The Story of Enfleurage 3

Drinking the Koolaid

In 2007 I returned…This was after Gonu. I had been on a road trip through North and West Africa, sleeping rough in Mali and the Mauritanian Sahara. When I arrived to India, and my agarwood friends, the first evening out at the butter and cheese paradise family thali restaurant caused my body to seize after all the weeks of austere micro-meals as we ate stale bread and cans of tuna in the dunes. I ended up losing my gall bladder in Mumbai before staggering off to Bangkok for the agarwoood conference. The agarwood lovers were under siege from corporations wanting to capture and commericialize our beloved wood/resin, and once the conference ended, I wanted to be back in Oman. I thought it would heal me and back I came, this time renting a Yaris and driving to Salalah, back to Haffa House, the frankincense market, the wadis, and wild trees, the wind and the space, with a tendril of frankincense smoke every so often. I made up my mind that I would come back, and do some work with frankincense, and I threw a pebble from my gall bladder, a gift from the surgeon, into the landscape along the airport road, hoping it would guide me back.

Over the next few years we lost agarwood, as the original oudh lovers know, and it became a farmed and tortured tree, grown and forced into slavery to make the resin, to meet the need that was suddenly global. Every perfume company now had an oudh, and self-styled experts appeared like mushrooms. The beautiful wild natural wood became harder and more difficult to find, eventually receding into collections in Japan, Korea and China. I stepped into frankincense quite naturally.

In 2008 I brought 4 small copper stills, and did some experiments in a little flat in the Salalah Gardens. Over the next few years I visited Salalah quite often, and kept my stills there, making small amounts of oil that I would take back to Enfleurage in New York, or just label and keep, along with my notes, in a Tupperware box. A friend found me a half of a tiny house in Dahariz, at the edge of the Khor; sometimes flamingos came to visit, and camels and herds of goats would appear from the edges of my vision, walking serenely, sometimes with a human, but often alone. A mosque across the road pointed its speaker into my front windows, and life took on its own rhythm.

In 2011 I discovered the FTA (free trade agreement), allowing Americans to open an Omani company without a sponsor, and I threw myself into that. There were other things afoot too—my goal was never to create a big company, or corporatize frankincense. I wanted to learn it and love it. I wanted my soul to be bathed in it. I would drive to see my favorite groves of trees, past Mughsayl, and have lunch with them. I called them the Old Lady trees, because they were stout and old and strong. I would sit on the rocks and eat my lunch, in the quiet and gentle flitting of the leaves in the breeze, and silence that deafened me.

Meanwhile, my friend and I experimented with ice cream, using her grandmothers easy recipe from condensed milk. We added some frankincense oil.  And it was good. I bought some small equipment, a machine larger than for home use, but not big enough for a gelateria, and started making frankincense ice cream in my home, using a recipe I arrived at myself. I was invited by a friend to offer it for sale at the Salalah Khareef Festival in 2011—not at the fairgrounds, but at the souq.  It was one of the best, most fun, and most interesting experiences of my life—so enjoyable, and hilarious. It caused chaos. It was not supportable, as I could only make 110 servings a day, and it took several hours of my time, not including being at the market and serving it. But it was so much fun that I was disappointed to be sold out so quickly. After one month I had to stop, as the chaos went to the tipping point. I experimented a lot with other local ice cream flavors, inspired by Dhofar: Chai Hakim, from tea served at a certain restaurant in Ittin,  Wadi Darbat, influenced by the botanicals in bloom there, Salalah coffee (with nescafe and tea); lavender, influenced by the Dhofari lavender, Lavandula dhofarensis, growing at Ain Garziz.) I also made hard candy; it was easy to make, with ingredients readily available in Salalah in those years.