Ala Tool

Feelings of disquiet reached a critical mass...

From past experience I’d learned that if I once let apathy get a grip on me, the whole day could pass in that mood. So to jumpstart my battery, I decided to go shopping, by myself, for the first time, in the Kingdom. Now, this wasn’t going to be a frivolous foray just for accumulating unnecessary trappings. The Jiddah landmark stitchery (that I did) needed framing and I wanted some ood (incense) to take home, too. I’d heard of perfumeries at a mall ten minutes drive away and I knew where the framer was. It would take courage to go alone, though. Since Linda, my main souk buddy had left, I would have to depend on myself. Before I lost my nerve, I donned my black abaya and phoned for a limo (campus taxi)…

The ride was uneventful--a driver with no tangle of questions on the tip of his tongue for a change. At the mall, scarfless females walked purposefully. I kept mine off, too. Two circular sets of benches had only men on them, rigid with decorum, waiting for their wives. All those eyes were daunting. I gritted my teeth, prepared to run the gauntlet and went about my business.

A personable young Indian fellow in the framing shop took my order. When I finished there, I wanted to sit for a few minutes before I continued my reconnaissance for the ood. I found the only unoccupied gap in a circle of benches, sat down, pulled out paper and pen and scribbled down how I felt about this spree, as it was unfolding. When I glanced up from time to time, to look off into space and think, quizzical looks came from the males in the seats, but I was determined not to take more notice than necessary, of either approval or disapproval. This feigned indifference would be dysfunctional under normal circumstances, I thought, but after all, normal would not be the adjective I’d choose to describe the circumstances of that day…

Mustering self-support, I intercepted scarfless ladies to ask the whereabouts of a perfumery. This alone took nerve, because of the aloofness among western women. A group of three actually did help, because an ood and incense shop lay not far away.

In the perfumery, ood came in three grades. On display in the same brown battered suitcases used to transport them, they looked like bits of chopped up tree trunk. I bought a handful of the Excellent grade of Indonesian ood, for 200 SR ($50.00US) per ounce. From past experience, I knew Medium and Low grades smelled little better than charred wood. Special shops sold varieties of Cambodian ood at 3000 SR per ounce, but I didn’t go there. It would have been like setting $100.00 bills alight for kindling.

Just before leaving the mall, I stopped at the entrance and looked back to see if I was forgetting anything. When two-dozen male eyes stared at me from the benches, I went out the door, pulled my scarf over my head and fled toward a taxi.

Three days later, on Thursday evening, Baba and I went back to pick up the framed stitchery. I was pleased with the work, more or less. It had lost its third dimension, as if ironed flat and the hook was on the bottom. But it would be easier to moisten and fluff it up myself and reposition the hook than to try to explain and leave it there any longer... I chatted with a Lebanese lady on my bench and she admired my needlework. She called her husband out of the jewelry shop across the aisle, where he worked.

“Bless your hands”, they both said with appreciation. I, in turn, blessed their warm hearts...

After my solo-shopping trip, I closed the frosted kitchen window and used the enclosure to experiment with frankincense and the ood I bought...

Nestling the pot pourri in the sink, I lit the charcoal and breathed in the vapors, each in their turn, from Indonesian ood and four different types of frankincense. My nostrils quivering with expectation, sometimes I spritzed Jasmine perfume on a piece of ood, just like they did in the shops. The intermingling of the fragrances was such a powerful assault on my senses, that first time I did it, I found it difficult to get up and do anything else. It was almost intoxicating, like an olfactory elixir.

I sat for half an hour, watched, blew on the embers and allowed the miraculous molecules to drift about me... I observed leisurely as black resin exuded from the ducts in the brown wood, formed a shiny coating and started to smolder. I watched the frankincense, one milky white, one translucent amber yellow, a third the palest sea-foam green and the last variegated in color, begin to bubble, darken and release their aroma. For some time, I became one with the aromas, with all that is natural and timeless.

The next morning, fragrance still lingering on the air, nothing was quite like entering the kitchen and having my senses redelighted by whiffs of one exotic scent after another. The feelings of the day before re-kindled in my inner sanctum, the sense of wholeness and stillness while uniting my spirit with that of natural materials, all catalyzed by fire: the frankincense seeped from trees, the ood of the trees themselves, and the coal from Mother Earth.