Journal Notes:

When I made Ananas Tabac, I meant for tobacco to become a regular part of what I release. Most people wore it without any issue, but a few reported skin sensitivity, so I discontinued the blend entirely. That didn't change my plans. If anything, it made me more eager to finish this one: a fresh, fruity tobacco.

I wanted to treat tobacco as a base you can build on, and to offer an artisanal tobacco at a price that stays within reach. To me, tobacco is earthy, sweet, damp, and woody all at once. It's a wide canvas that can hold many colors without feeling crowded.

Like Dukkan, this one began with a visit to a café. The coffee beans caught my attention: distinctly tobacco-like, with beautiful fruity notes of banana and chocolate. At the same time, I was working on a watermelon accord. Slowly, the two ideas merged in my mind into one blend. That's how these two worlds met.

This is the café where it started.

The result is remarkably fresh. The structure rests on tobacco and Hindi oud, with floral, leathery saffron, roasted maté, and caramelized coffee adding depth. A tincture of Nepalese musk gives the composition volume without weighing it down.

The opening is where it gets interesting. It's fruity and floral, with banana, peach, blood orange, and my own watermelon accord. 🍉 I built the accord from cucumber, tomato leaf, and berries, with a touch of melonal. It's fresh and crisp and, to my nose, has a balanced sweetness rather than the obvious sweetness you might expect from watermelon.

Kashani rose carries it from there. Its floral weight bridges the bright opening into the base of oud, Moroccan saffron, tobacco, and maté. It's rosy, though not as rosy as Dukkan can be. Here, the rose sits underneath the fruit instead of leading it.

Bateekh means watermelon in Arabic. For me, as a Palestinian, it means much more.

Why Bateekh?

Cut a watermelon open and you'll see red, black, white, and green, the colors of the Palestinian flag. After 1967, when Israeli colonial authorities criminalized displays of the Palestinian flag in the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians began using the fruit to carry those colors without carrying the flag. Read more about it here.

The artist Sliman Mansour once told the story of an exhibition of his in Ramallah being shut down, and of an officer of the Israeli colonial regime warning the artists that even a watermelon painted in those colors would be confiscated.

That story has always stayed with me. Something ordinary, something you grew up eating without a second thought, becomes a way of holding on to who you are.

You can ban a flag. But not its colors.

For me, Bateekh is one of those things. It's familiar. It's Palestinian. It's home. And in its own quiet way, it carries a history of resistance that is still unfolding today.

Mansour passed away this August. In a way, Bateekh is a tribute to him. Perfume is a different form of expression than painting, but it felt right to carry his watermelon forward in my own way.

Editions

This base turned out to work remarkably well in directions beyond its first formula, and that took me some time to appreciate. I've offered add-ons for a few blends before, but with Bateekh I became much more aware of how easily a new material could overwhelm what makes the composition work.

So instead of simply adding something new, I rebuilt the balance around a central material for each edition: the 2016 Malinau and Hainan ouds, the 2012 Malay oud, and the SQ Hindi Rose.

• Malinau 2016 and Hainan 2019 ouds: the Malinau offers a beautiful corn-silk quality with a slightly sweet earthiness, while the Hainan adds a cooling herbal sparkle.
• The 2012 Malay is darker and sweeter, with earthy, creamy, caramelized, and resinous facets.
• The SQ Hindi Rose is everything you'd expect from an aged Hindi gulab rose: sweet, dense, and unmistakably rosy, with age leaving its mark.

I genuinely don't think one is better than another. If anything, they complement each other. Each brings something different to Bateekh, and each asks for a slightly different balance around it.

Every edition is still Bateekh, but the composition shifts depending on what sits at its center. I wanted to give each material room to speak while keeping the character of the blend intact. Some elements are dialed up or down, not because the original formula needed correcting, but because each material called for a different conversation.

The original Bateekh Tabac, built around the Hindi oud and Kashani rose that started it all, is also available. The editions simply take the same idea somewhere new.

Future Bateekhs?

I've set a portion of the base aside, because I don't think Bateekh Tabac is finished yet. And if Dukkan and Nightfall both landed for you, I think this one will too.