Road to Ubar Pa - Nicholas Clapp [57]
That was as we found it: the finest trees, those that produced silver frankincense, were confined to a surprisingly small area and were wild. They stubbornly resisted cultivation. Pliny further informs us:
Cross-section of Dhofar Mountains
It is the people who originated the trade, and no other people among the Arabians, that behold the incense-tree; and, indeed, not current extent of monsoon all of them, for it is said that there are not more than three thousand families which have a right to claim that privilege, by virtue of hereditary succession; and that for this reason those persons are called sacred, and are not allowed, while pruning the trees or gathering the harvest, to receive any pollution, either by intercourse with women, or coming in contact with the dead; in this way the price of the commodity is increased owing to the scruples of religion. 6
This holy harvest of frankincense, some scholars feel, was a convenient fiction, an invention of southern Arabians intent on hoodwinking credulous customers. Yet we were inclined to believe Pliny's account. There was something very serious, almost formalized, in the way our two tribesmen moved from tree to tree to the rhythm of a measured chant.
The chant ended with a loud exhalation. The tribesmen and the children drifted off across their land, a moonscape dotted by small groves of frankincense. The shouts and distant laughter of the children dissolved into a desert breeze, which now bore the piny, slightly raw scent of freshly cut frankincense. Each slash in a tree's bark produced a dozen or so thick white globules of resin. Slowly these globules would lose their milky opacity and gain a silvery translucence as the frankincense hardened and crystallized. Fifteen days hence, the men would return to scrape it into special shallow baskets. Though a portion of the harvest would be kept for their own use, most of it would be traded to the coast. It would be used to sweeten the air of households throughout Arabia, to scent men's beards before dining, to fumigate robes and dresses. Little kids would chew it as gum. It would be a prized ingredient in exotic perfumes, including the French-Omani scent Amouage, promoted as the most expensive fragrance in the world.
That we might see more of the living history of the highlands of Dhofar, Ali Achmed invited us to visit a remote Shahra settlement. Driving by night, we arrived at dawn at a compound of four thatched huts clustered around a brushwood corral. Three of the huts sheltered cattle; the fourth was home to an extended family. Though the hut was windowless, two doors let in sufficient light to illuminate the single large room. Its walls and domed ceiling were woven of twisted, blackened tree trunks and branches, the best wood to be had in an arid land. Two young girls were rolling up sleeping mats. A baby was squalling in the corner. Two older men and a woman crouched by an open fire, making their preparations for the day, a day measured by the burning of frankincense.
Though the woman wore a long, hooded black dress, she was unveiled. A gold ring pierced her nose, her eyes shone with self-assurance. She was the settlement's matriarch. With brass tongs she picked embers from the fire and placed them in a brightly painted clay incense burner shaped like a horned altar. Then she added crystals of frankincense, which glowed brightly and immediately gave rise to a fragrant, smoky plume. All the while she chattered with the two men in the Shahra's strange "language of birds."
"Incense is most pleasing to God," she said, adding more crystals.
"But enough, woman, enough!"