Today was my very first visit to a proper hamam, an eastern bathinghouse.
I confess I was a bit anxious, not having a single clue what to expect apart from what I'd seen in movies and photo's. Both painted a loud, busy, chatty and intimate (wether asked for or not) picture of large women scrubbing their sons, daughters, and total strangers with the same fervour.
My mother, a good friend of hers and I arrived outside the Hamam around 1430, locked our bikes and went in to a tiny reception hall. Two Moroccan girls were just putting their shoes on, reminding us to take ours off by doing so. A woman in her early thirties wearing a tightfitting pink djeleba (http://www.ameerahimports.com/sf/images/3707.jpg) sat herself behind the desk and asked us what treatments we wanted, pointing at options like oliveoil-soap, a massage and mud (yes, just mud, no specifications).
She told us her husband was Dutch, and she'd grown up in Morocco. Whenever she went back on holiday, she would be treated like a tourist, being expected to pay ridiculous amounts for things she used to get for near to nothing. Just like my mother and her friend she loved Marakech, but unlike them she didn't dare take a trip in the Saharah, something both my mother and her friend have done and enjoyed hugely. Whilst they laughed I decided to add a trip to Morocco to my list of Things To Do Before I Die.
We decided to go for olive-soap and mud, and my mother's friend bought a scrubbing glove since she hadn't brought one. There was a selection of gloves, ranging from 'soft as a babies bottom' to 'sandpaper grade 10', and everything in between. She went for the babies bottom, which was a bright pink colour to match.
We went in to change, stripping down to knickers and throwing our own djeleba's on, bought by my mother when on holiday in Morocco a while ago. Then our pink lady led us into an utterly quiet space, showing us where to hang our djelebas, shower and adding that 'it's not as exiting here as it would be in Morocco'. We thanked her and showered, and I couldn't get over how quiet it was. There was one other woman there, and she was Dutch.
After the shower we lathered ourselves in olive-soap. With the soap still on us (as our lady had told us to) we stepped into the 'wet' sauna, a humid, steamy room. We sat down and I could feel the soap getting more and more slithery whilst it mingled with my sweat, and I couldn't help rubbing my legs and arms and scratching my calves, feeling little rolls of dead skin come free.
Suddenly a little boy stepped into the sauna, and sat down sobbing. I'd heard him yelping whilst I'd showered, and had seen who I presumed to be his elder brother chase him with a pale of water. My mother asked him if he was OK, to which he answered 'no', but he answered the same to wether we could help him. The only question he answered positively was wether it would be OK if we left him alone in the sauna, since we were done and had to start scrubbing.
After a rinse we started scrubbing, legs, arms, chests, backs, faces, feet, everything. Tiny bits of Ella swept down the drain. We then relaxed in the 'dry' sauna, my god I love a good sauna. Again I started rubbing my legs, and more skin rolled free. Through the sauna door I could see the little boy again, now lying down on a high table, being rubbed vigorously by his mother with one of the 'grade 10' gloves. He yelped and she added pressure with both hands, making long swipes across his body.
Out of the sauna, more scrubbing, rinsing, scrubbing, rinsing, till I felt like I'd lost at least one millimeter of skin. Strange how clean that makes you feel...
We then lathered each other in the mud, which wasn't thick but watery and oily, and had little bits of gritty stuff in it. In the meantime two new women had come in, both Dutch, blond and big. We must have looked strange, all of us covered from head to toe in mud, face and hair included, but they laughed with us and slapped on their own olive-soap.
After a last good rinse we were done, and went back to put on a dry (and clean, mud doesn't do knickers much good) pair of knickers, cream ourselves up and go into the 'lounging room' wearing our lovely djelebas. We ordered fresh orange juice, sweet mint tea, spinage and feta rolls and some baklava and biscuits.
In the room were three other women, all Dutch. I still didn't get it - where were the loud big scrubbing women? The only slighly loud and big woman was behind the counter making us tea, having shed the 'grade 10' scrubbing glove, but she was so lovely and soft that she was nothing near my first idea of a hamam-woman.
So I lay back in the cushions, drank my orange juice and listened to my mother trying her Arabic Moroccan (she's taking lessons) on the pink lady and soft woman, the corrections they made and all of them laughing. Then, suddenly, it was 1730, just as we'd agreed that we'd lost our sense of time. Time to go home, we'll be back soon.
