The Story of Enfleurage 5

A Brief Bit About Salalah

In 2012 I moved to my first actual real distillery, in South Saada, near the ice factory, and set up 5 alembics. I started making frankincense essential oil I could ship back to America and we could actually offer as a regular product, instead of just when I could come to Salalah and make a couple of kilos. I thought it was perfect; the house neatly divided into halves—I lived in one and the other other was the distillery, the office and the giant majlis. It could fit two dozen people and sometimes I did have a big group. It was a rather odd situation—I was, as far as I can tell, the only distillery there with any kind of a presence, the only distillery that was findable. There was one other, from a large American company, but they were as secretive as they could be. Mine was not identifiable from outside, but I was online. There might have been other frankincense distilleries too, but I didn’t know about them.

It was actually a brutal place to live, and I did survive it, until 2016, when I left, fed up and finished with it all. Salalah is not easy, and if you are a foreigner, meaning from outside of Dhofar, and a westerner, and a woman, and without the buffering presence of a company or institution, then get ready, because your determination will be tested. People like to say New York is tough, and “if you can make it there you can make it anywhere.” Not at all. Not even in the same category as Salalah. Anyway, I survived, but when I arrived back to the US, I tested positive for breast cancer.