Perfume and Iron

I just came back from a little round of......perfume sniffing! If you're accustomed to European perfumes, Arabian perfumes are a whole other ballgame: oil based, quite different, very rich. I believe they invented the stuff. It's so much fun to explore them. Right now I'm smelling lots of oudhs, made from a wood that is burned as incense. Oudh is kind of sickening when you first put it on, but it mellows into a rich smoky earthy smell not unlike really good scotch whiskey. Lots of perfume shops have their own recipes, available only from them. You buy the bottle and they fill it for you. Beautiful elaborate metal encased bottles, kind of cheesy until you give in to the extremity of decoration and go ahead and love them.

To counterbalance the perfume sniffing, I walked home through the blacksmiths suq. I love the smell of metal and the sound of the forges and the hammering of metal on metal. It reminds me of Paulus! It's near my house, but sometimes I can find it and sometimes I can't. It's mysterious, a little elevated above the other tiny streets nearby, with just one or two access points. When I leave I'm always disoriented and have to wander lost for awhile before I get my bearings again. I bought a little handmade ax, and got a little rush out of carrying it home through the streets, dressed in my black gown and veil, I felt like the Reaper.