Anatolia Daphne – Olive Oil Soap
/“Dawn of the Dead”
Out of the fancy box, this soap is a big, beige, rough-hewn rectangle, as if cut from a block, odorless, colorless, unadorned. It's 5.7 oz, so average size I guess. I was given this as a gift; I've never seen it in a store. It comes in this nice, slide-open cardboard box—which seems handmade—it's a nice box—I've seen wristwatches and expensive perfume come in boxes this nice. It seems like it could have been expensive, but looking online, it's not. There's a lot of info on the box—it says traditional, handmade, 100% natural, and there's contact and product details, and ingredients, which are: “Olive Oil, Soap Base, Vegetable Oil, Water.” I don't know... that's not specific enough for me. Soap Base. There is a website, a pretty nice one, which includes other Anatolia Daphne products.
The production address is Hatay, which is a Turkish province that borders on Syria. It's not far from Aleppo, actually, where the last olive oil soap I used is from. It's on the eastern Mediterranean coast which is, of course, a good region for olives, and olive oil, and olive oil soap. I could start reading about the history and politics of this little area, but I'd be here all day and probably still not understand anything. Of course, recently, there is the news of war from the Turkey and Syria border. I tried to read about that, and was mostly confused. It's not easy to understand, and I imagine, not necessarily agreed upon by those with knowledge on the conflict. I'll likely become more informed about all this, as war rages and the politics churn, but I don't pretend I'll become expert about the intricacies, subtleties, and implications of the history and politics. This got me thinking about how what you see on the news is the bad stuff—I know this is obvious, but you forget that. You see news about a region where there is conflict and you think it's it's 100% war zone, death and destruction. But there are people there going on with their everyday lives as much as possible. How much is business as usual and how much is disrupted or tragic, it's hard to tell. Of course the news goes where the action is, where the tragic stuff is. I'm not saying the news should just drop in on an area at random—of course it goes where the dire stories lie. But maybe for every news story about a distressing situation in a particular area, you owe it to yourself to check out something positive about the place. I guess this is where traveling comes in, and people who travel a lot definitely have a more balanced perspective of the world. I know I have not traveled nearly enough, and the little traveling I have done, I mean out of this country, has been really valuable to my perspective.
Back to the soap—it's a nice, no-nonsense soap, and has that olive oil quality, nice on your skin. It's totally uniform, but there were a couple little black specs in it here and there, which just made if feel more legit as handmade soap. I took a picture of one of the specs and would have liked to put it under a microscope. I suppose it was just some part of a plant or a piece of something. There is supposedly no fragrance in this soap, but it does have a smell— I tried to describe it—can't really—it's gentle and pleasant—I guess it's the fragrance of the olive oil. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was laurel oil, like the last olive oil soap. But that's not listed in the ingredients, and if it's there, it's really subtle. One more thing—and the biggest mystery of all. The olive oil soap form Aleppo floated... which I only knew because I read that, and then tested it. I don't know why. I thought maybe because of the olive oil composition, but I have no idea. But I decided I should test every soap from now on to see if it floats or sinks. Most sink. This one, I'm sad to say, sinks. So maybe there goes my olive oil theory? I don't know. I probably won't mention it, in the future, unless a soap actually floats.
Soap Review No. 76