I had promised myself that I will never write about shisha, ever again. The topic itself is as disgusting as the people who smoke it and, frankly, I hate to write about losers. I like to keep off the unhappy and unsuccessful, lest their bad luck rubs off on me.
Just when I thought I had hit the final nail in this shisha coffin (pun definitely intended), just when I thought I will never have to deal with the shisha girls, their stinky weaves and their over powdered pimply faces, while out on last Saturday night, I met the men who smoke shisha.
I blamed the gods for allowing me to see men smoking shisha. I questioned God, wondering why he had let me see the most disgusting thing I will never unsee. The memory of a man smoking shisha, dear Lord, is forever imprinted in my world-class brain. Lord, why me?
Men who smoke shisha have no shame at all. I am confused, dear readers. Help me decide. What is more disgusting? An African man stuffing that filthy little pipe up his mouth with smoke billowing from his nostrils or a man who brazenly shares a pot of shisha with a bevy of unruly women like he does not know how a real man behaves?
Let me break it down to you, my dear shisha boys. A real man does not smoke shisha — the cancer aside. A true African tribesman, a man with dark skin, coarse hair and hot African blood rushing through his Savannah-toughened veins, should never be seen within a hundred metres of a shisha pot.
Who raised you? Did you ever see your father or uncles or even your grandfather smoking sweet-flavoured things without so much as an iota of shame?
FAKE COLOGNE
Listen up shisha boys, remove your fake Dr Dre headphones, I am talking here. The only strawberry flavoured product a real man should use is protection (since I cannot use the C-word here).
An African man does not surround a small pot of smoke in the company of women with recycled weaves smoking something that smells like Bint el Sudan.
There is a certain level of cheapness and crudeness that comes with the men who smoke shisha. There is a way they look that you’d never miss a shisha boy from a single glance.
Maybe it is their fake cologne or their downtown watches. Or maybe it is their knock-off “Jordan” sneakers they parade on Instagram alongside a battalion of #hashtags. Or maybe it is in their low cc cars they tweet about all the time. You tell me.
Surely, a man who smokes shisha is not destined for greatness. They are the broke type that will spend only Sh2,000 a night to buy a pot of shisha and a single bottle of beer which they will fondle for the entire night.
It is a cardinal sin for a man to leave the bar smelling of a strange strain of strawberries like a house girl who just discovered body lotion.
No, please, if a man is seen to be asking the waiter to “badilisha hii makaa ya shisha (change the shisha coal)”, then we should buy him purple lipstick and a pair of heels from Moi Avenue so that he can be the shisha girl he so desperately wants to be.
If you are a man above the age of 30 years and Friday nights find you at a certain bistro smoking that poisonous thing, then let me be the first to tell you have a lot of growing up to do.
I mean, what’s a future with a man whose Nairobi stalls sweater smells of shisha? You will never attract a serious Jesus-loving girl (like this writer) if you keep that filthy pipe in your mouth.
No self-respecting woman will marry a shisha boy because playing nurse in her forties to a husband battling lung cancer is not in her game plan.
