New Short Fiction: Badar Salem’s ‘The Scent That Followed’

Badar Salem’s “نونينال-2” originally appeared in The Markaz Review.

The Scent That Followed

By Badar Salem

Translated by the author

She tried everything: air fresheners, candles, incense sticks, air purifiers, sage—but the smell would not go away. Until it arrived, she had been fine, content even: with her editing job, her looks, and her age, which compressed itself inward without leaving visible marks. She was getting old, sure, but the changes felt minor, manageable with some vitamins, a heavy moisturizer, and a good night’s sleep. Her periods no longer followed a schedule, showing up like an inconsiderate relative—too early or tormentingly late—but lighter than before. Her face flushed with the slightest effort, yet her body was fitter than ever. She looked fine, her health was okay, and her mental state wasn’t bad, either. The only real loss, the only thing she truly mourned, was her appetite.

She had once been to a foodie, obsessed with textures: the crunch of burnt sugar on crème brûlée, butter softening on a crusty toast, the crackle of fried chickpeas in fatteh, the shock of chili against briny olives. But sometime after forty-three, her appetite began to fade, like a song heard from the window of a passing car, gradually receding until you could no longer catch the words. She stopped craving new restaurants, stopped inventing recipes. Labna sandwiches could sustain her for weeks and she hardly noticed or cared for anything else. Chocolate, once her weakness, was abandoned in favor of bitter, cocoa-rich bars that tasted no different from burnt ash. If old age had a flavor, she thought, it would be dark chocolate: blunt, unsweetened, unforgiving. Her trainer insisted it was better for her, so she obeyed. “Better” had become the quiet mantra of middle age: better choices, better skin, better heart. Better than what? Better than before, though she no longer remembered what “before” had really been.

She believed she had reached an age where nothing could preoccupy her enough to keep her awake at night. She thought she had passed that turbulent stage of life, where a sudden phone call could ruin her entire day, or a critical article could unleash an internal hurricane of doubt that would rage for days. She no longer loved anyone to the point of breaking, nor did she feel a freight train of guilt passing over her soul if she hurt someone’s feelings. She was no longer afraid of losing more than she had.

Until she read that story.

It was an innocuous line in a short story she was editing. “A man, before leaving his house, lingered in the doorway before he turned back, sniffing the air, testing whether the smell of old age was beginning to cling.” That sentence undid her. Up until that moment, she had never heard of such a thing: “the smell of old age.” She froze mid-paragraph, lifted her fingers from the keyboard as if she had touched something sticky, and typed into Google: Is this real? Old person smell?  It was. Article after article confirmed it: studies, experts, remedies. “Old person smell,” as it turned out, was a recognized phenomenon, traced to a compound called 2-nonenal, produced by the oxidation of fatty acids in aging skin. “It’s basically sebum that has rusted,” as one expert said. The odor was often described as cardboard in a damp basement.

Old people smelled.

No one had ever told her, and she hadn’t been warned. No magazine, no beauty column, not even a cookbook had the decency to mention it.

She had always smelled like eid: showered, perfumed, and layered in lotions—it wasn’t a luxury, but a ritual of self-respect. She never left the house without a long shower and the overused essentials: perfume, sanitizer, hand cream, hairmist, watermelon gum. The very thought of not smelling good, even briefly, was unbearable. But the first morning after she read that story, she woke up to a scent she could not ignore. It was there. Not strong, but unmistakable. A faint odor of sourness, something humid and salty, as if the ocean had slipped inside her walls. But her city had no waves, no boats, no gulls, no fishermen, only sharp turns and hard lines.

She hated the sea. Once, in her twenties, on a trip to Cyprus with her sisters, she had fallen off a banana boat. Her life jacket slid up and off her chest, dragging her underwater. She kept swirling and swallowing water, the sunlight fracturing above her like broken glass. She was rescued—just in time, they said—but a part of her was never saved. She never tried to overcome her fear. After that, she lived in closed, landlocked cities, places where the sea could never follow. And yet now, somehow, it had come to her. Morning after morning, the sea lived in her bedroom: humid, salty, old.

She tried to find the source of the smell. She checked the corners of the room, the closets, the mattress, turned the bedspread over, pulled the sheets apart, washed them on high heat, changed the detergent, scrubbed the walls with soap, vinegar, hot water. But the smell remained. She replaced her usual creams with a thick, perfumed body butter, wore fresh pajamas every night, slept with the window open despite the cold, hoping the air would carry the scent away. Nothing worked. Each morning: she woke, walked to the bathroom, returned—and there it was again. Clinging. Inescapable.

Sleep began to abandon her. She lay awake, nose twitching, mind racing, searching for what had changed. She longed for the version of herself who hadn’t read that sentence, who hadn’t known. But knowledge doesn’t reverse. Then, one night, a thought offered a sliver of hope: maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe it was the room. The house was old, after all. Maybe it was mold, or the paint, or something hidden in the walls. Maybe it had nothing to do with skin, or age, or decay. Maybe she had simply internalized a fiction, turning it into a symptom, an illusion with a smell.

She needed to test the theory. If the smell followed, it was her. If it stayed, it was the house. Immediately, she booked a room at a five-star hotel for the night and performed her ritual in reverse: long, steamy shower, double shampoo, an exfoliating scrub, five full minutes of tooth brushing, the most expensive night cream, her coconut hairmist, new silky pajamas. She was meticulous: bed inspected—crisp, spotless—AC on for circulation. Worn down by weeks of anxious wakefulness, she fell asleep quickly, dreaming of water flowing through the walls of her apartment, curling around her ankles and rising slowly.

At seven, she woke like a soldier on a mission: sniffed the sheets, her armpits, her hair, her feet, then tiptoed into the bathroom, backtracking suddenly as if pouncing on prey, trying to surprise the scent, to outpace it by a second, to catch it before it disguised itself. Nothing. There was no smell. Standing still in the center of the room, blinking into the morning light, she realized it was all in her head. Of course. Of course. Age doesn’t smell. People can’t smell your age —not hers, anyway. That story had poisoned her mind. She chuckled to herself, made coffee, watched the news, slowly packed. As she stepped out of the room, she felt lighter, almost reborn. Walking down the thickly carpeted hallway, quietly dragging her suitcase, she stopped halfway, turned abruptly, went back into the room, opened the door and took a deep breath. Nothing. No smell. She had defeated it.

She glided toward the elevator. As she passed a housekeeping cart, two of the staff stood beside it, chatting quietly. “Bonjour, madame,” one said, while the other smiled politely. She nodded and returned the greeting, wishing them a lovely day, her words light, her smile wide. As she waited by the elevator, she heard their voices again, lower now, but still audible. “The room smells like . . . old age. Air fresheners won’t do. Seal the room.”

The elevator pinged.

And the sea rose in her throat.

Badar Salem is a Palestinian writer and editor,  ex-VICE, Bloomberg, & Variety. She lives in Montreal.