Started in the thousand-year-old practice of Nablus soap-making by a distant relative, Umm al-Abed is now passing on the secrets of this practice, designated as an Intangible World Heritage by UNESCO.
Umm al-Abed makes handcrafted soap at her home in the village of Salem, east of Nablus, one of several small soap workshops in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The process is rudimentary, involving a plastic bucket on a concrete patio and just three ingredients: olive oil, water, and lye.
“The person who taught us how to make soap was an elderly relative from the village of Immatin. A long time ago, about 20 to 30 years ago, she came here and made soap,” Umm al-Abed said.
He said, “When she cooked the oil, I watched how she did it. I learned the processes and I started making soap myself. I made it for all the residents of the village.”
The women behind Umm al-Abed were working hard. One poured olive oil from a container, then added lye. Using a long stick, he stirred the mixture with one hand and poured it into the water with the other. As he did so, the mixture slowly turned bright green.
Cooking is done over wood fire in oil drums. When the mixture is ready, it is poured into large plastic-lined trays and left to cool and harden.
The huge blocks are marked by hand before being cut into smaller bars of soap from a large metal sheet.
The artisanal process handed down from generation to generation has recently been added to UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage.
‘It needs to be preserved’
It joins other Palestinian entries such as hikaye, the female storytelling tradition, traditional dabkeh dance and embroidery.
According to the United Nations cultural organization: “The use of olive oil reflects people’s strong connection with nature, and many people use their homemade soaps as personal gifts for celebrations such as weddings and birthdays. “
“Most families in Palestine share this tradition, with both men and women participating in all stages of production” and children helping to cut and pack it.
In Nablus, the Tukan Soap Factory, founded in 1872, continues to produce bars.
It was founded “in the Ottoman period and has been making soap ever since”, said Nale Kubbaz, head of the factory.
He sat in his office surrounded by faded photographs of men wearing suits and fez, all members of the Abdul Fattah Tukan family, co-founders of the factory.
The output of the site is significantly higher than that of the artisanal workshop of Umm al-Abed.
On the factory floor, a layer of soap covered the entire room from wall to wall. A barefoot soap maker walked slowly towards the back of the room and was cutting the huge soap carpet into individual pieces of exactly the right size.
Thousands of individual soaps were then stacked into hollow round towers to dry before being individually wrapped.
UNESCO’s recognition of Nablus soap is “an acknowledgment by the global community of the importance of this craft and the need to preserve it,” Qubbaz said.
Doing so was especially important “given the Israeli occupation’s efforts to undermine these traditional industries,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
