Where there's smoke, there's. . . .

When I was in Manhattan last October, my cousin took me to a spot in the Village. It was a sheesha bar. I've always preferred calling it hukkah because that's what I grew up with, but anyway, it was lovely. The last time I was a "hookah smoking caterpillar" (thank you Jefferson Airplane) was twenty years ago, on a New Year's eve with friends. That was the night I almost retched because I inhaled cigar smoke when everyone around me was telling me not to.

We have hukkah bars in Portland, or at least we did, but I never went to any of those. One of my favorite Lebanese restaurants on campus had sheesha as well. Don't know what it was exactly that kept me away, perhaps the fact that it would be yet another solitary thing.

I had forgotten this until I was talking to my best friend the previous day, but all Portland pubs are no smoking zones now effective this past New Year's. We were talking about how she celebrated her birthday a week ago, and she told me that a group of them went to the Horse Brass, our favorite British pub, drank beers and ate bar food (the fish and chips there is fabulous!) I said something about how if I had been there with them I would have lit up a cigarette, and she reminded me of the no smoking policy. The proprietor was plum against the idea. I remember when it was first announced that Portland would go no smoking, I thought the Horse Brass owner(s) would be the last man standing, fighting against this. This was a place where the second you walked in, smoke got in your eyes, pipe smoke, cigar smoke, the tobacco industry was definitely earning its keep in the Horse Brass.

Apparently business is now better than ever over at the HB on Belmont so the owner probably is not terribly mournful for the death of tobacco in his pub. Perhaps the scene might change a little though, and it won't retain the same character, and that is what would make me ever so slightly mournful. The idea of neighborhood folk, artists, banger loving working-class folk being replaced by the pretentious lot, oh the horror!

***
I always feel a little sad after a conversation with my best friend. I miss Portland a lot, I miss her even more. I spoke to her a week ago on her birthday, and the moment she picked up the phone she began chanting my full name (without the middle part) in very much the same fashion her boyfriend does when he calls, or if I call him. Before she decided to invest in a cell phone, I used to call him when I wanted to talk to her, and it became a joke of sorts the way I'd greet him, "Where are you and what have you done with my girlfriend?"

I still remember that afternoon, almost twenty years ago, when we were in the same graduate Romance Linguistics class together, a course she ended up dropping. With her blacker than black hair, and her "foreign" looking features, I couldn't really tell where she was from. She called out my name as she was distributing a packet, and it piqued her curiosity. I don't exactly recall if it was then, or later in the cafeteria where she asked me where I was from. I told her I was from Pakistan. She had recognized my name as being Persian, and she thought I might be an Iranian who was married to an American, but that I didn't look particularly Iranian. I couldn't really tell that she was Iranian either, but then I never have been all that good with pinning people down to a particular ethnicity. Twenty years. . . I guess it's not entirely impossible for me to hold on to something for that long. . . it might have ended for good a couple of times, if the spirit was not willing on both sides, and love had not won out over stubbornness.

***
I quit smoking a year ago last month, and the only time I fell off the wagon, so to speak, was when I was in New York, knowing that I could easily quit again. But every now and then, I am tempted to sit in a quiet corner, with a glass of something like Tullamore Dew, and a Harp chaser, and inhale deeply from a cigarette. As I did in the Horse Brass.

I remember at uni, if one of the Pakistani guys, usually it was the same one, would see me with cigarette in hand, or a thin line of smoke emanating from my lips, he would exclaim, "Aap kaisi Pakistani haiN?" And I laughed it off most of the time. He thought that it was scandalous, "good Pakistani girls don't smoke or drink." I thought about the women I had seen smoking in Lahore, and Ma's village. These were not "bad" women. I exasperatedly pointed out to him once that women in our part of the world did smoke and there was nothing wrong with them for doing that. If I were to walk up to all the guys who smoked and said, "Oye, tum kaise Pakistani ho?" well let's just say a large part of the population would be rendered un-Pakistani.

I don't believe, necessarily, that a good argument for women doing something is that if it should be okay for a man, it should be for a woman, but come on, how stupid is determining one's nationality by the fact that one smokes? Even as a joke, which this wasn't, it sounds ridiculous. And what do these men defend as defensible, when casting aspersions on women for smoking? Talk about it being bad for one's health, for ruining one's complexion, more health reasons. There's nothing remotely scandalous for a man or a woman in lighting up a cigarette.

If I should ever go back to Lahore, I plan to sit in a cafe, and light up a Morven Gold or a Capstan if they still make Capstans, and I doubt that I'll be stoned for doing that. That is, if the Taliban haven't taken over.