Why I Write

By way of introduction

I am writing this during a blackout, with a black cat pressed against my side for warmth. Outside, the city has gone quiet in that particular way that only arrives when electricity disappears. Just cold air, darkness, and attention sharpened by necessity. Soon the power generators will start and their hum and smell of burned fuel will fill the winter air.

This is not an unusual scene for me anymore. In Ukraine, it has become a way of thinking.

I hesitate when people ask what exactly I do. The answer resists neat categories. I am not here to report in the conventional sense, nor to explain events as they unfold. I am here to witness: to stay with places, people, materials, and words long enough for something essential to surface.

Much of my recent work has taken place on the eastern frontiers in Ukraine. I travel, listen, observe, and write, not only about destruction, but about what continues to exist alongside it: memory, culture, habits, rituals, humor, stubborn beauty. I am interested in how people hold on to meaning when the structures around them fracture, and how culture survives not as an abstract idea, but as something practiced daily and often without recognition.

Before any of this, I wrote a book called The Rooster House. It was written well before the full-scale invasion, and it is a book about family, inheritance, silence, and the long afterlife of history inside private lives. Writing the book taught me how to listen to what is said, and to what remains unspoken. That training matters now as I move through places marked by loss.

Parallel to this work runs another thread: perfume. I have spent many years working with scent, treating it not as ornament or luxury, but as material knowledge. Perfume is history made volatile. It is about chemistry, craft, and memory at once. It teaches patience, precision, and respect for time. A formula cannot be rushed. A raw material carries geography, climate, labor, and tradition within it. In difficult moments, I return to scent because it grounds me. You cannot experience it without paying attention.

There is also language. I translate from Persian, because poetry has taught me how to endure complexity without resolving it too quickly. Translation is an exercise in humility. It reminds me that meaning is fragile, that beauty often arrives indirectly, and that some truths must be approached at an angle. When the world fractures, poetry offers another scale of time.

These threads of witnessing, material knowledge, and language intersect here.

I am a writer by vocation, a perfumer by training, and a translator by inclination. I move between countries and disciplines, often because the borders between them feel artificial to me.

This Substack is a place for long reads and field notes. I write about travel, culture, scent, books, and the small rituals that make difficult days livable. Some pieces are written from the road, some from quiet rooms, some from places where quiet is no longer guaranteed. Occasionally, I share translations or fragments that have stayed with me. Some writing will remain open to all; some will live behind a quieter door, for those who wish to go further.

I hope you will find something that steadies your attention, sharpens your senses, or reminds you why beauty still matters, especially when the world feels unstable.

If we haven’t met before, I would love to know more about you and your interests. Meeting new people always inspires me, and I enjoy sharing stories.

A blurry selfie taken with my cat Lola, Kyiv during black out.