“Smell” on the road

Damascus, Syria

Yes, it is the last in my five-part series on the senses, and this post will address the fact that we vagabonders smell.

We do sometimes have an odor about us, especially after a long day in the tropical or desert heat, but what often stands out more are the other things we smell. Sometimes the smells are pleasant — cooking pad thai perhaps, or an Indian curry. Even better (for me) is the post-downpour aroma of a tropical rainforest. Other times the smells we ingest are unpleasant — rotting garbage on the streets of Delhi, or shredded human remains unearthed days after a fierce battle in a Palestinian refugee camp. Smells, both good and bad, can stick with you long after you’ve returned home, and they teach us things about culture, nature, and our own fragility.

About a week ago I stood outside a bakery in Damascus, watching people take their purchase to the drying racks outside, where the hot bread would cool as well as dry for a couple minutes before being stacked and carried off. The smell of bread filled the street, and it was good. Standing there, I also heard a father tell his daughter to buy one more batch. About the same time, I grabbed a stack to stop it from falling over, then tasted the piece a man tore off and gave me as thanks for keeping his bread from hitting the dirt. And then I watched as a young girl made faces at me across one drying rack, her mother smiling to the side, as I photographed the bread.

There’s a lot I wouldn’t be able to tell you about Syria, particularly just how fragile and potentially explosive (according to some) are its sectarian divides, which simmer under the surface but are held in check by an authoritarian regime. I can, however, tell you a lot about the scene at one bakery in the capital. I spent an hour there, and I smelled, touched, listened, tasted, and saw.