Scents of the Middle East #2

(Previous rambling can be found here)

I love to lurk/stalk people’s blogs/forums/other places.

In fact, I’ve been lurking this particular forum for the past six years, every single day without fail, and I’ve only regularly commented there a few months ago.

I wonder how it’ll be six years later. Will I continue my six year streak of continuous lurking, or will I forget about it altogether? Hmm.

I lurked the forum again just now. I JUST LOVE THE FORUM.

(I shall not tell you what that forum is because then you’ll know which member is me)

(I’m not creative enough in the art of nickname creations six years ago GAH x.x)

Anyway...MIDDLE EAST’S SCENTS!

I like to lurk Hawaa World for that purpose. From there, I've learned that,

1. They like to burn incense for their houses.
2. They have their own special blends.
3. They have their own special methods of applying perfume.
4. They like perfumes. They probably couldn’t live without perfumes. And they have all kinds of perfume. Perfumes in super duper pretty lovely gorgeous beautiful bottles.

Yes they are THAT pretty. :D

I’d often find myself, gawking at the perfume bottles in this store…





But then I’d hop to Centerpoint and look at these empty bottles instead.







Cute things weaken my knees.

You can definitely buy a whole lot of perfumes and incenses from stores such as Arabian Oud, but surprisingly, most of the people in Hawaa World prefer to use the cheap yet reliable incense from their local market instead. You can get all of those in all kind of brands for under SR20 in markets, whereas in nice stores like above, the average price for their incenses is SR200 (or so I’ve been told. Or maybe they showed me the most expensive ones, I wouldn’t know).

Anyhow, I was at Medina’s market, pestered by merchants, like always, when they sprayed tons of cheap perfumes on me that I thought I was going to pass out right there right then. So I tried to divert their attentions by pointing at a bowl of coals, and that was then they introduced me to bokhoor/bo5or/بخور aka incense.

They then began to smear a whole lot of mukhallat/mu5ala6/مخلط aka mixtures on my hands. Mu5ala6 are those that you should keep an eye on if you wanted to buy nice perfumes in gorgeous bottles as souvenirs.

Here's how they look like in the pamphlet.







They are prettier in real life, though.

Unfortunately, those people must’ve sprayed me with tons of perfume already, and those smeared fragrant oils made my hands sticky, and not to mention my nose was kind of stuffy, so when I tried to smell the mu5ala6, those mu5ala6 in gorgeous bottles…

I can’t smell a thing.

*pissed pissed*

I only smelt something icky and that was me.

*annoyed annoyed*

In the end, I didn’t buy any of those mixtures, but truthfully, I’m lemming for it. Seriously lemming for it.

The average prices for those mixtures are SR50. Keep that in mind, and if you’re highly skilled in the art of haggling I’m sure you can get it at a much lower price.

But now let’s talk about bo5oor.


I use bo5oor efra7. It's REALLY nice.

I encourage you to watch this first! In this video, he demonstrated how to wear the fragrance. I'll supply the minutes below, and you just have to fast-forward the clip according to the time. :D



Here’s Ustath Tareq, explaining about the magical world of perfume and incense. Apparently (and PLEASE correct me if I’m wrong) if you want to make sure your fragrance smells the best and lasts all day, you can;

Mix it with dehen oud. Dehen oud (oud oil?) is an extract from the oud’s branch. There are all kinds of dehen ouds, if it’s from an Indian store then its extract is from the Indian’s oud. If it’s from a Malaysian store then it is extracted from Malaysia’s oud. You can mix it with mu5ala6 or your Parisian perfumes. It’ll smell special, and nothing will smell like it.

…we have oud in Malaysia? I thought those are imported from the middle east lololol :P

And in Malaysia, people associate incense with witches, no? :P

1:40 How they’d wear the dehen oud (and mu5alla6 too I suppose). Aside from putting it on your pulse and behind your ears, you can also put a small amount of water on your palms, mix it with the dehen oud and apply it on your hair. Or for guys, on your 3’etra/shma3’.

Would it stain? It wouldn’t, he said, because we’ve mixed it with water. It’s fine for shma3’ but for clothes, that’s a different story.

2:38 Now he’s spraying the perfume. He might’ve used half of the bottle for all I know. o.O

5:16 Now he’s burning the incense and letting it seep into his clothes. His advice; you should put on your perfume first, after showering and wearing your clothes, then burn the bo5oor. Some people wear their perfume before wearing their clothes, or the clothes themselves aren’t clean, and those are some of the reasons why the fragrance doesn't smell as lovely. Clean clothes are important to make sure that the perfume smells good, and it shouldn’t be applied on the clothes that you’ve worn this morning either. And remember, apply perfume first, then burn the incense.

But according to a novel I read, the character burned the incense, put it under her clothes, while perfuming at the same time.

And another person in the forum said that to make sure that the clothes will smell great all day, you need to;

1. Smoke out the clothes
2. Spray some perfume on it
3. Hang it in the closet
4. Let the burner rests under it
5. Put a fresh batch of oud/bo5oor on the burner
6. Close the closet, and poof! Foolproof clothes that will certain to tickle people’s nostrils all day.

All kinds of method, to each of their own, I suppose. I didn't follow their methods, though.



This is my burner! I use the electric one so you only need to plug it in and you wouldn’t need candles or matches or stuff like that.



Put some of the incense in, and wait for it to burn.



Tada! Whoa. And no, it doesn’t smell as pretty yet. It smells like regular smoke. Can you see me coughing?



Come on, scents! Get into my shaila! lol No I don't think you're supposed to do it like this.

What I did is, I hung my clothes in the room, let the incense burned for a couple of minutes, took of the plug, closed the door…

And after a while, the smoky smell will magically transform into something so earthly sweet.

And your clothes will smell exactly like it. It wouldn’t be as strong if you follow my method though. In fact, you can barely smell it unless you put your nose close to it, but that’s good enough for me. After all, I just did that for a hint of scent, for a bit of freshness, and this is exactly what I wanted.

The incense – if you’re using it solely to fragrance the house – will only last for one day. Then again, I use the cheap one from the market, and from what I heard, if you buy the more expensive one, the Arabian Oud for example, it’ll last for days.

You pay peanuts, you get monkeys. That's probably true.

But it’s okay. The effect on the clothes lasts for weeks so I’m greatly satisfied by it.

*sniff my shaila* Aaaah…

*sniff sniff* Aaaah…

Thank you for reading, now let me hug myself. :D

Scents of the Middle East #1

(photo courtesy from here)

I live in an apartment.

Sometimes, I'll sit in the living room watching TV, and then my neighbor would pass by my house and his PERFUME WILL FILL IN THE ROOM. O.O

And then another neighbor will leave his house and again my house will be intoxicated by his perfume.

The strange thing is that, I might not know for sure how my neighbors look like (I'M SORRY but it's hard to recognize people when they're wearing the same thing ;__; Not to mention they cover their head too so it's hard to see their faces), but I recognize their perfumes anywhere.

(caution: this post is leaning towards creepiness…you’ve been warned)

It happened! I saw this person and said, “Hey he smells like this neighbor.”

And then my father will say, “He is that neighbor.”

See what I mean by ‘recognizing the smell’? (creepy alert)

But it does seem as if Arab people in general like to drench themselves, their families, and even their homes, in perfume.

Whenever I go to their houses, there’ll be this certain fragrance wafting around the air, relaxing my senses. It wasn’t cloying, nor was it headache-inducing – it was far from that, it was simply, refreshing and uplifting. And plain awesome if I may add.

Though I don’t think I need to fragrance my house anyway, since my neighbors with their ultra strong perfume have already done such a great job at it already.

But the odd thing is, even if they’ve been working outside for hours, they'll still smell fresh and clean. No matter the time, broad daylight or the darkest hour of the night, the perfume still stays strong. Even when they were buying fish, they’d still smell as if they’ve just returned from a wedding reception.

Or maybe they did. But every single night? And every single one of them? Orz

My father would go to the mosque and came back smelling as if he’d gone to the perfume store instead. And then the entire house will smell like a perfume factory, and we’ll be like, “What is that smell?!”

Okay maybe I was exaggerating a bit. Maybe not the entire house, just the places that my father has graced his presence with.

But there was this time, when a student of my father gave him a shmagh/shma3’/ghetra/3’etra, this thing by the way,


(picture stolen from here)

which smelt like OH MY GOD YA ALLAH MASHA2 ALLAH WHAT IS THIS SMELL??!

I wouldn’t be surprised if the 3’etra was drenched in perfume oil for 100 days. It just smelt too strong. TOO strong. TOO STRONG!

I’m not kidding, the fragrance even found its way towards my room, seeping into my furniture and we were all like, “Okay the head’s kind of aching right now.”

Insane. We kept the 3’etra inside our closet and the rest of our clothes smelt like it. It was really phenomenal.

Because I’d spray some Parisian perfume on myself and it didn’t last as long as that at all.

Weird, weird, weird. And I’ve only talked about the men’s side of perfume, how about the women?

Generally women – though there are a few who don’t follow the rules, and they usually wear Parisian perfume if my nose’s not mistaken, and Parisian perfumes are kind of cloying if applied too much – don’t wear perfume as loud as the men. They might occasionally smell just as lovely as their other half, but in public, where you’ll be meeting tons of strangers and have to mix with men, they’ll make sure their fragrance wouldn’t stand out as much. Just a tiny bit to freshen up, and that’s it.

Of course you’d know that if you wear a strong perfume, it’ll attract unnecessary attention, and unnecessary attention is not something we’d terribly need in our lives.

That, and women aren’t allowed to wear such strong perfume outdoors anyway.

Indoors, now that’s a different story. I’d meet my Arab friends and they’d give me a greeting hug and pecks on the cheeks and all I’d think of is, “Aaaaah. Oooooh. Ah please keep on embracing me.”

CREEPY ALERT CREEPY ALERT!

I was almost tempted to ask about their fragrance but I just can’t bring myself to do that. Maybe I don’t think it’s appropriate? Maybe I’m too shy? Malu bertanya sesat jalan? Too shy to ask? Then prepare to be lost! Muahahaha yeah that’s the meaning of that sentence. Minus the laughing part of course.

Perhaps the reason that the question never seems to be able to see the light of the day is because I’ve asked a gazillion questions to them before, like where did you buy your abaya oh and what eyeliner are you using and how to bake these cookies and how do you wrap your shaila and where’s your favorite coffee shop and OH NO YOUR HUSBAND’S GIVING YOU THE EYE HE WANTS TO GO NOW ok then BYE BYE. ;___;

People and their early marriage. /rant

Anyhow, in the end, I did find the answer. I'll talk about it in another post. :D

(read the continuation here)