Hyposmia

I think my sense of smell is gone. Or if not gone, then certainly skewed.

It shouldn't come as a shock that nearly everything in this country smells terrible. Sometimes breath-stealingly terrible. I'll spare you any detailed descriptions of these olfactory abominations, but rest assured (as if you wouldn't) that searing heat plus a lack of any discernible sewage system does remind me of a rose garden in spring.

After a while you stop noticing how bad you and those around you smell, partly from acclimation and partly from inevitability. As the breezes of increasingly cooler mornings preach the end of summer, it still feels like a coat of defiant sweat has painted itself onto my skin, rage raging against the dying of the light. (Suck it Dylan!)

But none of that is the real problem. I mean, who really cares if man-stink or burnt donkey shit no longer sends them to seek a sensory sanctuary? In this kind of environment that might actually be an advantage. But losing one side implies loss of the other, and as a consequence I don't think I can even smell good things anymore!

This realization didn't hit me until just a few days ago. I was in the shower fighting futility when I began to stare down my soap/body wash bottle. To test my theory I opened the top and held it right up to my nose, taking a cartoonish whiff. Nothing. Not a damn thing. It could have been a mixture of sulphur and vinegar for all my nose told me. I then tried to think of the last time I remembered something that smelled good. Beer in Germany maybe?

While I'm reasonably sure that my newly discovered affliction will be cured when I leave this place, I also worry that it may come back too suddenly for my senses to process. Fortunately I can kill those senses with that very same German beer, and won't know the difference anymore!