Gerishna: Seven Gerashi friends went on a pilgrimage together. On coming back, they were asked how their trip was. All of them agreed that it was terrible. “We were seven, but we had only six qalyāns.”
If the story has one streak of truth in it, it is surely that Qalyān (or Shisha, as it is often called, or maybe Hookah, as Wikipedia calls it) has a special place in the culture of the people of Gerash. There is not one house in Gerash in which qalyān is not a daring presence; and there is never a social gathering, be it a wedding feast or a funeral, in which a number of people are not responsible for preparing qalyāns for others. It is believed to have a lot of metaphysical, and even medical, applications, from defying evil eyes to treating cold. Women sing songs about qalyān in weddings; and beginning to smoke qalyān is comparable to the rites of initiation for the youth in other cultures.
Three major parts of qalyān are the head, the water jar, and the pipes that connect these two parts and the smoker together. The head comprises of “bāde-gir” and “sar bāde-gir”, and contains tobacco (wet and rounded) and coal. The water jar, or “qalyān” obviously contains water, and is where the smoke is drawn through a reed pipe, called “nag”. Another pipe, called “bambeh” joins the head and the water jar.
In addition to these main parts, qalyān devotees gather a host of accessories and pride themselves on knowing how best to work with them.
The two infographies below show the anatomy of a Gerashi qalyān and its accessories.
