Smoking water-pipes is an age-old tradition with roots in Iran and India, but its recent resurgence in popularity among young Iranians is raising alarm bells with health professionals. Photos by Khashayar Sharifaee

Iranians collectively puff on 60 billion cigarettes a year, but the hookah, or qalyoon as it's known locally, has no shortage of fans in the country. The inherently social dimension of qalyoon - at its best when planted firmly in the centre of a group of chatty customers - along with its novelty, relative affordability, and variety of aesthetically appealing apparatuses and tobacco flavours have made it a particular hit among Iran's youth.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Two young hookah smokers in Tabriz, Iran. Photograph: Khashayar Sharifaee

Smoking qalyoon in Iran stretches far back. But even in the 1940s, it was already considered passé - an old person’s thing or lower class. Passing by tea houses, you'd see day labourers and working class men huddled on wooden benches covered with tread-worn things that once had been carpets, pulling this awful smoke into their lungs. The coughs were attractive, sounding like echoes along jagged valleys of dragons being slain by Rustam, the mystical Iranian hero. But the water-pipe was considered crude and unsophisticated. In more up-market parties and weddings, it was usually limited to the smokers’ section, or even room, where these addicts would be herded so as not to drown out with their coughs the joyous music.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest At a coffeehouse in central Tabriz. Photograph: Khashayar Sharifaee

The resurgent popularity of qalyoon has prompted Iranian medical practitioners to express serious concerns for the health of their country’s youth. There is a common misconception that the hookah is less harmful than cigarettes, or not harmful at all, because the smoke passes through water before being inhaled or emitted as secondhand smoke. In a letter to the office of the president, over 4,000 prominent medical professionals and scientists commented on popular misconceptions about hookah smoke being inherently less harmful and beseeched the country's leadership to take action to curb the trend among the nation's youth.

The letter's authors count among the grim realities of hookah smoke its higher percentage of arsenic, carbon monoxide, and lead - the latter entering the body at 202 times the rate of one of Iran's popular Bahman cigarettes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mohammad, 20, multitasking. Photograph: Khashayar Sharifaee

Perhaps as a means to strengthening their argument – while at the same time demonstrating a familiarity of their audience - the signers of the letter emphasise tobacco’s connection to the legacy of western imperialism and colonialism in Iran, referring to it numerous times as a ‘colonial curio.’



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tabriz Photograph: Khashayar Sharifaee

All discussions of ideologically appealing language aside, this wording interestingly hints at an analysis of tobacco’s relationship to society's ills that goes beyond popular narratives of addiction as the cause of socioeconomic problems, rather than simply a symptom of larger, more systemic inequalities.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In northwest Tehran. Photograph: Khashayar Sharifaee

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A coffeehouse in Tabriz. Photograph: Khashayar Sharifaee

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A young man laughs at a friend's joke. Photograph: Khashayar Sharifaee

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A few friends and their dog camp along the Anzeli coast in Iran. Photograph: Khashayar Sharifaee

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Watching football at a central coffeehouse in Tabriz. Photograph: Khashayar Sharifaee

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A modern cafe in northwestern Tehran. Photograph: Khashayar Sharifaee