Nargile Nights

One of the pleasures of a traditional Turkish men’s teahouse is smoking a nargile, a water pipe sometimes referred to outside of Turkey as a hookah. A hot coal sits atop a little box of tightly packed tobacco. By inhaling through a long flexible tube, smoke passes through and is “cooled” by the water. While in more upscale restaurant settings a single pipe is shared by a group of friends—each person equipped with their own plastic mouthpiece—here we see a solitary horse-cart driver puffing away. In the background, someone tends to the traditional double-boiler Turkish teapots. Personally, I find the rhythm created by the constant inhaling necessary to keep the nargile’s ember burning both relaxing and a bit intoxicating.