.
This is Majles.

On the far side of the room there is a large Pepsi cooler stocked
with Snapple. There would clearly be no camels here. There were,
however, a lot of very young and remarkably white people trying to look
casually sophisticated and somehow European. Beyond that, there was an
enormous mélange of colors and creeds, mostly men, all at the
end of a hookah hose. A sweet pinkish smog hung in the air. It smelled
like strawberries. The place was packed.

First, I filled out a membership application: The Washington State
smoking ban, bless it, mandates that any smoking establishment be a
private club, ergo a membership is required. A yearlong membership is
$5. After that small sacrifice, I’m allowed to order.

Majles calls itself a cafe and lounge, but that’s stretching it.
There is no food and nary a cocktail to be sipped. There is hot tea,
and, of course, Snapple. But I only had eyes for the hookah.

Hookahs cost $15 for up to three users. The shisha comes in a
million sticky kiddie flavors: cherry, strawberry, vanilla, chocolate,
and so forth. I ordered the strawberry because I am a big dumb girl,
and I sat alone in a corner and awaited my first hookah.

My server (definitely not a belly dancer) brought the pipe first,
and asked if I knew how to use it. Of course I lied; of course he knew
it. So when he emerged with my strawberry shisha—a hot coal held
by tongs, smoking with lung-killing strawberry goodness—he loaded
the bowl and stood watching. I lifted my hose, casually, and took a
small puff… just enough, a little nip. I exhaled a small cloud of
pink. It tasted like… strawberry-flavored air. And dirt, kind of. The
waiter chuckled and darted away. (Finally!) Again, I inhaled. And
again. Yes… strawberry-
flavored air. Huh. Maybe I would have a
Snapple.

People were willing to risk emphysema for this?

After three more quick hits, I laid my hose on the table and left
Majles, $20 dollars poorer and willing to kill for an Altoid. I hope my
poor lungs can forgive me.

editor@thestranger.com