LEBANESE SOUL-2 : SABOUN BALADI

LEBANESE SOUL : my book-in-progress about that « miracle » of still feeling Lebanese, despite decades out of Lebanon !

Chapter 2 :

SABOUN BALADI (POPULAR SOAP) : 

THE FORMER « MAIDS’ SOAP » HAS BECOME TRENDY !   

When I was a kid, I used to spend some of my summer holidays in Zahlé, my mother’s family hometown. We stayed at Tante Emilie’s house, a beautiful house on the hills of the city, with a garden where we used to drink blackberry syrup, served in large glasses filled a lot of ice cubes…

Leaving Beirut for Zahlé for the summer was like going back to Lebanon’s traditions for us. These traditions included drinking homemade blackberry syrup - a taste no industrial syrup can ever reproduce. Or even better : climbing into blackberry trees to collect the blackberries that our aunties and women relatives would transform into syrup… 

 Among these « rural » traditions, was the evening bath we used to take in Tante Emily’s big bathroom. She had no running water in her bathroom in those times, and we used to sit in a bathtub and use a « kouz » (a water recipient) to wash and rinse. And a big cube of Aleppo soap, that our little hands could hardly grip…

Using Aleppo soap - that we used to call « saboun baladi » (popular soap) was for us very exotic. In Beirut, middle-class families like ours used to buy those Western brands advertised on TV or in magazines, and considered as very chic then : Palmolive, Cadum, and the best of all (or so everybody thought, because of its name) : Lux ! In our family, Aleppo soap was used only in the kitchen, and we never, never, would have considered using it for our shower or bath use ! 

We are now in 2022 and Aleppo Soap has become very trendy those latest years, thanks to the « organic », « ecological » and « anti-consumer » trends combined. The big green cubes, weighing sometimes as much as 400 grams, can be found in any organic shop and other trendy shops, whether in Paris, London, New York or Berlin, and, having rediscovered it, I like to use it at home - especially for my face.

I buy it not because it is trendy to do so, but because Saboun Baladi, that we used to despise so much decades ago, is a natural soap, made only with olive and laurel oil, and without any chemicals. And my skin loves it more than any other fancy industrial soap. Moreover, with its shape and smell, the big cube of Aleppo soap in my bathroom is like a material fragment of my happy Zahle childhood holidays, to be reminded every day…

Similarly, I use pure rose water to freshen my skin, instead of any beauty lotion. And likewise, rose water, almond oil, shea butter (used by West African women), and other traditional beauty secrets of non-Western countries, formerly called « underdeveloped » countries, and violently despised during colonial times, are now in fashion in the West… 

« Swing time », like the title of the best-selling novel by half-Jamaïcan British author Zadie Smith… : as westernized middle-class Lebanese, we used to despise our local, natural « popular soap », and valorize only imported, industrialized, Western brands. And now the West is turning into valorizing our traditional products !  « Baladi soap » was the cheapest soap in Lebanon decades ago ; in France now -  and other Western countries I suppose - Aleppo soap is now more expensive than industrialized brands, precisely because it is a traditional product, hand-made and not industrial… 

Colonial times are gone, and now is « Swing Time »… Tradition and Nature are slowly winning over Industry and Modernity. And national prides are winning over the « complexe du colonisé » as the French call it - the complex of the colonized.  

By the way, do you know that Europe discovered soap during the Crusades, in Medieval Times, in the region covering today Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Syria ? The Crusaders brought back kilos of Saboun Baladi on their ships back home, and Marseilles, the harbour city in the south of France where French ships both departed from and landed back, was thus the first European city to develop a soap industry, along the same recipe. 

Now called « Savon de Marseille » (Marseilles Soap), that French soap is the direct grandson of Aleppo Soap, made naturally with olive oil as well, and as much valued today as the latter. Aleppo Soap - and Marseilles Soap - are thus the ancestors of all other soaps used in the West since Medieval times, until the modern « Cadum », « Lux » and « Palmolive », and including your favorite shower gel or shampoo !

When you wash your hands or shower next time, think how Europeans - and Westernized Lebanese families - used to despise Saboun Baladi, the Father-of-All-Soaps, in the past… 

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