This article was sent to us by Imad al Kaka, who’se family is from Nablus.
I have been there once, and took a piece of soap with me from the very, very old soap factory.
Nablus soap
Dr. Mohammad T. AL-Rasheed
In happier times, when the name Nablus was mentioned to an Arab, he or she would conjure visions of olive groves and soap. ‘Saboon Nabulsi’, or Nablus soap, is of mythic significance to peoples of the eastern Mediterranean and western Asian regions. It is said that soap was invented in Nablus more than 3,000 years ago. It would not really surprise me since we still use this soap, and though we might stock our houses with the latest French products, it is rare to find a house that has no Saboon Nabulsi in its cupboards and larders – yes, larders! It is so fragrant with olive oil that it diffuses that scent into arty closed area.
Cubical in shape, heavy in weight, slightly green in color, and heavily laced with olive oil, nothing cleans both body and cloth like soap from Nablus. Arabs, in general, like to couple regions with products. They say you get best pomegranates and figs from Taif, mango from Egypt, olives and olive oil from Tolkarm an4 Nablus, Apricot from Balbeck, cherries and apples from Mount Lebanon, roses from Damascus, and so on. There was a famous song celebrating such delicacies and their regions that was popular in the early seventies.
As Sharon’s madness continues unabated, and what happened in Jenin and Nablus becomes clearer, there passed an item in the news stating that the Israelis demolished the two soap factories of Nablus. The news item went largely unnoticed, but it sort of drew my attention to the irony of what is going on in the West Bank. Sharon is not demolishing a people; he is demolishing a history that all humanity shares in.
The groves of Nablus were the preaching ground of Jesus. It is known that as people moved from Jerusalem to Upper Galilee, they passed through Nablus and stocked up on oil and soap. Jesus would not have been any different. But considering that Sharon has no respect for the Church of the Nativity where Jesus was born, I should not think his soap shop would rate any higher in Sharon’s mind.
The sense of irony begins to pile as one thinks more and more about this grave twist in human history. Soap, as is well known, is made of ash and oil. To be more precise, it is made of what is called ash soda. It is believed that people began burning saltwater plants to get the soda, otherwise known as nitre. The nitre, when added to oil, produces soap. So irony provides us with a vision unclouded: we see that there are those who produce the ash and those who create from it. Sharon can burn as he wishes, and President Bush can keep calling him a man of peace, but there is an indigenous population that makes life out of mere ash. Better still, a cleaner form of life.
Olive oil is a sacred commodity. It is mentioned in all three Books. People from the beginning of time have had an extraordinary relationship with the olive. Wasn’t it an olive branch the dove brought back to Noah? Its oil, in all its forms, was used in ways that ranged from lighting lamps all the way to anointing the blessed. To desecrate such a symbol by bulldozing ancient olive trees is not only a crime, but also a sacrilege in all religions. It takes a Sharon to dare commit such a crime.
The man seems like a figure out of the Old Testament; a Moloch or a Baal. He certainly fits any of those characters described with such ferocity in the Bible. He could be the sort of person who would use Moses’ absence on the Mount to convince the Israelites to worship the Golden Calf. Curiously enough, the Bible describes Sharon and his ilk from a long distance in History. I doubt that Sharon reads even his ‘own Book, but let me quote Jeremiah: ii.22 for him:. ‘For though thou wash with nitre and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord God.’
Even the soap of Nablus cannot wash hearts clouded with the fumes of hate and the bitterness of venom. That much is clear from the Biblical quotation. It is also clear to us who have lived to witness the crimes of Sharon. It is doubly so for those who are old enough to remember the crimes of Hitler.
Again irony peeks through the thin veils of language. Sharon was alive and well when Hitler was setting the twentieth century precedent of destruction and mass slaughter. He was alive and well in Europe; the part of Europe that does not know the olive tree, nor does it understand what olive oil is. Moreover, the Europeans Sharon was born amongst did not know what soap was till the seventeenth century. I doubt if a Moroccan or a Yemeni Jew would have the heart to cut an olive tree. He might kill an enemy, but he will not cut myrrh or a frankincense tree. He would know better.
Murderers will have their day. They will demolish and destroy, but they will also pay. If Lady Macbeth wondered aloud about one man’s blood when she was trying to clean her hands of invisible blood spots, (‘Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’) could we not imagine how much blood is in a whole nation? Lady Macbeth finally admitted that ‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’ Indeed, nor will all the soap of Nablus help either.