If You Want My Hookah Pipe You’ll Have To Pry It From My Cold, Dead Hands

It’s amazing that three years after the smoking ban went into effect, Astoria hookah shop owners somehow are still limping along:

Borhane Charif, the first customer of the day at Elkhaiam Café in Astoria, knew he was doing something that wasn’t exactly legal. The shisha he smoked from a hookah pipe was made from tobacco, and banned from indoor public places by order of the city. But he loves the fruity tobacco, and the newly touted legal alternative, Soex Herbal Hookah, wasn’t an option.

It would be “like you used to drink coffee from Starbucks, and then all of a sudden, you buy coffee off the street,” he said.

“If they stop serving tobacco, I’ll stop coming,” Charif added.

There are 10 more or less identical hookah cafes along Steinway Street in Astoria’s Little Egypt. Similar establishments are sprouting up throughout the rest of the city as well, run by anyone from Jordanians to Israelis to Albanians.

You might be wondering how hookah shop owners stay in business:

Soex, a medley of sugar cane and molasses, is the most recent initiative taken by hookah café owners to avoid getting summonses from the city’s Department of Health following the passage of the state’s Clean Indoor Air Act of 2003.

According to its package description, Soex contains no tobacco, tar or nicotine. The city Department of Health is currently testing the product to determine if it contains any tobacco, in which case it would be prohibited indoors, like all other tobacco products.

But Middle Eastern smokers might beat the health officials to it. Soex has gotten such negative feedback from customers that many cafés serve tobacco at the risk of getting ticketed for violating the ban. Otherwise, Charif said, “These places will lose 80 percent of their business.”

However, paying fines is hardly a viable option for the café owners. This year alone, Labib Salama, owner of the Egyptian Coffee Shop, said he has received eight tickets totaling $3,800 for illegal indoor smoking. Adel Krayem, who owns Alzaeem Restaurant and Café a few doors down, said he had to pay $9,000 in fines. “They’re killing the business,” Salama said.

I think that’s the idea, actually . . .

But assuming Soex passes muster, hookah shop owners may discover a new audience:

In Manhattan’s East Village, Mohammed Bashir, owner of the Horus Lounge, said he can get away with serving Soex shisha to his customers: Most are Americans and can’t tell the difference. Besides, he said, “Americans appreciate everything you do for them, like if I give a beer on the house, they are so grateful,” he said.

Bashir still frequents Astoria’s hookah cafés to relax and feel at home. “There are millions of places like this next to each other in Egypt,” he said, reclining amid a cloud of strawberry caramel hookah smoke at the Egyptian Coffee Shop on Steinway Street. “People can get together and play dominos and backgammon and watch the soccer games. This is the place to be private, away from the kids and wife, to be alone.”

For people like Bashir, the right to smoke hookah is worth fighting for. “This is what we grew up on,” he said. “Customers have asked me to stop smoking hookah. I said, ‘Okay, but only if you don’t have wine with dinner or ketchup on your burger.'”