Junior Brandon Winter finds Sex on the Peach to be the perfect way to unwind after a grueling day of classes. As he sat in garage with three friends last Thursday night, the peach-smelling smoke he exhaled created a haze that filled the room for an hour and a half.
"Sometimes [the smoke] got so thick that you could cut a box out of it in the air with your fingers," he said. "The smoke and the relaxation of it made us lose track of time."
Winter, who purchased his own hookah almost a year ago, was introduced to it in high school at Khoury's Mediterranean Restaurant in Indianapolis and returned to that hookah bar several times the following summer.
"It was something my friends were doing, and I tagged along one night," he said. "It's like breathing in thick, flavored air ... not like smoking cigarettes at all."
Ball State University's chapter of Hillel, an international Jewish campus organization, will sponsor Hookah Night from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. today at LaFollette Field. Entrance is free, but plastic tips must be purchased in order to smoke and cost $1 each. Students can sample 10 flavors of tobacco and purchase the hookahs at the end of the night.
Junior Kestrel Jones said she plans to attend Hillel's Hookah Night this year. She has enjoyed flavored cigarettes in the past, and hookah has been something she has wanted to try since she learned about it from friends who attended Hillel's Hookah Night last year, she said.
Khoury's Mediterranean Restaurant employee Chris Wing said health risks associated with smoking hookah are far fewer than smoking cigarettes because the tobacco, or shisha, contains no nicotine or additives. The tobacco is stripped and covered in molasses to give it a fruit flavor when inhaled.
The most common hookah device, which stands about a foot-and-a-half tall, is a smoking pipe in which smoke from tobacco passes through a long tube submerged in water.
Brent Blackwell, Ball State Hillel adviser and associate English professor, said even though hookah has only recently become a trend in the United States, it is used for the same reasons as in the Middle East - to form social connections and to strengthen social bonds through a relaxing, communal ceremony.
Every nation between India and Egypt has a cultural tradition of social smoking, Blackwell said.
"Smoking hookah in the Middle East is like going to Starbucks [in America]," he said. "Everyone: Young adults, elders and entire families use the hookah as a social bonding event."
Though smoking hookah is not addictive, it's prohibited to people younger than 18 in America because it involves use of a tobacco product, Blackwell said.
While Blackwell said he understood the historical and sociological rationale behind hookah smoking, he did not advocate smoking of any kind.
"Any kind of smoking is more dangerous to you and others than not smoking at all," he said. "But just because my students smoke does not mean that I don't love them any less. People are always more important than a belief."
Hillel Secretary Ben Goldenberg owns a hookah and has been smoking from it since he was a junior in high school.
"It's a very smooth smoke, very unlike a cigarette," he said. "People are always surprised that they can taste the flavors of the tobacco. It's really relaxing."
At Khoury's Mediterranean Restaurant, most customers who come in for hookah nights are between ages 18 and 23, Wing said, although some older people who smoked hookah while growing up in the Middle East also participate.
Goldenberg said he hoped students will come to Hillel's Hookah Night to socialize, but also to learn about a culture that is relatively unknown in the United States.
"It's something almost everyone of college age in Israel does," he said.
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