Apart from an Olympic ice rink and a record-sized aquarium with a dozen tiger sharks swimming, the Dubai Mall could pass for a shopping center in any developed country in the world. There are shining atriums with fountains, cafes entwined with artificial ivy in a European style, and a system of escalators devoid of obvious logic - like in "Labyrinth" with David Bowie. Locals even go with lattes from Starbucks (although Costa Coffee will make it with camel milk, if necessary). In short, Dubai Mall would fit into the consumer landscape of any metropolis. But here, every five meters, I am washed by a wave of a special, unlike anything like smell - I am definitely not in Moscow, not in Paris, not in London.
Dubai Mall © Scott Olson
Just walking around the mall for Dubai dwellers - which, given the average annual temperatures in the desert, is the center of social life all year round - is a true perfume attraction. Women in black abayas, traditional Arab dresses with long sleeves, leave a dense and almost tangible, like a comet's tail, a fragrant train: sandalwood, jasmine, roses. Men in white dishdashas - linen long-brimmed shirts - move rapidly, and the aroma enveloping them scatters bright prominences. Again sandalwood, oud, patchouli. And the rose: in the Gulf countries, it is not considered "feminine." There is a structure in this complex fragrance: you understand that a person consistently applied these scents - patchouli, musk, rose - one after the other, like smears of different colors are put on a canvas. First she whitewashed, then ocher, then ocher - mother-of-pearl, so that everything shines. And although they like to compare the style of Arab perfumery with the thick, powerful spirit of the oriental bazaar, the latter is like a mad genie that escaped from a bottle after thousands of years of imprisonment, and the former is a verified system.
© Chris Ratcliffe / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Genies first. After them I go to the "spice souk" - as they call the spice market, part of the Old Market of Deira. In every shop (most of them run by Iranians) they offer me dried barberry - bright red berries with a subtle smell of rosehip flowers and black lemons - and this is already a local spice, almost unknown outside of Arab cuisine. Citrus fruits are yellow during life, but when they are dried in the sun or in ovens, they take on a shade of coal and, whole or powdered, add to tea, soup, fish or chicken the strange aroma of a long gone summer - even in countries where summer never ends. … In one shop, they praise me the whole roots of turmeric - it looks like ginger, which has been hastily walked over with self-tanning, rose water and cardamom with a green, icy smell - for coffee, and the root of a mountain orchid - in the Emirates in winter, as in Istanbul,it is used to make a sweet milk-based drink Salep. In another, they explain that the red petals, which are everywhere passed off as the most expensive spice, are saffron, in fact, safflower, or dye thistle. It is used for yellow and red food coloring, tea and laxative, but real saffron in Dubai is sold in so-called bouquets - tied bunches of stamens, ten grams each. All these smells hit the head: the spice bitch has its own atmospheric front, hanging over the Old Town. For beginners, it becomes either very good or extremely bad.but real saffron in Dubai is sold in so-called bouquets - tied bundles of stamens, ten grams each. All these smells hit the head: the spice bitch has its own atmospheric front, hanging over the Old Town. For beginners, it becomes either very good or extremely bad.but real saffron in Dubai is sold in so-called bouquets - tied bundles of stamens, ten grams each. All these smells hit the head: the spice bitch has its own atmospheric front, hanging over the Old Town. For beginners, it becomes either very good or extremely bad.
The same can be said for Arabian perfumery. Anyone who has flown with Emiratesto the islands - the Maldives or Mauritius, beloved by the Emiratians, and once stood behind a local couple in the Dubai queue for boarding. Feeling delighted or sick: Arab culture loves strong and, as perfumers say, diffuse, that is, trail odors. In order for the scent to obediently follow the owner all day, like a well-bred dog, in the countries of the Gulf there are all sorts of techniques, techniques and devices. The main thing is bakhur. This is the name of a fragrant incense mixture, which consists of small wood chips soaked in oils of patchouli, sandalwood, jasmine, rose, and so on. After impregnation, the chips are pressed into flat square blocks or small "washers", the shape can be different. Many factory bakhoors are sold in Dubai, but it is considered good form to have your own, home-made:family recipes are passed from mother to daughter, making aromatic mixtures is considered a woman's business. The finished bakhoor is laid out on hot coals in a smoker and a room is surrounded by it so that the fragrant smoke spreads around the room, or they are placed under a hanger with clean and dry clothes. An hour of such fumigation - abaya or dishdasha will smell strongly and persistently of precious wood until the next dry cleaning. This is a base, a "primer", on which other smells fit well - a couple of drops of attar (a codistillate of flowers, for example, roses, and sandalwood oil) on the wrists, a drop of muhallat (a fragrant mixture of oils, that is, oily perfume) behind the ear. Followed by a thick, strong-smelling hand cream, aromatic hair oil and maybe a spray of floral water for clothes. Dubai people use a huge amount of perfumery (a local resident buys an average of six bottles of perfume a year - in comparison, for example, with Europeans, who are limited to two), and Dubai is a real reserve of strong, imperious smells, smoked - an involuntary pun - by corporate culture from Western offices and public spaces. True, as in any nature reserve, dangerous animals are found here: it happens that a fragrant wave, rolling after some dishdasha, knocks you down.
Perfumes of the Persian Gulf
© press service
1) Une Nuit a Doha, Stéphane Humbert Lucas 777
A Night in Doha is an unusual gourmand fragrance built on candied citruses, tobacco and thick maple syrup, which the immortelle pretends to be. Night transfer in Qatar before the morning flight to the islands: all night, as if it were a routine, you wander through tea parlors and hookah bars, and at dawn, dragging the aromas of the night city with you, you come to the hotel to have breakfast with all the sweetest things the peninsula is rich in.
2) Ta'if, Ormonde Jayne
Al-Taif is a city in the mountains of Saudi Arabia, just above Mecca. It is called the summer capital of the country: many residents of Riyadh and Jeddah keep mansions here, where they escape from the sweltering heat of the plains in the hot season. Taif is full of all kinds of beauty - vineyards, date palm plantations, apiaries and, most importantly, Taif rose fields (the local rose oil is famous throughout the region, although the harvest is very small compared to Turkish, Iranian or Bulgarian). Ta'if is a gorgeous rose in the midst of oriental sweets: dates and sherbet with cardamom.
3) Arabie, Serge Lutens
Arabie - the authentic scent of an oriental bitch: on the one hand there is a viscous, syrupy spirit of dried, but still juicy dates, on the other - the bitter aroma of spicy herbs. It also sells handicraft bakhur from the evil eye - pieces of incense and myrrh mixed with peels of lemons and oranges. Beautiful East, dried like a bay leaf in the Luthans herbarium.
4) Musk Crystal, Attar Collection
"Spirit of Dubai" is the name of the multi-year advertising campaign of the Dubai Tourism Department. Musk Crystal of the young Emirati brand Attar Collection is its olfactive twin: the same musky freshness of snow-white dishdashi, the same warm, vanilla-golden tint of the desert, the same bright fruity sweetness. For those who care about the persistence of the scent - it holds tight.>