Shaghaf, meaning passion or sensual desire in Arabic, is, for us, the jewel in the Anfas crown. The simplest way to describe it would be to say that it smells exactly like walking into a centuries-old majlis – a huge, carpeted room for receiving honored guests or conducting parliamentary business – in the heart of a Middle Eastern city. Shaghaf smells like old wood and textiles that have long absorbed the lusty aromas of burning oud wood, the preparation of tea and coffee boiled with cardamom and cloves, and the smoky sweetness of a million assorted grades of bakhoor seeping into hair, wool, and fur, and is now releasing them into the air, with a sigh.
Shaghaf opens with a wave of thrillingly exotic notes, crested by a funky-smoky oud note that’s been made even grimier with a lusty ginger and cardamom underlining. The spiced oud accord is like a beastly shadow that creeps along the walls along the Ka’aba, its presence dark and ever-present. But soon, all you notice is the heart of magnificently dry oud wood smoldering in the heat of the embers, peppered with chunks of amber resin and glittering with incense. Slowly, a worn leather note emerges – or maybe it is black tea – thick with a meaty stew of resin and spice.
Shaghaf is a very dry but very rich perfume, a microcosm of everything we imagine the Middle East to smell like. But for all its husky desiccation, this is a wonderfully warm and inviting scent. With its toasty, sandy texture, Shaghaf occupies the same headspace as Fidelis (by Histoires de Parfum), Nanban (Arquiste), and Songe d’Un Bois en Eté (Guerlain) but is much softer and smoother, with no harsh woody buzz around the edges. Silage and longevity are as monumental as the scent itself, but Shaghaf is the rare beastmode oriental that actually gets better and more interesting the longer it’s on your skin. With the heat of your skin to get it going, the scent seems to expand and radiate off the skin in big, red-gold waves of aroma, undulating in richness and saturation. Color us impressed – this bad boy is a Muezzin’s call to prayer in scent form, but there’s nothing holy about it.
