Al-Hayat

Alcohol and Perfume

Every life has a smell. That’s the truth nobody admits, but everyone knows. Some people smell of roses, carefully plucked and preserved like a poem that refuses to rot. Some smell of gin, sharp and desperate, like an excuse you can’t quite swallow. The rest of us wander between bottles, uncertain which fragrance to wear and which poison to drink.

There are two liquids that fascinate me: alcohol and perfume. They are not opposites, no. They are distant cousins, both pretending to cure what only God can heal. Alcohol whispers, forget yourself. Perfume whispers, forgive yourself. One numbs, the other disguises. And somehow, both manage to touch the soul more deeply than most sermons ever do.

Alcohol is not a drink. No, it is despair distilled, failure fermented, sadness with a logo stamped on the neck of a bottle. It is the salesman of oblivion. It greets you with laughter in the night and leaves you in the gutter by morning. It is joy you cannot remember and shame you cannot forget. You don’t drink alcohol, my friend—alcohol drinks you. It swallows your dignity, chews your future, and spits you back into the street with pockets empty and memory fractured. It is the coward’s medicine, the prayer of men who do not pray.

Perfume, however, is more subtle, more cunning. It arrives in bottles that look like stolen treasures from forgotten kings. A spray on the wrist, and suddenly you are a man reborn. You smell rich even when you are broke. You smell powerful even when your boss is insulting you like a child. Perfume is not truth; it is theater. It is the mask you wear when your heart is leaking.

But theater is not always a crime. Some theater is sacred. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ loved perfume. He wore it not as deception but as dignity. Perfume was his sunnah, a secret wisdom in a bottle. Because scent is not for the nose alone—it is for the soul. Angels flee foul smells, and the grave itself has its fragrance: roses for the righteous, decay for the damned. Even eternity has a scent.

I mocked perfume until my sister began selling it. I thought it was another hustle, another tiny empire of bottles and desperation. Then one day she placed two perfumes in my hand. I sprayed one lazily, but the scent clung like a shadow. It refused to leave. It followed me, haunted me, reminded me. Perfume is not about “smelling nice.” It is about carrying an aura. It is the memory you leave behind after you exit the room. It is the invisible sermon you preach without words.

And yet, here lies the absurdity: the same society that praises perfume worships alcohol. The same men who laugh at you for refusing a drink will compliment you for wearing oud. We live in a theater where destruction and dignity receive the same applause. Alcohol empties wallets and homes. Perfume fills rooms with dignity and memory. Alcohol drags you into sin. Perfume lifts you towards sunnah. But tell me, which one saturates the nightclubs every weekend? Which one baptizes young men until they forget the names of their fathers?

I have seen alcohol’s handiwork. Fathers stumbling home with tongues too loose to guard their children. Uncles pouring salaries into bottles and leaving behind hungry wives. Bright students turned to clowns, their genius drowned in gin. Alcohol does not just kill. It mocks before it kills. It strips a man’s honor, then delays his death just long enough for him to lose everything worth saving.

Perfume, on the other hand, reminds a man to wash, to iron his shirt, to hold himself with dignity. He enters a room, and people notice him without a word. His scent preaches louder than his mouth ever could. This is not vanity—this is power. This is barakah bottled in musk.

Yes, perfume has its comedians too. Brothers who drown themselves in oud until angels cough. Sisters who wear perfume that announces their arrival two streets before they arrive. This is not sunnah—it is a crime of exaggeration. But I would rather endure the excess of perfume than the disaster of alcohol. Because perfume offends the nose. Alcohol offends entire generations.

Ask the child of a drunk father whether perfume and alcohol are the same. One creates memories of roses on Friday morning. The other creates scars that smell like fear.

Life is always this choice: alcohol or perfume. Not literally, but essentially. Alcohol is escape. Perfume is endurance. Alcohol numbs the pain. Perfume dresses the wound. Alcohol teaches you to run from yourself. Perfume teaches you to carry yourself with grace until Allah grants you something better.

And failure will always smell. That is life. You will fail in love, in exams, in business. The stench of disappointment will cling like sweat. Alcohol whispers, forget it. Perfume whispers, carry it with dignity. Islam whispers, repent, be patient, try again. And one day, what stinks will turn into fragrance.

So I choose perfume. Not because it hides the truth, but because it reminds me of what truth could become. Alcohol drags man into the mud of beasts. Perfume lifts him, however briefly, into the air of believers.

When I stand in prayer, I want my angels to smell roses, not the stench of despair.

Shuaib

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Salamuaikum

Jummat Mubarak