Maybe if you have to ask for more information, you don't deserve to hear it, but this amerikaniye wants to know - what's up with all the narghile pictures? My hubby smoked a water pipe for laughs at a wedding when we were last in Lebanon. But now we see nothing but pics of Lebanese smoking water pipes. I loved the ones of guys smoking in the ruins this summer - defiance, Lebanese style. What is up with all the pipes now during the demonstrations? Is it to remind us of the summertime smoking? Is it to assert the unity of Lebanese across sectarian lines, bound together by tobacco smoke? Is it just a hot fad right now (even in America there's a fad for narghile cafes, you can smoke all over the Bay Area of San Francisco and points east and south)

Could you please riff for us on some of the "semiotics" of the narghile. Thank you.