The Portrait of a Lady as a Smoker

[Ali Znaidi]

It has been raining since last night. The weather was really very cold, to the point that everything was on the brink to freeze, even human blood, and the main street in the city was wrapped up in mist and fog.

In the corner of a luxurious café, Dounia lit a cigarette because she was very cold, but the cigarette didn’t warm her. So she ordered a hubble- bubble, letting the strawberry-flavoured tobacco mingle with her strawberry-flavoured lipstick.

Dounia, the beautiful winsome thirty something lady, didn’t know the reason behind the suspicious looks of people as they kept looking dagger at her, while she was travelling in the smoke of her hubble -bubble and enjoying the music of its gurgle.

Before finishing her hubble -bubble, Dounia stood up and shouted at the people in the café as she was upset: “Oh, why you still deny that I’m free!”

[Ali Znaidi]

The story is set in Tunisia, north Africa. Here Tunisian women have lots of rights. But I created the character of Dounia and through the act of smoking just to criticize those who are still belittling women and underestimating them.  The act of smoking in public is just a means for the character to break the social barriers and the reactionary visions that still see women as harem without any right.

As for the hubble-bubble you can have more information in this link

http://www.mymerhaba.com/Hubble-bubble-(Nargile)-in-Turkey-1124.html

 

[Mike Handley]

Interesting that you tagged this feminism. Does that mean that you consider a woman's breaking social barriers as a feminist act? What is it called when a man does so? And, finally, is the word for the man's act interchangeable with the woman's?

[bolton carley]

so is hubble bubble made up or real? i have to know. i'm with the others.

[Angela]

Like Gita, I am fascinated by the story, and by the hubble-bubble.  I enjoyed the image of "travelling in the smoke" and the gurgle of the water.

Dounia is a lovely name.

[Gita]

I do not know what country this is set in, although I am sure that it is not in the west/Europe because nobody cares whether a woman smokes in a cafe. It is fascinating. I never heard of a hubble-bubble before.