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.
