IMAGES: ALILA JABAL AKHDAR RESORT; GETTY; EMMA AL-MOUSAWI; AYMAN AL SAQRI
OMAN
THE INTERVI EW Muatasim Al Hinai, co-founder of perfume house Omanluxury, reveals how the country’s history is woven into fragrances
HOW IS OMANI HERITAGE AND CULTURE CAPTURED IN FRAGRANCE? Our culture has been captured in so many ways. We have a fragrance called Belfiore inspired by the village of Wakan, which is famous for apricots, and another inspired by the Omani majlis (traditional 'sitting rooms' where people gather), with notes of orange, oud and coffee.
HOW DO OMANI PEOPLE USE FRAGRANCE? In perfume, of course, but lots of ladies also burn bukhoor to scent their clothes. Some even make their own, buying agarwood from the market and soaking it in oils such as saffron, cardamom and sandalwood.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE COUNTRY’S TYPICAL SCENTS? Frankincense and oud, but if you want something lighter, you can use rose — or lemon and orange for fresher notes.
petals fall to the ground. During the height of the season, the family collect more than 60,000 roses a day. We bring our fl owers to Qais’s small rosewater
distillery, Dehjan, named after the traditional tools used to draw out rose essence. He lights a fi re in a knee-high stone oven and sets a terracotta pot of roses above the heat, topped with a small copper vessel. A bowl of cold water seals the pot, guiding condensation upwards until the copper catches drops of fragrance. “Every three hours we change it,” Qais explains, handing me a bottle of golden liquid from an earlier batch — it’s smoky and sweet, similar to yesterday’s halwa. Qais also produces clear rosewater — without the
smoky hit. In a large metal oven, about 6,000 roses are slowly steamed for 12 hours to yield 40 litres of liquid. The real prize, however, is the pure rose oil that rises to the top of the batch. “The price is around 75 OMR (£145) for 3ml. This is what we use in perfume,” he explains. Lesson in perfume-making complete, I mooch
around Qais’s tiny on-site shop, where I notice a small jar containing rose-scented wood chips known as bukhoor. Burning these chips, in a similar way to incense, is an age-old tradition across the Gulf. “Omanis love bukhoor,” Khalid says. “Wait until you get to Salalah — the city is very famous for it.” My mountain base for the past couple of nights
has been Alila Jabal Akhdar, a secluded resort located on the edge of a yawning canyon, and it seems fi tting that I spend the last evening experiencing its Rose Ritual at the spa. Ceremonial in nature, it begins with a rosewater footbath, before I’m scrubbed with an invigorating blend of rose petals, ginger, sea salt and lime. A rose-oil- infused massage follows, and I sink into a relaxed stupor as the same sherbet aroma from earlier in the day envelops me.
Land of frankincense Dust rises up from the bone-dry earth of Wadi Al Mughsail, cloaking our 4WD as we wind our way behind Oman’s Dhofar Mountains. Against a backdrop of taupe-hued peaks and the dulcet tones of my guide, Ahmed Rafeet, we head towards the homestead of Sheikh Ahmed Al Amari, whose family have been extracting frankincense from the boswellia sacra tree for generations. Dressed in a smart brown dishdasha, Sheikh
Ahmed welcomes us with a hand on his heart and we sit on a blanket beneath the canopy of a boswellia sacra, its papery bark wrapped around gnarled, twisting branches. His son Salim pours cinnamon-laced black tea that’s been brewing on a fi re and presents me with a bowl of majeen, a local snack made from dried camel meat. The taste is unexpectedly delicate, a little salty, a little smoky, with a chewiness that lingers like cured beef jerky, though sweetened by the addition of dates and spices. Sheikh Ahmed leans on a walking stick to steady
himself on the rocky terrain, and with a traditional handheld blade called a mengaf, he chips away at the tree’s fl aky bark, making a soft surface wound. The scratch reveals a vibrant green layer before ivory fl esh becomes visible underneath. Soon, speckles of white liquid start to appear. “That’s the frankincense,” Ahmed tells me. It will take at least a week for it to form into a golden resin on the tree, at which point, Sheikh Ahmed will collect the crystals. The boswellia sacra holds almost sacred status
in Oman. “In the past, when there were no schools, no roads, no cars, no electricity, frankincense helped to give people a good life,” Ahmed explains later. “They would exchange it for money, but also clothing, rice and dates.” Today, the precious resin is protected, as are the trees that provide it, and before exploring
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