Thank You for Smoking

They say it doesn't really matter if you smoke or don't smoke cigarettes in Cairo. Just breathing the air will put you six feet underground. With that mentality, most of the Egyptians I have met in the last few days do smoke.

On Saturday I went to tea and sheesha (the Egyptian word for hookah) in the Zamalek Marriott. My friends pulled out a box of Egyptian Merit cigarettes before we left and I noticed a large message on the box. Egypt has recently put danger warnings on cigarettes, but for my 20-something friends the message isn't working. Blame the medium.

Next to the warning is a photo of a shirtless man wearing a clear plastic breathing mask and suction cups on his chest. I immediately began translating the Arabic to find out how this man ended up in a hospital bed, but the text didn't help. It reads:

"Beware smoking damages your health and causes death. The damage caused by smoking affects smokers and non-smokers. Smoking causes diseases of the heart and arteries."

Luckily, N. knew who the man was. N. just started work in advertising at a large Egyptian corporation that operates all the KFC's and Hardees in the Middle East--with halal meat, of course. He told me what (he says) everyone knows about the ad. According to "everyone" the man pictured is an ad executive with no medical condition. In fact, according to the story the man didn't know why his picture was being taken. Only when he pulled out a pack of cigarettes (yes, he's still a smoker) did he recognize his own image.

This may or may not be true. The ad is only a few months old and it remains ensconced in rumor. But for a fresh-faced Egyptian ad man to be this cynical (yesterday was his first day of work) is disheartening.

I, too, am skeptical about advertising in this country. The milk I got in the supermarket today definitely wasn't skim and I doubt the strawberries were really organic. But by the time I go back to America, I'll probably have stopped worrying about labels. In a city like Cairo, I'm learning to worry about more menacing things--things that don't have labels--like dirty water and the noxious pollution. All things considered, I think I'll forgo the search for real skim milk.