Enris Qinami
Musician · Perfumer · Author · Traveller
My first memories of scent take me back to Albania and to my childhood with my grandmother.
I remember preparing scented oils with her in jars. At the time, of course, I had no idea that perfume would one day become so important in my life. The spices and herbs we used in the kitchen were already teaching me about scent and about the way different aromas could come together.
We also had a Mediterranean garden. I remember it as a place full of knowledge and flavours. There was always something to discover there. Plants and herbs were part of daily life, and through their scents my imagination could already travel quite far.
When I look back today, I can see that my relationship with perfume began there. I remember my grandmother’s hands, the jars of scented oils and the herbs from the garden. I learned very early that a smell could stay with you and bring back a whole world.
Later, life brought me to France, and more precisely to Paris, where I studied music.
The olfactory world I found there was very different from the Mediterranean environment of my childhood. I suddenly became aware of synthetic smells everywhere. They were in the Métro, in shopping centres and in commercial perfumes. This was something new to me.
At the same time, Paris gave me access to an incredible variety of materials from different parts of the world. This is where I discovered oud, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood and musk.
I became fascinated by them. Each material seemed to come with its own landscape and its own history.
Being a musician probably influenced the way I approached them. I started to realise that creating a perfume had something in common with composing music. Some materials had depth. Others could change an entire accord simply by entering the composition.
During those years in France, I also felt a growing need to keep something from my childhood close to me.
I like to think of it as a magic drawer. I kept memories there, along with images and melodies. Smells were part of that drawer too.
They came back through cooking and through my search for Mediterranean ingredients and traditions. I did not really understand it at the time, but I was trying to keep a living connection with my childhood.
Slowly, I started creating my own perfumes.
There is another part of my life that is closely connected to all of this. I have been passionate about Sufi mysticism and spiritual music for many years.
My first connection with this music came through my family heritage. From there, I continued exploring Sufi musical traditions on my own. It became a lifelong journey of listening and learning.
This music has taken me to many places. I have had the chance to perform in festivals across Europe, as well as in the United States and Brazil. Morocco became especially important to me, and I have had the honour of being regularly invited to perform at the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture.
For me, Sufi music has always gone beyond the idea of a musical repertoire. Through it, I have met people and discovered traditions that changed the way I understand music and spirituality.
This is also one of the reasons Morocco affected me so strongly through scent.
When I first discovered its olfactory world, I felt something very familiar. Fragrance was everywhere and was completely integrated into daily life.
I felt this especially in the medinas. Around the great mosques and through the old streets, I discovered attaris and perfume shops filled with materials that fascinated me.
Bakhoor and incense were burning. I discovered different musks and ambers, alongside rose, jasmine, orange blossom, gardenia and saffron. Walking through those streets was an experience in itself. The smells followed you and mixed with one another as you moved through the medina.
I was also very touched by the use of fumigation in Moroccan homes and gatherings. During spiritual ceremonies, fragrance was present alongside music and prayer.
That was very important for me.
I began to understand fragrance in another way. Incense could prepare a space for a gathering. It could accompany remembrance and change the atmosphere of a room. Scent had a role in the experience itself.
Morocco was a real emotional and olfactory shock for me.
It brought me back to sensations I had known during childhood. The scented oils, the herbs in my grandmother’s kitchen and our Mediterranean garden suddenly felt connected to what I was experiencing in Morocco.
My life in music and my growing interest in perfume also started to come together more naturally.
Both were ways of approaching something we cannot see.
Creating perfume became one of the ways I could give form to those memories.
Another important experience happened in Jordan.
There I had the chance to meet Ensar Oud and discover his extraordinary world of oud and natural materials. I was able to experience exceptional ouds and materials that he had distilled himself over many years.
Meeting him changed my understanding of natural perfumery. I became more aware of the time behind a material and of the importance of its origin. Distillation itself became fascinating to me. Some ouds seemed almost alive, and I began to understand how much history could be contained in a single raw material.
Tunisia also has a special place in my olfactory memory.
As in Morocco, I was immediately attracted to the attaris and perfumers of the medina of Tunis. I discovered scents that belonged very strongly to Tunisian culture.
One of them was fel, the small Tunisian jasmine. Its scent stayed with me. I also began associating certain fragrances with places such as Sidi Bou Saïd and Carthage. There was something in them that reminded me of the Mediterranean light and the gardens of Tunisia.
At times, these experiences brought me back to Fès and Marrakech.
Morocco and Tunisia gradually became mirrors of each other in my mind. They have very different identities, of course, but I could feel a connection between them through fragrance and through their Mediterranean culture.
Travelling has taught me that scent moves very easily across borders.
You can smell a flower somewhere far from home and suddenly find yourself back in a garden from your childhood. An incense, a piece of wood or a spice can connect places that are thousands of kilometres apart.
Istanbul has its own place in this story.
I had the chance to lead a perfume creation workshop at Les Arts Turcs, in the historic heart of Istanbul, facing At Meydanı, between Ayasofya and Sultanahmet Camii, the Blue Mosque.
I remember feeling very moved to share perfume there. Istanbul is a city where I feel many worlds meeting each other. Standing in that historic place and teaching perfume creation made me think about how far this story had travelled.
Years earlier, I had been a child in Albania preparing scented oils with my grandmother. Now I was in Istanbul sharing my own experience of perfume with others.
Today, this journey also continues through writing.
I have recently completed a book of spiritual poetry called Iqra — Becoming Readable. Perfume has found its way into the book very naturally. Fragrance, aromas and raw materials appear throughout the poems because they have become part of the way I experience the world and write about the spiritual life.
While writing Iqra, I realised how closely these different parts of my life had grown together.
Music has its own language. Poetry has another. Perfume speaks without words.
For me, they often lead to the same place.
A scent can bring back something we thought we had forgotten. It can carry a place with us for years. It can also change the way we experience the present moment.
From Albania to Paris, through Morocco and Tunisia, Jordan and Istanbul, fragrance has accompanied my travels and has become part of my way of remembering them.
When I create a perfume today, somewhere inside it there is always a memory of a place, a person, a journey or a moment that stayed with me.
Enris Qinami
Musician · Perfumer · Author · Traveller