CAIRO, Looking extremely shabby, Abdel Moneim Abazeid, also known as Corombo, approached people sitting at the Green Cafe in the luxurious district of Maadi in southern Cairo."Spare change ... I need to buy something for breakfast," the 75-year-old man begged the bystanders for money.
Desperately with no one willing to give him a penny, Corombo resorted to a nearby chair, picked a cigarette from a packet with a bent cigarette pictured on it and a broad-font warning that says "Smoking affects sex ability", and started to smoke.
Corombo, who has been smoking for more than 52 years, believes he still has the opportunity to give up. "I will give up smoking because it affects lungs. It makes me always spitting." However, he believes smoking has nothing to do with the sexual ability of man.
The Egyptian government has been exerting strenuous efforts in cooperation with local NGOs to curb smoking, a disconcerting habit spreading widely in the most populous Arab nation, especially smoking hookah or "Shisha" as known by Egyptians.
The most conspicuous measure taken by the government is compelling tobacco manufacturers and importers to print warnings on their products including photos that show the dangers of smoking to lives. Some photos showed damaged lungs with a warning "smoking causes lung cancer," others for a pregnant woman with a warning that goes "smoking causes embryo distortion" and sometimes the photos show a child blocking his mouth and nose with smoke at the background and a warning "smoking harms passive smokers."
However, the governmental campaign was countered by smart solutions from defiant smokers, apparently in challenge of the measures.
At the early beginning of the campaign, some smokers used to hide the warning photos with a small piece of blank paper or even with substitute beautiful drawings.
The idea developed later as some manufacturers made use of the measure and invented separately-sold covers with beautiful photos on them to hide the warning picture.
Later on, new cigarette boxes supplied with lighters spread in the markets. Some women also used their makeup boxes to hide their cigarettes after getting rid of the original packet.
"My father was a heavy smoker. He died at the age of 75. He was healthy and he had 20 other children plus me. He also married two women and none of us, as his children, had problems due to passive smoking," said Abazeid.
"I only think it creates respiratory problems if you smoked it into the lungs but if not it is OK ... The chewing tobacco only may affect the marital health," he said.
The results of a recent survey published by Egypt's Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) on Jan. 28 showed that 20 percent of the 77.5 million Egyptians are smokers. 16 percent of the population smoke cigarettes and 2.3 percent smoke hookah, while 2.6 percent use chewing tobacco.
Smoking in Egypt spreads more among adult males with nearly one third of this category cigarettes or hookah smokers.
Around 439,000 children in Egypt under the age of 15 smoke cigarettes, some 74,000 of them are under 10.
According to the Egyptian Health Ministry, smoking kills 37,000 people in the country each year.
In June 2007, the Egyptian parliament sanctioned a law banning smoking at workplaces, public transportation vehicles, health centers and schools.
Ninety percent of Egyptians believe that smoking is a major cause of some life-threatening diseases like asthma, lung cancer and birth defects, according to the survey results.
However, Ali Mohamed, a 57-year-old security man has another opinion. "I have been smoking for more than 40 years and I have never suffered any health problems. My marital life is very good," he said.
"My father died at the age of 93. He was an extremely heavy smoker, but he never had such health problems." His answer was extremely shocking when it came to the warning labels on cigarette packets, "It is just a decor," the old man said.
"I have tried once to give up smoking but I started to suffer some health problems ... I will never quit smoking," Mohamed said.
But, how is the governmental campaign in curbing smoking.
The recent survey showed that 41 percent of Egyptian smokers tried to give up, but only 18 percent of them succeeded. This means that only less than eight percent of the total number of smokers give up.
"I have started smoking since been to prep school. Now, I smoke heavier after they fixed those photos," Ali Hamed, a 40-year-old journalist said.
