Jennifer Gauthier/For Metro Abdolhamid Mohammadian becomes emotional on the ninth day of his hunger strike Thursday, April 23, 2015. The Persian Tea House hookah cafe owner is protesting a B.C. Supreme Court judge’s dismissal of his case this week to strike down a bylaw that bans him from allowing people to smoke from a water pipe in his café.

Tears roll down Abdolhamid Mohammadian’s face as he puffs on a hookah pipe, the sweet strawberry-scented smoke wafting through his downtown Vancouver hookah café.

It’s that café the gaunt 68-year-old is fighting to save as he entered the ninth day of his hunger strike Thursday.

Mohammadian is protesting a B.C. Supreme Court judge’s dismissal of his case this week to strike down a bylaw that bans him from allowing people to smoke from a water pipe in his café. Related:

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“I’m tired … but I am strong,” he told Metro in an interview inside his café where he is surviving on only water and tea during the protest. “This is my last chance.” Abdolhamid Mohammadian smokes a shisha pipe on the ninth day of his hunger strike to save his hookah bar from shutting down. (Jennifer Gauthier/For Metro)

Abdolhamid Mohammadian smokes a shisha pipe on the ninth day of his hunger strike in an effort to save his hookah bar from shutting down. (Jennifer Gauthier/For Metro)

For 17 years, Mohammadian has owned and operated the Persian Tea House on Davie Street.

But for seven years, he and another Vancouver hookah café owner, Abdolabbas Abdiannia of Ahwaz Hookah House, have been involved in a legal battle with the city, fighting a 2007 bylaw that prohibits hookah smoking in business premises and common areas.

B.C. tobacco control legislation states that hookah bars can operate as long as they don’t use tobacco. Mohammadian and Abdiannia switched to tobacco-free herbal shisha in an effort to comply with the law.

Last August, the B.C. Supreme Court upheld the city bylaw. Mohammadian and Abdiannia appealed the decision, but this week, the judge dismissed the appeal. The reasons for the judgment have not yet been released.

Maybe it is just the way it is reported here, but it sounds like they complied with a somewhat business-changing order, and then the goalposts were moved. There is some degree of hypocrisy, as the article suggests, when the law is used to crack down on non-tobacco hookah bars but not open-air sales of illegal drugs (marijuana and mushrooms) to minors at 420.