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Kanafani
This release is dear to me. It carries the name of Ghassan Kanafani. Kanafani was born in Acre in 1936. In 1948, when he was twelve, his family was forced from their home and became refugees, like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that year. He grew up to become a novelist, journalist, editor, and teacher, and he spent every ounce of his talent telling the story of his people. My people. He wrote Men in the Sun, Returning to Haifa, and The Land of Sad Oranges, stories that still read like they were written this morning. In 1972, at the age of 36, he was assassinated in Beirut by a car bomb that also killed his seventeen-year-old niece, Lamees. Many people first met Kanafani through a short interview he gave in 1970 to Australian journalist Richard Carleton. Watch it and you'll see a familiar script, one that amounts to asking: why can't you just accept that a triangle has four sides? The questions were framed to make the occupation sound reasonable, to make the occupied sound unreasonable, and to turn a people's fight for their land into a quarrel between two equal sides. Kanafani doesn't take the bait. Calmly, precisely, he dismantles each framing. When he is asked why his side won't simply talk peace, he answers that what's being offered isn't peace talks but capitulation. When the conflict is called a "conflict," he names it for what it is: a struggle between the sword and the neck. That interview is a masterclass in refusing a narrative written by someone else. It exposes the double standard, the careful linguistic gymnastics, and the way colonial media casts itself as the reasonable voice in the room. Decades later, the script hasn't changed much. Neither has the need to see through it. Kanafani wrote about the oranges of Jaffa, their scent carried into exile as memory and grief. That idea has stayed with me: a smell can hold a homeland, and memory can be a form of resistance. It sits behind both blends in this release. The first is Bateekh, which I dedicated to Sliman Mansour. The watermelon he painted carried the colours of a banned flag. Here, it becomes a fruity watermelon blend, presented in many lights through its oud and rose editions. The second is Hainan Rose, which returns to the Hainan oud and rose of Qinan Rose. That blend carried the words of my late friend and comrade Tarek Al Ghoussein: "Maher, you learn things when you're ready to. Not when you want to." Coming back to those materials a few blends later felt like the right way to bring him into this release too. Sliman left a fingerprint of Palestinian resistance in colour. Tarek captured it in light and stillness, in quiet self-portraits. Kanafani expressed it in words. These blends are my attempt to give it scent. Kanafani gave his words, and ultimately his life, to our story. The least I can do is keep his name alive.
Prices and Materials
Do all materials need to be expensive? It's a loaded question, and the honest answer is: it depends. Material cost is driven by many things: rarity, how hard it is to source (sometimes that means negotiating with and convincing an owner to let it go), production volume, age, scent profile, shipping, and rising costs across much of the supply chain. Whether a material is worth using in a blend is a different question, and I think it's best answered from the consumer's side. As a perfumer making work for people, I ask myself: will someone actually appreciate this material, whether for its rarity, its cost, or its scent? Not every material will interest every customer, and rightly so. I'll admit that, as a perfumer who aspires to work with rare materials, getting my hands on something hard to find thrills me, as I imagine it does every perfumer. But the litmus test is this: does the material add something to the blend beyond romance and nostalgia? In my experience, some materials do, and some blends genuinely benefit from them. Qinan Rose and Soul of My Soul would not be what they are without high-grade Hainan oud (Qinan Rose) and Two Souls, a vintage Papua rose (in both sprays). With Chinese ouds in particular, many lean generic to my nose. It takes a great deal of sampling and testing to find one that is truly unique and worth offering. You might try 20 oils to find one you love. Other ouds have better odds, more hits than misses, but not Chinese. Patchouli is similar. I've smelled nondescript patchouli oils, and others that could honestly be considered perfumes in their own right. I may offer one as a soliflore in the future. The effect of a great material isn't always a sharp spike in one note. Often it's an overall upgrade to every aspect of the blend. Take Musk Melange, the blend so many of you loved. At the time I offered it at half my own cost, because I wanted people to try my work. Had I priced it at its actual cost plus a margin, I'm not sure it would have been noticed the way it was. That blend contains many musk tinctures that are around a decade old. You can rarely achieve something like it without those materials. You might come close, and the effect of age can be simulated or reverse-engineered (as in the upcoming Misk Ateeq), but it can't truly be replicated. Beyond the age of the material itself, there's the curation and preparation: tincturing, filtering, treating, and rebalancing to accentuate one note over others. That takes time and effort, and often means losing material along the way. In any other industry, we'd call that R&D. Oud Session and Ambergris Spectrum, among others, took a great deal of work to prepare. I often work on a blend for many months, sometimes closer to a year, before it reaches the online store. It isn't only the materials or the process; it's also the time the materials need to age. So the answer is: some blends can be made with lower-cost materials, and others simply can't. A great deal goes into making a blend, and then comes the final step: pricing it. My approach is to consult a small circle of select customers, perfumers, and vendors before anything reaches the store. They know the market, and they buy and collect themselves. Think of them as my own board of directors. After all, I could put gold leaf in a bottle, but it wouldn't add anything noticeable to the scent beyond an attractive look (unless it triggered some unexpected chemical interaction, which isn't something I care to explore in my work right now). In the end, the question comes down to the consumer: would that be worth a higher price tag? I always aim to price blends in line with their current market value. My rule is that nothing should be overpriced. I look for the sweet spot: high enough to cover costs and fund future blends, but low enough that things actually move. Pricing is the other end of choosing materials, and neither happens in a vacuum. Making perfume is about far more than clicking "buy" on one oil or another based on price.
Lighter?
So far, I've mostly relied on my own judgement, as the maker, to decide how best to present a scent. But many of you have asked for lighter versions: lighter on clothes, lighter in presence, and lighter on the wallet. After all, a blend is made to be worn — by you! I've always tried to give you a choice, so each blend can become your own. That started as X Editions, where "X" was whatever you wanted to add to a blend, and over a few releases it became the more focused set of Add-ons I offer today. Some blends want to stay dense, and some want to stay light. So I'll be revisiting some of my current blends to make lighter versions of them that, to my nose, are still concentrated enough to give each blend what it deserves. To drive the point home on concentration, let me clarify a few things. You experience a perfume when its scent molecules physically reach the receptors in your nose, either because you sniff your skin up close or because the molecules have drifted into the air around you. That drifting is what we call projection. But reaching your nose isn't enough. You only notice the molecules your receptors can detect. Think of it like Lego: a molecule has to click into a receptor that fits it. Each receptor fits a range of shapes, and each molecule fits several receptors, so every scent is a pattern of pieces clicking into place. Not everyone has the same pieces. Some people can't smell certain molecules at all, and certain musks are a well-known example. That's one reason the same blend can smell different to you than to someone else. What the scent sits in matters too. In a spray, the scent is dissolved in alcohol. Alcohol evaporates within minutes, so a spray opens fast and fills the air right away. Once the alcohol is gone, the scent molecules keep leaving your skin on their own, each at its own pace: the lightest first, the heaviest last. In an attar, the scent sits in oil. Oil barely evaporates, so it holds the molecules back and lets them go slowly. That's why attars sit closer to the skin, project less, and can last a long time. Warmth speeds up both. A blend behaves differently on a hot day, and on your wrist compared with your shirt. Which brings me to a trade-off. A molecule is either on your skin or clothing, or in the air. There's no Schrödinger's cat business in perfumery; it can't be in both places at once. For the same amount of perfume, the faster it leaves, the more you smell it now and the less is left for later. Slower release means softer projection that lasts longer. It's a trade-off, not a strict rule. Wearing more, or wearing a stronger blend, can give you more of both. Then there's concentration itself. Think of scent molecules as people in a room. A crowded room is loud, noticeable, and slow to empty. A room with fewer people is quieter, airier, and empties sooner. But the people aren't all alike. Some leave almost as soon as they arrive; others stay until the end. With natural materials, who is in the room matters more than how many. The same material can behave differently depending on how it was processed or how long it has aged. That's why a number on a label tells you so little, and why I judge a lighter version by nose, not by percentage. A lighter version is softer, less dense, and fades sooner. It also has an upside: some materials show different sides of themselves when they have more room. A lighter version isn't just a weaker copy. It can reveal facets that the denser one hides. Where you wear a scent matters too. Your skin has its own chemistry: its natural oils, moisture, warmth and pH all interact with the blend. Drier skin often lets a scent fade faster, while oilier or well-moisturised skin tends to hold it longer. Even the condition of your skin on a given day plays a part. That's why the same blend can wear differently on you than on someone else, and even on you from one day to the next. If you want a more even, predictable experience, try your clothes. Fabric has no chemistry of its own to change the scent and no body heat pushing it off, so a blend tends to smell closer to how I made it, and it often lasts longer too. That's another reason I'm making lighter versions of the current drop. Many of you wanted to spray them on light-colored shirts, and the denser versions, rich in dark natural materials, can mark pale fabric. The lighter versions are much gentler on clothes, but natural materials can still leave a trace, so test on a hidden spot first. When someone asks me what the concentration is, my answer is usually "enough." Now there's simply a "lighter enough."
Nisreen
This release marks two small changes. Co-authored is now part of Unscripted. Co-authored grew out of Unscripted to begin with, and the unscripted quality is inherently there, so keeping them separate stopped making sense. Every product page already names the vendor who holds the stock and the artisans behind it, which is most of what a separate category was carrying anyway. Releases now have names. I used to lean on a hierarchy — bases, themes, genres — as a conceptual guide, both for you browsing the site and for me making the products. I wrote about that in my taxonomy piece. The longer I sit with it, the more I feel that a single release name is enough. It’s looser, less structured, and easier to hold in your head. A release can draw from different bases or genres, curated or unscripted, and still come together under one name. The first release is Nisreen. The name was inspired first and foremost by a ten-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza whose account I’ve been following. Check out Nisreen’s page on Instagram. She posts about the challenges she faces, but mostly about how she gets through her days — how she, other children her age, and Palestinians across Gaza are surviving a genocide we watch unfold on our screens every day. And she does it with a smile. That’s what made her my inspiration: Palestinians can never be broken. This is my tribute to her. I’ve never met her or spoken with her, but that’s beside the point. If she ever comes across this site, I hope she finds some comfort in knowing that her presence, in however small a way, inspired something here. The meaning of the name felt fitting too. In Arabic, Nisreen (نسرين) refers to the wild rose. It felt right for the kind of products this website offers.
The Perfumer’s Paradox
The last tobacco blend, Kasturi Cola — or as some affectionately called it, Cigar Cola — was quite a polarizing composition. Some fell in love with the entire arrangement. Others almost sang about individual notes they could pick out. A few found it too gourmand to wear. Such is the challenge of perfumery. I was discussing this recently with a customer. One of the difficulties I find — and perhaps other perfumers do as well — comes from working with materials in their raw form. Sometimes you lose the ability to experience them the way others do. Or perhaps more accurately, you stop meshing them together in quite the same way. After years of smelling the raw materials, you become intimately familiar with their individual character, while customers encounter the finished composition as a whole.
Art Not Fiction
For some reason, it’s widely accepted that consumers can demand suppliers be “neutral”—usually expressed as “stay out of politics.” I’ve outlined my view on this in Art with Bias, but recent conversations make me feel I should be more direct: I reject that fiction, especially at a time when official channels continue to suppress, ignore, or shut down voices that don’t align with power. Neutrality risks becoming complicity, particularly when it is demanded by those uncomfortable with hearing the voices of the oppressed. Art has never been neutral. Commerce has never been neutral. Media, design, and entertainment are all saturated with ideology, even when they claim otherwise. So no, I will not strip the politics from my reality. If that makes people uneasy, it should. Recently, a few members of my small but growing community told me that some people had left my brand because I am “political.” I expected it, but I am indifferent. In fact, through the lens of basic human dignity, I am glad. I am glad my blends are not used to adorn their world—a world where justice is rationed to the powerful, and privilege is disguised as entitlement. For me, this is not about comfort or convenience. It is about whether I am willing to bow to the pressure of profit, or to the expectations of those whose moral compass only functions within what is comfortable. I sometimes wonder if those who argue for separating “politics and business” realize that taking a stance is itself political, just as much as refusing to take one. Silence is a choice. Indifference is a choice. I made mine. Others can make theirs. Yes, I have had customers leave. I have had social media accounts banned. I was let go from a job for my stance against war-for-profit and colonization. That is a price—but it is small compared to what is actually at stake. The cost of silence is far greater. This is about refusing silence, and standing with a collective voice that is pushing against the erasure of Palestine. Palestine was not “nearly forgotten.” The struggle did not begin in October 2023. It began over 75 years ago and has continued since—with more loss, more violence, more dispossession, and more denial. It is not a recent story. I am open to discussion. We can talk history, theology, logic, and more. But if the expectation is my silence, then I have nothing further to say beyond this: you are welcome to explore the work of other perfumers. For those who celebrate the independence of their state, I ask only this: do you also acknowledge the resistance that made it possible? Do you teach your children about the sacrifices of previous generations? Would you not speak against the exploitation or colonization of your own history? I am not asking anyone to take a stance for Palestine. I am simply stating that I will not abandon mine. If I have a voice, a platform, and the ability to speak, then, God willing, I will use it. For me, Palestine is worth it. EDIT Nov 11 2025. I came across this short today, which I felt very much speaks to the same irony: Maher
