Sohat mineral water in various formats, a fixture in Lebanese life since 1910. (Credit: Jad Abu Jawdeh / L’Orient-Le Jour)
A plastic bottle — large or small, for sharing or carrying in your pocket — but always recognizable among a thousand. Its blue cap and matching label have changed in design over the years, but remain a reference point from one generation to the next. The Lebanese have seen this bottle so often that they barely notice it anymore. It is part of the everyday landscape. The clear liquid inside it, mineral water, has no color or distinctive shape. People drink it as naturally as they breathe, in a gesture so ordinary that it goes unnoticed. Yet Sohat belongs to that rare category of objects whose familiarity has made them iconic: present in every hand, on every table, in refrigerators, schoolbags, construction sites, and even at presidential palace meetings, the brand has almost disappeared behind what it contains.But this now-ordinary water...
A plastic bottle — large or small, for sharing or carrying in your pocket — but always recognizable among a thousand. Its blue cap and matching label have changed in design over the years, but remain a reference point from one generation to the next. The Lebanese have seen this bottle so often that they barely notice it anymore. It is part of the everyday landscape. The clear liquid inside it, mineral water, has no color or distinctive shape. People drink it as naturally as they breathe, in a gesture so ordinary that it goes unnoticed. Yet Sohat belongs to that rare category of objects whose familiarity has made them iconic: present in every hand, on every table, in refrigerators, schoolbags, construction sites, and even at presidential palace meetings, the brand has almost disappeared behind what it contains.But this now-ordinary...
