Lebanese Bottled Water And The Diaspora

I’m looking at this post over at Danielle’s about Lebanese restaurants in Trinidad. What caught my attention was the Sohat bottle of water at Little Beirut.

The presence of water that was bottled in Lebanon could have been due to the exceptional zeal of a restaurateur who wants to have as much authenticity as possible. But this is not an exception. I’ve seen Sohat water in many parts of the world where the Lebanese exist: From Australia to Trinidad. Even in this West-African country where I live, our local supermarket sells them by the boxes.

To think of it rationally, this is odd. It’s just bottled water and the good mineral ones are all supposed to taste the same. Moreover, shipping bottled water thousands of Kilometers is an act of environmental madness. But I guess this is a lesson in the power and irrationality of Lebanese nostalgia. Although Sohat officially doesn’t have a taste (they say so in their ads), to the Lebanese all over the world, it tastes just like home..