100% Laurel Halap – Soap

“Sea Jewel”

This is the last cube of Aleppo olive oil soap I have—so I'm ready to go out and look for more, because this style of soap has become close to my favorite. This one is odd because it doesn't seem to have a name (though there is, I believe, Arabic on the package, which I can't read) just a description: “100% Laurel Halap Soap”—so I guess the description is the name. It's also different than the others I used because this one is from Turkey. The entire packaging is this one, small square of paper that has five stars, a jar of olive oil, phone numbers of U.S. and Canadian distributors, a Turkish address, a gmail contact, date and expiration, and ingredients (97% Olive Oil – 3% Alkali) (though it also contains, apparently, Laurel oil). Then in a big all-caps text strip it says: “By Syrian Experience and Hands.”

People love this Aleppo olive oil soap, and I think all or most of it includes Laurel oil, as does this one. It's a lovely fragrance, one of my favorites. So I guess this soap is made by Syrian soap makers (they say) and it certainly has the same properties as the others I had. It's a brown, rough square, and then when you start using it, a beautiful green underneath. It's super hard and lasts forever. In the process of making it they stack it underground (I'm guessing because it's so hot there?) and age it for like a year. It should be the world's most pricey soap, but we can get it here in the West for cheaper than the chemical crap that comes from multi-national death factories. I don't know if there is any political (or soap-world political) significance of using this Turkish version. I'm not olfactory-ly sophisticated enough either, to tell a significant difference between this one and the last version I had that was from Aleppo. All I know is that I've been using this soap for a couple of months (off and on, of course) and it's still pretty substantial in size, and the scent is just so pleasing—really my favorite soap I have right now.

Also, this one floats, as did the Aleppo version I had last. I looked on the internet for the reason it floats, and the meaning of that—I couldn't find anything that didn't confuse me. It might be that no one, living or dead, knows—and it's beyond science. It might be mystical, or just one of those things. Or there might be a good answer, and I need to keep researching. Which I will do. I'll look for other versions, too. Shopping, researching, bathing, floating, smelling, washing, luxuriating, living, dying—all in a cube of soap.

Soap Review No. 89