المغرب
I read about the Hammam in one of the travel books I had taken out of the library. A communal bathing space. The place where the Moroccan gets clean once a week. It seemed to me, at first, repulsive. I promptly forgot this original opinion and put it at the top of my list of things to do when I arrived in Marrakesh.
we could buy soap, brushes, anything that one might need to become cleaner. We were handed a rough black sac the size of one’s hand that I correctly guessed was for the scrubbing. We entered a large cold room with benches and three large Moroccan ladies behind a high counter. It was with them that we left our belongings.
My Hammam angel came in the form of a Moroccan woman who took weekly trips there as a child with her mother and six siblings. She arranged the trip for us with the driver. We were to go for a matinee, from 11 to 3. She asked me what I preferred, the traditional or the spa-like. I said traditional, although in that moment I really wanted to be pampered, massaged and have my legs waxed for under a dollar. She said that she preferred the traditional too and so off we went to the hammam, traditional, that had a large painted sign above it, declaring it so for a scheduled, four hour shower.
Latifa ordered something from the ladies for 30 dh. I said I wanted one too, although I didn’t know what it was, but anything for 30 cents couldn’t be wrong. The ladies handed Latifa four blue buckets, two medium and two large, and two plastic pails with long handles, one pink and square, the other blue and in the shape of a heart. I watched a woman enter the hammam in an attempt to figure out how to act and what to bring. She had a towel and was in her underwear. I asked Latifa if I should get completely naked. I understood yes and passed my panties over the counter, but she still had hers on. I pointed to them and she just shrugged so I just shrugged and walked into the next room in the buff feeling like there was a high likelihood that I was
A blue tiled wall separated the mens side from the womens, and each had our own window where
not going to enjoy the experience as I don’t particularly like strangers or saunas. We hung our towels on hooks and peaked into the hammam where I could thankfully feel the warmth that was absent in the first room.
I caught a woman’s gaze in the door way of the communal area who was naked and sitting upon a short plastic stool. We entered the room with our buckets and I took a brief scan, trying not to stare at anyone in my curiosity. The Moroccan ladies with the whiteyellow skin and dark hair and their daughters with darker skin and dark hair washed themselves and each other with their buckets in front of them, most, in their underwear.
Latifa first cleaned a little corner of the room that was vacant, rinsing our buckets before filling them up with lukewarm water. While she was washing I filled the other three buckets, assuming that was what I was supposed to do. When she came back she stuck a hand in one and frowned. It was too cold. She frowned again. They were all too cold. We took them back to our spot, me lifting them to carry, but she said no, drag them on the floor like this, and so I did each time we went back to the faucets that stuck out of the wall. The queen of the faucets was a woman with large breasts who smiled and asked Latifa, “is it her first time? Tell her that the Moroccan woman can’t go without a good scratch.” She tapped her pail on the wall near the faucets, signaling that the water was not hot enough and whoever was back there made it be so which made Latifa happy and we refilled our buckets. Loving a hot bath, I was excited to have the steaming hot water pouring into my buckets. The queen of the faucets turned on the cold water so that it poured in too and turned my hot down to a trickle. She stuck her hand in my bucket to signal that it was too hot. I wanted the water hot. So we went back and forth with this once or twice, she looked surprised that I was so indignant but if the traditional way was lukewarm water, I didn’t want to do it right and I slid my bucket away from her back to our corner where Latifa had found and washed us a little
mat for which I was thankful considering my compromising condition sans underwear sitting in a communal bath house of people who hadn’t bathed in a week. I’m not sure what I would have done if I had of shown up alone like I had planned. For her, I am eternally grateful. First we washed our bodies with the natural black soap that looked like a solid, translucent dark green paste and was wrapped in waxy newspaper, like what the coupons come on. It felt so nice, like cream, and we pinched off little pieces of it and rubbed it everywhere. She started scratching her skin with the black glove that we had been given and I could see tiny rolls of her skin shluffing off and accumulating on her arm. She had just spent a week in the desert and exclaimed how dirty she was. I started to do the same with less effect, but doubted it was because I was less dirty, not having an overly thorough washing routine at this time myself. The little pails we used to dip into our buckets and poured the water down our bodies for rinsing. It was sensational. Latifa said she would get the lady. When she came back she said, “her name is Zara,” and we continued to scratch. I expected to be attended to in a moment but I was left scratching so long that I began wondering, “where is Zara?” Zara came in, a full breasted woman in black underwear that rolled under the weight of her belly. She was not overly adept at guiding my body to where she wanted it to go and so there was a
lot of me gingerly trying different positions and her saying no. I finally understood to lay on my stomach on the ground while she took my glove and scratched me hard. Latifa pleaded for her to go easy on me as it was my first time and my skin was already getting pink. Zara was not concerned, and neither was I. I wanted the full scratch that Zara had to offer. She raked her gloved hand across my back, neck, positioned me on my side and did my thighs, butt and armpits, my chest and my belly. She was indifferent to the fact that my hands cupped her breast while she scratched my arms, my fingers involuntarily teasing at her nipple. Before rinsing me, she rinsed herself, pouring off the rolls of skin that she successfully motivated off of my body. Latifa was getting the same treatment beside me. Zara offered to stay for the hair washing but I declined and gave her a heart-felt “shokrun” of gratitude. An old lady in the corner opposite us pasted her red hair with the white roots in Moroccan shampoo (see volume one). She was committed to her cleaning routine, her hands moving deftly and repeatedly over her body and in every orifice. She removed her teeth and cleaned them several times as well. I washed my hair with mint PertPlus which left my scalp pleasurably tingling and I thought never had I before experienced such pleasure in a hair wash. Next to me a woman was combing through her long black hair with
tangle-free ease. Often knotted, I noticed the tool that she used a flat comb in her palm with many small plastic spikes. Latifa had bought one at the window, so my head got the tangle-free massage as well. The experience was truly selfloving and deeply entranced me into relaxed appreciation. After the shampoo was the henna, which Latifa had mixed up in one of our little scoops. It was gritty and, well, the color of henna. Latifa said it would give our skin a yellow tint and I wondered if that was why the Moroccan women appeared yellow. I rubbed it all over.
We shared a pumice for our feet from the woman to our right. Communal pumice. I smiled at the little girls that stared at me and who I stared at, and at the older ones too. To the children, that is life, they go to the hammam to be washed with their mothers, among their neighbors who kiss each other and smile. I filled the buckets of a woman who asked. Latifa said, “here we share, we don’t have to ask. After the soap, we are done and can leave the hammam.� She handed me another bar of soap which felt redundant as I was confidently already cleaner than I had ever been in my entire
life. I lathered up for good measure and rinsed with the second to last bucket of warm water before rinsing again with the cold, to close the pores, and get the body ready to go out. The last bucket was saved until after we had reclaimed our belongings from the counter and dressed. We used it to wash our feet one last time before putting back on our socks and shoes. I offered Latifa water, she offered me an orange, which she said was a traditional after-hammam treat.
I am high on a day of living high, wandering the Medina with Sadek and his mother who love to shop. We ate lunch at the golf club. We took tea with jewelry shop owners. You want a coconut cookie? Here is a coconut cookie. You like those necklaces? Have a necklace. Before lunch the girls grandfather bought them a piano. He signed a check for
$1800 dollars. For the rest of the day he asked, “who bought you a piano?” with a huge grandfather grin on his face. He reminded Lila many times that the next time he visits, she will play him a song, and he stretched out his fingers ton the keysto-be. She is practicing now. I watched two men sew together leather bags while
Sadek tried on shoes. Everything hand made, right there, in the backs, lofts or fronts of the shops. Cutting boards, shoes, paintings, gilded metal, and items from old ‘recylcing enner tubes’. Yoko walked up and down the streets calling out “Je m’appelle Yoko” to the shoppes-men.