He passed on from bottle to bottle—attar of roses, gardenia, lily of the valley, jasmin, black narcissus, and countless others—demonstrating each perfume's beauties in the same manner. And as he showed his wares he talked, and I learned something of the story of his family. which has for centuries been distilling and selling the perfume of Arabia. The Soliman family is the only one in the world which knows the processes necessary to make certain of the perfumes Ahmed sells. Leading London and New York perfumers must come io him for supplies.
These processes, inscribed in Arabic on parchment, are closely guarded. Only the eldest son of each generation, to whom the parchment is handed by his father, knows the secret for-inulas. But each generation of Solimans secks to add to the knowledge of his forefathers, The secret of one perfume sold by Ahmed, "The Flower of the Sahara," was obtained by him less than fifteen years ago.
A young man sitting in a Cairo coffee shop heard an old Arab extolling the exquisiteness of a perfume he had smelt in the desert as a youth. It had been brought to the tent the old man's father by a desert wayfarer. The old Arab had only a general idea of the direction whence the wayfarer had come. But the young man knew the commercial p of a process of making a new perfume and decided to go and seek it. He spent weeks searching in the desert and, at last, in a little village in the depths of the Sahara, he found the man who held the secret.
It cost him great argument—and more money—to learn the details of the process, but when he returned to Cairo he knew the method of compounding "The Flower of the Sahara." He, in turn, sold his knowledge to Ahmed Soliman. who is today the only perfumer in the world making "The Flower of the Sahara." This perfume is compounded of jasmin, lotus powdered behozar from a gazelles heart, and one other ingredient.
If you ask Ahmed Soliman what that ingredient is he smiles and shakes his head. "That i my secret," he says. Thus, in a world at war. Ahmed Soliman lives on among his perfumes. Business is not what it was in the days before the war, but Ahmed maintains his policy of never asking a customer to buy. He will demonstrate, he will ask for your appreciation of some perfume, he will give you tea or coffee. But beyond that he will not go. Perhaps that explains why in a country of hucksters all clamouring for your money, Ahmed is the master salesman. His method comes as such a relief after the importunings of the many!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.