I WAS about 9 when one day I found a cigarette butt and lit it to try smoking. My heart raced and my body trembled from fear that I might be discovered and punished. A feeling of guilt also engulfed me in the few minutes I spent smoking the remainder of the cigarette. I remembered this incident when I saw in a certain city during a weekend three girls, in their early teens, sitting alone at a table in a famous coffee shop after midnight smoking shisha. They seemed not to care much about the many onlookers. Occasionally the waiter would serve them with more tobacco, coal for the fire and change the water in the waterpipe. I was stunned by the effrontery of these kids but found an excuse for them as they were young girls who might love adventure and wanted to try everything that was forbidden to them. Their parents might not have known about their little adventure or they did not care much. However, I put the blame on the owner and the staff of the coffee shop for not adhering to their legal or social responsibilities. They should not have allowed the kids to smoke in public. I might not be bothered much if this incident took place about nine years ago before I got married and became a mother who was worried about the future of her children. I took photos of the three young girls while they were busy enjoying their shisha. I used Photoshop to blur their features because I was more interested in their actions, not their personalities. For three days in a row I used the toll free telephone of the municipality without being able to reach any official. I talked to the officials of the Ministry of Commerce through the ministry's Twitter account but they told me that they were not concerned and asked me to try the municipality. I did a quick search on the Internet and found out that the municipality had developed certain applications to be used on smart phones to inform them about violations. I used these applications to give them a detailed account of the incident with pictures. Two hours later a field employee of the municipality called me and I gave him all the details including the name of the coffee shop. He told me that they were not concerned about the age of the customers the coffee shop was serving. After I told him about the decision of the Interior Ministry not to sell cigarettes or tobacco to people under 18, he said he would go to the coffee shop and get back to me. I waited for two days and he never called back. I called the municipality again and this time I ran into an employee who seemed more responsive. He told me that he would immediately go to the coffee shop and call me back. In fact he did call back only to inform me that he had handed over a warning to the coffee shop. I asked him for a photocopy of the warning but instead he sent me the phone number of the municipality's chairman and told me that the issue was with him. Since then the employee has disappeared without any trace. I did call the chairman but this is another long story.
