by Rosie Alfatlawi
A restaurant in Egypt has been forced to apologize after images of hookah seeming to contain live fish went viral.
Footage of goldfish apparently placed in the base of waterpipes at southeastern Cairo’s Ta5t restaurant provoked outrage after it was widely shared on social media.
In shisha pipes, as they are called in Egypt, smoke is passed through water before inhalation and reports in local media claimed the creatures survived only minutes once the customer began smoking.
But that does not seem to be the full story, however. Despite thousands of angry Egyptians taken in, and Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya even covering it, the cafe has insisted the fish were in a separate container below the water filter.
This clip, posted Monday by Salma Eltabakh, received hundreds of angry responses.
In a post shared more than 8,000 times, Eltabakh gave details of the hookah bar, calling it “one of the ugliest things” she had seen in her life.
Just hours later, the restaurant was forced to issue a statement on its official Facebook page, apologizing for the feature and assuring customers it had been removed.
Their post “offered a full apology [...] for an (unintended) error from the management in putting live fish in a small vessel under the shisha as ‘decor.’”
“When we read your comments, we stopped [using the live fish] immediately,” Ta5t continued, thanking commenters for their advice “which we appreciate.”
It maintained, nonetheless, that allegations the fish had been placed in the shisha itself were incorrect. "The shisha is separate and the fish is decoration," the restaurant repeatedly asserted in replies to large numbers of comments on its Facebook page.
The cafe had been hit by a campaign of bad reviews, pushing their average rank on Facebook down to just 1.1 stars. The 71 five-star ratings it has received are now dwarfed by over 2,700 one-star reviews.
Reviewers described it as “inhumane” and “animal torture.”
“The way you trap[ped] a fish in a shisha jar is just brutal... Have you no heart?” Wrote Ahmed Abdel Wahab. “Imagine you are trapped inside a smoking room with no ventilation.”
Moussa Adam Hamade, meanwhile, labeled it “barbaric behavior,” calling for the business to be closed and charged over the incident.
Eltabakh’s video even spread to Twitter, where it was shared by journalist Ahmed Khair to his verified account.
ايه يا مجانين ؟! pic.twitter.com/vBYBo2CCIu
— khair (@ahmedkhair) January 22, 2018
What is this, you crazy people?
With its business so comprehensively undermined by the incident, Ta5t restaurant’s management has now claimed in a second Facebook post that they will be taking legal action.
They suggested that the video had been shared with “bad intent” and was deliberately “truncated” so as to incorrectly suggest that they had abused animal rights.
“We are in the process of submitting a communication to the Attorney General and all relevant investigative bodies,” they wrote, expressing hope that “full and comprehensive investigation” would be carried out into the video.
Still, someone managed to see the funny side. "Why would someone want to smoke to fish smells?" asked Riaz Issa on Facebook.
