Omani Bakhoor and Luban

I have recently learned to love Bakhoor.  What is this?  Read here.  Every house or State or area makes their own from what I gather and therefore you have different scents.  I bought this MABKHARA from the nicest Museum gift shop a couple of weeks ago.  It is from Salalah, which is in the South of Oman.  I like it because it is red and very colorful.  I have had several over the years but broke them as they are made of clay.

Khalid, Amal's Oud teacher gave the girls little kits from Salalah that he bought for them when he took his summer vacation before Ramadan.  He put in some extra Luban and Incense in Amal's bag so I grabbed them!  I really like the floral perfume scent.

Thank you Khalid!

The coal that came with the kit doesn't work so nicely for us and we have a stash already so all you do is take a square and put it on your stove and let the flames light it up.  Once it is red, you take it and put it in this Mabkhara or incense burner.

Side view...

Then you take the Bakhoor which comes in these little copper or metal containers and they are all taped up and then open it up...

and the fragrance hits you!  You take a pinch of this and...

Put it on the coal.  It starts to smoke up and you either let it permeate the room or walk around with it to perfume the larger area.

It is burning out here and I am walking around my Studio with it.

I then put more on, as I am still new to this whole thing.  Yes, my husband burns it but I never really paid attention to it.  So, I took it over to my abaya and put it inside to perfume the fabric.

Putting it way in there!

and then you just hold it so that the smoke perfumes the cloth.

I then went to my favorite scarf to perfume that...

which I bought at the Cleveland airport last summer and have gotten so many compliments on it.  When I don't use it on my head, I wrap it around my neck in a cool European slip knot!

Here is how I am storing the luban and the bakhoor.

 This huge bag of Luban was included.  I don't like it as much but my daughter likes to mix the bakhoor and the luban.  Frankincense to English speakers.  Oman grows some of the finest in the world.  Read more here and you can see the little copper containers with the bakhoor in one of the pictures in this article.

Please go to my daughter's blog to read more about this subject.  

It lasts a long time in the clothes.  I love when a woman walks by and you get a waft of this scent.  I mean, they are all different but you know it is this versus perfume.

My husband's family doesn't care for it much and whenever my husband burns it, he puts it in the AC room so it goes through the ducts in our Central Air and permeates the house.  The house gets so smoky that it is suffocating.  It helps to mask the smell or kill the smell of cooking and also kills mosquitos.  Yes!

I will post later tonight or tomorrow my first stash of bakhoor that my friend Nola shared with me before she went back to America for university.  These are wonderful too.

Thanks for stopping by.  Now, off to shower as we are going to, yep, La Mer again tonight!  Three times this month!  It's all good!