Middle Eastern Beauty, Readily Available on Atlantic Avenue

From Bond Street to Third Avenue, natural and organic beauty options

Essential oils behind the counter at Al Firdous.


First, we took you on a tour of the Middle Eastern food shops on Atlantic Avenue. This time, come along for a trip to the other end of western Atlantic to complete the Middle Eastern shopping experience on one of Brooklyn's main drags.

Before you reach Atlantic Terminal and the end of artsy and interesting Atlantic Ave., you'll find a variety of Middle Eastern beauty and clothing stores and bookshops. Quieter than their foodie counterparts, the stores are great for browsing at length.

At Anwaar Co., between Bond and Nevins, you'll find more black seed beauty products than one could ever imagine. The quiet store is a good place to browse solitarily without being bothered. A friendly woman in a black hijab stays behind the counter at the bright, neat shop.

If you’re looking for a purely consumer experience, Anwaar offers up an incredible array of shea butter products, natural and organic hair and body care, and a myriad of essential oils line almost an entire wall on one side of the store. Decorative bottles for these scents are stored under a glass case. Most of the black seed items are topical, but there are many to choose.

(For the uninitiated -- Muhammad was said to have claimed that black seed, the scientific name of which is nigella sativa, is “a cure for all diseases except death.”)

A little farther east on Atlantic is Al Firdous. This notions and cosmetics shop is smaller than Anwaar, just as quiet, and has a more varied selection of products. It’s manned by the Bangladeshi owner’s younger brother, Alamin, who sports a long beard and wears a taqiyah, albeit with jeans and sneakers. He's shy but quite knowledgeable.

Al Firdous has the air of being undiscovered by the neighborhood. Visit soon in order to get all the attention you need.
Alamin explained that black seed -- which is prominently advertised on Al Firdous’ awning -- is one of the store’s “top of the line sellers” in ingestible oil form. Several shelves are devoted to the purported cure-all, including the jars of the plain seeds themselves, which can be added to yogurt or cereal.

Toward the back of the shop are shelves with big lumpy, black, paper-wrapped packages called “African Soap,” sold by weight. Though it looks like a bulk item, waiting to be sliced and measured, Alamin said “people buy the whole thing.”

In addition to the soap, there are quart containers of shea butter piled on the floor, a variety of homeopathic remedies stocked along the walls, and the ubiquitous, colorful essential oil bottles behind the counter. The scents range from rose to “Halston,” with other knockoffs like CK One sneaked in there, too. Alamin pointed out the oils’ various prices “get better the more you buy.”

Dar-us-Salam Bookstore is right next door to Al Firdous, and though it specializes in books with titles like The Qur’an and Modern Science: Compatible or Incompatible?, one can also purchase toothbrushes and halal soap here.

Up at the counter is a stack of Sisters: The Magazine For Fabulous Muslim Women. The store extends through several rooms and is incredibly crowded with books and DVDs -- it seems the extra stock is piled in the middle of some of the main space, there are so many books.

On a recent snowy weekday, the shop was quiet, and staffed by an appropriately bookish-looking young man named Faisal. The shop appears to be a community hang-out, of sorts. A couple of reticent men, who didn’t seem to be either working or shopping, stood around the front counter and very occasionally spoke in Arabic with Faisal.

As at Al Firdous and Anwaar Co., numerous black seed products were on hand, and Faisal said “they’re for the immune system, but they’re not medicinal.”

In the back there is an assortment of djellaba (long, loose-fitting robes) and in another room, a glass case with beaded and embroidered women’s leather slippers. Faisal said all the books are from the Middle East -- none are published in the U.S.

If you haven't already, stop by one or all of these local shops. The experience will give you something to take home, even if you don't buy anything.

Have you visited any of these shops? Will you now?