36 bottles of Bint el Sudan

By Alison Bate A well-worn package arrived today from northern Nigeria. The Fedex package looked lumpy, heavily inspected, with yellow and blue stickers and tape splashed with orange type declaring “Inspected by Canada Customs”. The sender: W.J. Bush & Co. of Kano, Nigeria. The original...

Memories of Bint el Sudan

By Alison Bate In the recently-published article about my grandfather and Bint el Sudan, there wasn’t room to include all the information and memories I collected about the perfume. Here, then, are some of the emails I received about Bint el Sudan, starting with the present, and followed by memories of...

Bint el Sudan, my grandfather. . .and me

My grandfather E.E.Burgess, left, and another W.J. Bush agent in Africa On a trip that took me to Africa, I found my grandfather’s lasting legacy—the continent’s signature scent—in a market in Sudan. This story “The Bint Formula” is in the December 2009 issue of Reader’s Digest...