Aleppo soap makes leap from souq to Paris suburb

An employee of the Aleppo soap company Alepia sorts out bars of soap in Santeny, 30kms from Paris, on December 19, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE LOPEZ

SANTENY // For those who know about such things, Aleppo soap is the finest. Rich in plant oils, fragranced with laurel, it is prized by devotees all over the world.

Like so much else, Aleppo soap is a victim of the war in Syria. But luckily, it has found salvation in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Paris where Hassan Harastani, a master soapmaker from Syria, is carrying on the age-old trade of mixing olive oil and laurel oil with water and lye to produce a high-quality cleanser.

The scent of laurel oil wafts through the corridors of the factory in Santeny, about 30 kilometres south-east of the French capital, where big blocks of soap are drying.

Wearing white overalls, Mr Harastani stirs a bubbling pea-green mixture in a giant cauldron while talking to businessman Samir Constantini.

Dr Constantini began importing soap from Aleppo in 2004 and later began producing the soap under the Alepia brand.

His plan had been to open a soap factory on the outskirts of Aleppo with Mr Harastani, a master of the art who learnt the trade from his father. But Syria’s civil war aid waste to his plans.

Mr Harastani and his family fled the fighting that turned the city into a charnel-house and symbol of suffering.

“We could no longer go to the factory because of the shelling and kidnappings,” he said.

With all but one or two of around 50 soap factories destroyed in Aleppo, Dr Constantini and Mr Harastini decided to start producing the soap on French soil.

“We left our country, our houses, our businesses, our friends,” Dr Constantini says. “I used to have lots of customers, in Syria but also abroad, in France, Italy, Germany, the Gulf countries, South Korea, Japan, China. I was an ordinary person who loved his work and his family. It’s the only profession I’ve known for over 35 years.”

On arriving in France, 4,000 kilometres from home, he resumed his trade.

Dr Constantini is keen to stress that although the soap is now made in France soap, it is still essentially Syrian.

“If a top French chef opens a French restaurant in New York it remains French cuisine, not New York cuisine. It’s the same for the soap. It is made by the master soapmaker Harastani and is, therefore, proper Aleppo soap,” he says.

The entire process — from the selection and mixing of the oils and lye through to the drying and cutting — is carried out according to family recipes dating back more than 3,000 years.

“I am very proud to carry on this tradition,” says Dr Constantini. “The know-how is not being lost. It will endure despite what is happening in Syria.”

The war, which has lasted almost six years came to a head in the eastern part of Aleppo last week, as thousands of hungry, terrified residents began being bussed out of the city after weeks of living under siege and bombardment.

For Dr Constantini the war has mushroomed into a “world war” pitting global powers against each other in a scorched-earth battle for control of the Middle East.

With no immediate end to the fighting in sight, he says the best thing he can do is “continue making this soap and hope that peace will return”.

Mr Harastani says he does not know what the future holds but is “not so pessimistic”. But of one thing, he certain. “We will return to Syria someday.”

* Agence France-Presse