Becoming a Master Perfumer’s Apprentice

I will teach you the meaning of perfume, he said. You have to start with a name.

Name is everything. Will you smell this, he gave me a small
brown bottle to tell him whats inside? Yes you are right, it is
Cocoa , now will you try this second one. Something in me was telling me that I know

this smell, it was pleasing to senses and homy, but I was not able to name it. It took me more than a little while to finally recall it was the smell of coffee (and for some reason it reminded me of my last morning coffee in a Geneva Cafe) . How can I forget
such a basic thing, and yet how can i remember so much of my past with just a smell of coffee. He was affectionate. You cannot
smell anything without a name. the meaning is in the name. Name is
everything, he reiterated again with an understanding smile. It was his humble way of telling me that we
smell not with our nose but more with our minds, our memories, our emotions, our past lives…). And this was how I
initiated my few good days of apprenticeship with a Grandmaster perfumer, Dominique Dubrana aka Salaam Attar, an eccentric perfume composer, safely hidden from the rest of the world in a remote Italian town, content within his own composed world of fragrances and beliefs and happiness. A legend among his peers, an affectionate father among his family, a devout Sufi, and a generous teacher, planning to teach the world, what he loves the most in this transient world of ours. I can safely say for Dominique, “He is of the kind of people who are in this world but are not of
this world” .

We were a group of seven odd seekers accepted by him. From as diverse background as Cuba, and Iran and Canada, and age groups from 22 to 57 years, with different upbringings and acquired knowledge and tastes. Very much lost in our own ways, floating somewhere a bit above the Maslov’s pyramid, but all having common passion to experience life in general and perfumery specifically.

Perfect first shot

It was our first day. Dominique(our teacher) brought with him a nice good quality bow and arrow. He took his position, aimed his target and as if being sucked up by the target itself, the very first arrow flew effortlessly through space and time making its way towards the center and Bang… “Bulls eye”. We all were silent for a while, mesmerized by the perfect shot. “One must have a clear idea in his mind to make perfumes”, he said sometime after, “and never compromise on good quality materials…”, and rest of perfume making is as easy as that arrow flying towards its target, we all understood. He had his ways of teaching us the craft. And with that we were introduced to our Perfumery Organ of seventy-five bottles, all full of natural essential oils except one last mysterious seemingly empty bottle(full of love i think).

My perfume Organ to play for few days

And so began the magical journey of learning the art of perfumery and much more than that, perhaps the art of living a good life. “You have to make good perfumes and be happy with that, and not push yourself making it perfect”, he told us multiple times during our learning sessions. “Only god can make perfect things. Do not exert your energies on something you cannot achieve. Good is good enough”. But how do we make good perfumes, one lost soul asked, only to get a mystical smiling reply from him quoting Rumi, ” Just like you can only learn to love by loving people, you can only make good perfumes by making them. Just adopt the Way of the scents”.

His specialty was his knowledge of pure natural essences and his high standards of using only pure raw materials. Anything else was simply an insult to his craft. “Love is a world, either you are in the center of it or outside of it” he said. His love of natural and pure perfumes had taken him into multiple journeys around the world and I believe within himself as well. Just like his spoken words coming out of his pure experience, he generously shared with us scents from his unique collection, real Musk glands from Kashmiri Musk dear, personally collected 20 years back, thousands of years old fossilized Hyrecium, Ambergris, civet (his favorite animal scent) and some rare vintage perfumes with saffron and real musk and real damask roses and old Mysore sandalwood(non-existent now)….one after another, smells of profound purity and spirit, touching the deepest hidden corners of our minds , all that for me was like as if a peasant boy is given a glimpse of a some mystical princess from the tale of thousand Arabian nights and he falling forever in love in her magic……..

His teachings were humble yet powerful, mystical yet all making perfect sense, his examples and stories crisp and to the point. You have to make perfumes that other people like. A perfume becomes bad if you put your own ego in it. A good perfume should heal both the body and soul, and quoting Rumi again , Love is the bridge between you and everything. A natural perfume connects you with your primordial nature, connecting the profane with the sacred. Real perfumes are made for real people with real rose and real cinnamon….and the teaching continued beyond space and time and all of us students like thirsty travelers in a desert with open mouths and minds were soaking ourselves with his fragrant words and magical scents……..

Sitting in a Kiev Cafe now, having my usual Sheesha full of rose and apple and mint fragrance… thinking of my days spent in his company… Joan Osborne just out of nowhere has started singing “What if god was …..”(link below)…. destiny’s hand as he told us whenever we had an accidental drop more, than what we wanted in our perfume formulas making our perfumes even better….. A smile just passed by my face, full of lavender and jasmine emotions and frankincense memories and I definitely am not feeling empty anymore, feeling more like in that garden full of long juniper and pine trees and roses and butterflies, we met for the very first time ……

Joan Osborne’s Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn7rIarpQBk