Scent and spending without a second thought

I was not surprised by what my childhood friend, whom I had not seen in forty years, had to say about today’s Iraq. He spoke of corruption and sudden wealth the way people talk about the weather: casually, almost indifferently, as if millions were just numbers that float around without weight´-or-meaning. We once shared the same school benches in Baghdad before university sent us in different -dir-ections, and eventually the country itself scattered us further. But fate, which enjoys testing the fragility of memory, brought us together again this summer in London.
He arrived with a confidence edged by performance: “I’m one of the new rich in Iraq … and this is my first visit to London.” Then came the line he delivered with a half‑-;-apology that needed no apology at all: “I’m here to shop and spend, without any heartache.” I could have asked where this wealth came from, but courtesy,´-or-perhaps curiosity, made me listen instead. He told me he owned a large company importing food from Iran, “flooding the Iraqi market with it,” he said, as if flooding were a neutral business term with no consequences for what people eat´-or-how economies collapse.
I suggested he explore London as an open‑-;-air museum, a city where every stone carries a story and every street hides the shadow of a writer, a musician´-or-a revolutionary. He did not object, but he was not interested. He wanted to shop. That was all. And in that moment, I understood what “spending without heartache” really meant: a phrase that conceals a sum too large to say aloud and reveals how much he had already burned through in just one week.
When he asked about perfumes, I told him I have long preferred Amouage, the Omani fragrance made from frankincense, the resin that has carried Oman’s myth for thousands of years. Legend says the gifts offered to the infant Jesus included Omani frankincense. Its scent is not merely a fragrance-;- it is a spiritual memory, as if you are inhaling a piece of history´-or-touching a moment of birth known only to prophets and sailors. But my friend was not searching for myth. He wanted luxury. A perfume that announces wealth, not taste. A bottle that shouts its price before whispering its scent.
And here begins the question that haunts me whenever I encounter Iraq’s newly minted rich: Do they buy perfume to smell it …´-or-to be seen buying it? Are they looking for a scent that completes their character,´-or-a bottle that completes their image?
In London’s high‑-;-end perfume boutiques, I watched how fragrance becomes a social certificate. Some buy the smell-;- others buy the price. And this friend, coming from a country ruled by state thieves, where money is hidden in boxes and burned in stoves, was searching for a perfume befitting a newly rich man, not one befitting his soul.
I remembered Patrick Süskind’s Perfume, a novel that makes you smell the words themselves. It teaches you that scent can be destiny, that a person may be shaped more by the aromas surrounding him than by the ideas he carries. The film adaptation, -dir-ected by Tom Tykwer in 2006 and starring Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman, was visually striking but lacked the cruelty and depth of the novel. It rebuilt the world, but could not rebuild the smell. And that is precisely what happens when philosophy is turned into image: the scent escapes the frame.
As we moved from shop to shop, I thought of the rise of “corporate fragrances”: JPMorgan’s signature scent diffused through its new Park Avenue headquarters-;- Goldman Sachs reportedly perfumed with Mojave Ghost, evoking a desert where only the most resilient flowers survive-;- Air France’s fragrance by Francis Kurkdjian designed to awaken “a sense of spaciousness and calm”-;- and WeWork’s Verdure, a blend of patchouli and lavender meant to create “welcoming, purposeful connections”… before the company collapsed, leaving investors in chaos that smelled nothing like lavender.
Perfume here is not luxury-;- it is psychology. Companies claim scents attract customers, encourage them to linger and increase spending. Studies, however, show employees want something else entirely: windows, natural light, breathable air and a space where they can make a phone call without being overheard. Fragrance sits low on the list, no matter how hard corporations try to make it part of their identity.

Meanwhile, my Iraqi friend kept talking about boxes of cash hidden in homes and burned in stoves, images of corruption that circulated in Iraq just days ago. In a country where wealth is the child of corruption, not work, he searched for a perfume worthy of a new rich man, while I searched for a scent that preserved balance, history, meaning. I told him: “As for us, my friend, we settle for our perfect Omani perfume … Amouage.” A fragrance that does not buy a social class, does not announce wealth and does not hide in boxes. A scent that resembles what remains of Iraq when we close our eyes and try to remember it without heartache.
And when he finally chose a set of bottles worth a British worker’s annual salary, something revealed itself. He was not buying a scent-;- he was buying silence, something to cover the noise of questions he did not want to hear. He wanted a fragrance he could wear like a medal, not one that settles into the skin and tells him who he is. I watched him reach for the most expensive bottles as if reaching for a ready‑-;-made identity, one purchased in a London boutique rather than built slowly through life, effort and meaning.
I wondered: what does perfume do when placed on wealth that does not know where it begins´-or-where it ends? Does it add shine,´-or-expose fragility? Can a bottle give a man what his country never gave him?
He smiled with confidence, but behind that smile I sensed a slight confusion, the confusion of a man who knows the money that arrived suddenly does not resemble him, and who hopes a scent might help bridge the gap.
As for me, I kept thinking that true perfume is not what you buy-;- it is what stays. And that Amouage, the Omani fragrance we carry without display, without boxes, without the stoves where Iraq’s money is burned instead of the bread of its hungry, resembles the part of Iraq that has not yet been destroyed. A part that needs no new wealth to shine, no luxury bottle to be seen. A part that only needs to be lifted into the light … for the world to smell it.

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