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Disraeli smoking a
narghile in
Tenniel's political cartoon
An eastern pipe, consisting of one or
more flexible stems connected to a container of water or other
liquid through which smoke is drawn and cooled, from the Persian
nargileh, by way of the French narguil, also known
as the hookah.
Thackeray, in his Notes of a journey
from Cornhill to Cairo, clearly enjoyed his après-bath more
than his bath.
When the [Turkish bath] is concluded, you are led—with what heartfelt
joy I need not say—softly back to the cooling-room, having been robed in
shawls and turbans as before. You are laid gently on the reposing bed;
somebody brings a narghile, which tastes as tobacco must taste in
Mahomet's Paradise; a cool sweet dreamy languor takes possession of the
purified frame; and half-an-hour of such delicious laziness is spent
over the pipe as is unknown in Europe, where vulgar prejudice has most
shamefully maligned indolence—calls it foul names, such as the father of
all evil, and the like; in fact, does not know how to educate idleness
as those honest Turks do, and the fruit which, when properly cultivated,
it bears. The after-bath state is the most delightful condition of
laziness I ever knew, and I tried it wherever we went afterwards on our
little tour.
The narghile is sometimes confused with the
chibouk.
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