Will you for a moment take a deep breath, and smell around with courage?Well, we live in a world that is dominated by visuals. Visuals everywhere. As we walk with our wild open eyes to the extent that our senses are almost auto receiving the signals without our full conscious.So, do you usually keep attention to your nose? Do you usually attempt to use it throughout the day? It is funny that a lot of people forgot how to smell, as they would shut down any source of noise in order to identify the smell (like reducing the music sound to make sure if we are smelling something burning or not). That is ironic, because you wouldn’t need to close your nose to see things better!This is not an issue of this modern world that we live in as -I assume- that what has been captured by the author Patrik Suskind in his masterpiece in the 80s (Perfume: A story of a murderer). I believe that he achieved with this book what no other writer did. He unlocked the reader’s sense of smell through written words, forcing the reader to explore an entire universe of scents through the pages of his book.
How did he do that?Let’s think at first about “Language”. When it comes to describing figures, visuals, sounds, and textures, we will dive into an ocean of descriptive words, however, we tend to struggle when it comes to describing a scent or smell. We would usually describe it simply as “a bad smell”, “good”, “weird” or if we are richer in words, we would say “sweet, smoky, or funny”. So the problem is the language barrier that resulted from the absence of naming the scents, because if you do not name something you cannot identify it. Exactly like the emotions. If you cannot name the emotion you are feeling in your chest, you will be confused thinking that you are constantly stressed while you are not. Suskind shattered this language limitation because he realized (as I assume) that unlocking this hidden sense is by “naming” scents, and that how he trains his reader.
You are not only reading sentences, but your brain will also start actively mapping the scents. Suskind used different ways to achieve that, as he gives scents tangible weight, temperature, and shape, so the smell is not just an aroma. He used a mixing method of describing the smell by identifying it using physical words, such as heavy, light, soft, rough, solid…etc. As well as its temperature where it would feel cold or warm. He also used to deconstruct the smell by eliminating items, such as describing a smell that is sweet but not cinnamon, or not lime. Therefore, the smell in your head will have a layered description which strengthen your ability to recognize it and enriches your sense of smelling it. An example of layering is when he described a scent of a beautiful young lady:” the scent was vital like a piece of thin ribbon..” or when he said: ”there was a basic perfumatory theme to the odor of humanity, a rather simple one, incidentally: a sweaty-oily, sour-cheesy, quite richly repulsive basic theme that clung to all humans..”.
Suskind also, within certain part of the story, takes the reader through the main character’s explorations in the perfume lab, where the reader will be introduced to the names of wooden sources, oils, herbs and other sources.What happened to me when I read it?After reading some pages in the beginning, I started sniffing the papers of the book- off course. Then head to the kitchen and grabbed the most obvious seasoning, the cinnamon, to smell it. Then I stopped. I realized that there is no surprise in smelling the cinnamon. I should smell salt! And lucky me, I had 4 types of salt, as it shocked me that each one of them smelled differently. Which means that the smell is enclosing the origine, age, complexity, and story of each one of these salts. I then realized that I am surrounded by treasures and hidden stories hidden behind the scents and aromas.So, today I leave you with a challenge, as you finish reading this; do not just look at the world around you. Pause, take a deep breath, and smell the world. The sense of smell is a direct reach to our memory center in the brain. One smell that you recognize may help you remember things that has been lost at the back of your head. It is an essential need for human beings, that will allow you to see in the dark where your eyes cannot.I encourage you to read the novel before watching the video, otherwise, your experience won’t succeed and Suskind will fail to enrich your sense of smell.
Yasmin,






