Parents Weekend (Round 2)
scent of the day: Sultan Rose Attar, by Ensar
Not groundbreaking in what it is: sandalwood-oud-rose—as much a staple to middle-eastern attar-style fragrances as Perc30 fizzing out of the ass of a bunghole between the clapping cheeks of a lovely young lady twerking on the hood of a car is to the Western world. Even so, and even though I have “merely” the free-gift version, this is a star in my collection. Arguably, it is my favorite rose Ensar.
This thing is gorgeous and dirty. I have Sultan White Rose too, perhaps the most beautiful spotlight-on-rose—at least a clean rose—there is (although my little-worn Malik al-Taif might have something to say about that). But this one just speaks to me insanely. We get the dirty almost culinary sandalwood of Santal Sultan and Siber Extreme and yet this thick—like thicc body yaddi—rose mixed in, infused as if not anything separate from the wood.
This is only my third time wearing this. Relating it to Santal Sultan and Siber can be of help here. All three have a spiciness that leans in the avenue of Indian kitchen. Siber goers strongest in that direction with its strong cumin. Sultan Rose Attar is the least explicitly spicy. Its spices seem more like they had sat so long that their pungency not only rounded off but started to become indiscernible to just regular grit and dust. All three scents share a oudy-mintiness—nothing as extreme as my comparatively nude Tigerwood 91 spray or Terre d’Ensar but enough to feel in camphor in the nostrils, although it is minimal here in Sultan Rose compared to the others.
What is especially cool is that in terms of texture, Sultan Rose attar seems to combine the extremes of the other two. For all its minimalism there is definitely drama just in that! Whereas Santal Sultan is butter (not as creamy as Santal Royale but still butter), Siber seems dried out—much more driftwood than ghee. The magic of Sultan Rose Attar is that the sandalwood really gives both elements. It is as of you were dealing with a dried-out piece of sandalwood driftwood and it is so dry that you can rip the empty-space hunks of wood off the log and crumble it in your hand—only that when you do you feel that there is this buttery oil inside.
This dual aspect of the sandalwood is easy to account for. Sultan Red Rose uses both Timor and Sri Lankan sandalwoods. Drier than Australian sandalwood (which gives a texture of coarse linen), Timor sandalwood gives a feel of wood powder. It brings wood dust and airy brightness with green aromatics—as though a piece of sun-bleached driftwood had weathered until it crumbled into an almost silky powder, fine enough to resemble ash. Whereas Timor emphasizes the airy dusty side of sandalwood, Sri Lankan approaches more so—albeit not to the clotted cream degree of Mysore—the silky buttery side of sandalwood. Think creamy ivory wood and soft resinous sweetness—as though freshly carved sandalwood had been polished until it became smooth as porcelain, releasing a gentle cloud of warm milk, almond skin, and coconut flesh. Compared to mysore, both the spice in Timor and in Sri lankan lean drier and cooler (even despite their own hints of cumin). Less golden and less rounded, both moreso give a green cardamom and faint pepperiences. Sri Lankan is a bit warmer with its clove facets and subtle floral sweetness, though.
Sultan Rose Attar’s sandalwood—and maybe this is the most alluring factor—is just so dirty and musty and old (almost approaching the mold and mushroom of Chinese ouds like we see in starkly in Yaaseen’s Hainan oil and Areej’s History of Chinese Oud), like I smell my arm and this is like a really old grandpa (not a grandpa perfume like Heritage but the smell of grandpa). I could reduce my love to this. But its the various tensions too that pull me. It is not only creamy and dense but also dusty and diffuse, it also has some aquatic elements from the lemony-herbal-yet-lush rose and spicy-smoky-minty-incensy oud (almost like the effect of lotus or even the calone in Sacred Scarab) and yet it is smokey from the oud and yet it has—especially in the beginning—a pickle vibe of Afrika Olifant
The blend is great too. It literally seems that the smoky oud and the velvety rose are not in addition to the sandalwood but infused into sandalwood like the sandalwood holds it so captive that it has become part of it, deepening it. I think of this primarily as a sandalwood scent in that way. Even if the roses are doing the dominant work here (some providing airiness and lift and glow whereas other giving a velvety darkness and even oily herbaceousness), its work is funneled toward deepening sandalwood. Sandalwood is the cream-colored mold holding everything together—thing that lets the rose bloom upward and the oud seep inward.
*Let's workshop this poem about a father and daughter confronting a shared history, an unspoken buildup over a decade, at a house party whose anonymity requirements enable the most addictive healing.
*Reworked last stanza
Parents Weekend
Father and daughter knew by voice (by smells, by birthmarks) they held one another—
but the orgy’s foyer box (“alibi not included”), ski masks black as three-hole deniability,
licensed payloads piped with the rubberless rage of a decade: “Been fuckin wantin it!”
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right)
