An afternoon at the hammam

The shrill voice of the woman pierced the heavy hot air, ricochetting off the hard tiled walls, looking for escape but finding it turning upon itself high up in the domed ceiling of the room. I did not know what she was shouting, but only that there was not enough space around us for the shrieking sounds to catch a foothold and come to rest and the echoes seem to grow and increase at a pace, joining the new and continuing cacaphony. This was not the normal stillness and serenity normall associated with water and steam rituals of the hammam... (Fes, the old medina)

Water is my element.

It is therefore probably not surprising that wherever I go, I seek out the rituals that involve water – or if the water is turned to steam, as in a sauna or steam room, then that too to me is sheer bliss.

In Japan I could easily spend a few hours each day indulging in the cleansing and soaking process of the Japanese baths – and one of my favourite memories is of the hours Ann and I sat in the natural warm water of the baths carved out of the rock under the ryokan against the mountain side outside Hakone.

In Iceland Inge introduced me to the singular pleasure of floating on my back in the hot thermal spring water of the Blue Lagoon, steam rising from the surface and clouding the presence of everyone else, only my icy nose and my toes sticking out of the water and reminding me that the temperature is minus 14'C. In Taupo Hilary and Pat allowed me to sit in their thermal pool for hours on end, gazing out at the snow covered peaks of the mountains across the lake, and even as we crossed the pirate infested waters of the Arabian gulf of the coast of Somalia, I lay in the super hot sauna and enjoyed the pleasures of the heat and steam.

So needless to explain that I am in my element here in Morocco – for here the hot water and steam ritual form part of the daily lives of the Moroccans – in the form of the hammam.

In every city and town and village there is a building dedicated to this pleasurable – and necessary ritual of cleansing. Just like the mosque in every community often seems to be the only building that is not made of simple mud and straw, the only buuilkding that does not look like it dates back to the 12^th century – which they in fact often do, and the only building that is decorated and painted and adorned with the beautiful green roof tiles, just so the hammam is something quite special – not on the outside, but inside where the ritual takes place.

Depending on the size of the community and number of people, the hammam is used by men and women -- the men in the morning until 12 noon and then again in the evening after eight, and the women from noon to 8pm

Usually even the simplest hammam has at least two rooms – more often there are four or five or even more rooms. The rooms are heated – through the walls and floors – I believe through and intricate system of hot water pipes and even in the poorest village's hammam there might not be as much heat as in the bigger cities' hammams, but the water is warm. The further you go into the hammam, the hotter it becomes – the inner most room where the well with running hot water is, being the hottest – sometimes like a very hot sauna, with steam clouding around the bodies of everyone there and everything slightly blurred, lines softened, rendering the figures almost insubstantial – a gossamer scene that could only be described in the softest water colours. The steam rises up into the domed ceiling, swirling around and then swept away through the round holes at the top that open up to the blue sky above.

Every person finds a spot on the tiled floor where she sits either on a plastic mat or a small plastic stool, demarkating her territory around her with two or three large buckets of hot water that she has collected from the well. She first rubs her entire body with a dark brown gooy soap made from olives, henna, sugar, lemon – the recipe often a family secret, the consistency and effectiveness depending on the quality of the soap. When her entire body is covered with this brown substance, it is time to look around and start chatting with her neighbours. There are women who look ancient, their bodies a mass of wrinkles and folds and scars, backs bent into permanent hunched-over shapes, legs bowed from years' of carrying heavy loads, hands gnarled and wizened faces. There are young nubile girls, their bodies still waiting to find their own true form, long thick tresses flowing down the curve of their backs. Young mothers, already thickening around the hips and waist, sit against the warm wall and breast feed their smaal babies, toddlers having soap brushed through their hair and screaming as the knots refuse to release, others mimicking the movements of their elders in making sure that the brown olive soap covers every inch of their small dimply bodies. Little girls smile coyly across the nude bodies of their mothers and grandmothers at each other, wondering if they have just made a new best friend, and the odd small boy gets shouted at very quickly when his boisterousness points him out as the unwanted opposite sex in the midst of this all-feminine coven.

After the brown goo has been allowed to soften and become smooth on your skin in the heat and steam of the atmosphere, you take your washing mitten – a mitten made of very rough and abrasive fabric – and start defoliating your entire body. Every centrimetre of your body is rubbed and rubbed and rubbed some more, until there is not one possible bit of dead or old skin left and your entire body glows and tingles. When you have a moment you turn to your neighbour and offer to do her back for her and she would lie down on the tiles so that you can rub her back and legs down for her. She will then do the same for you. Or, if you wish, for a few dirham, one of the women who work in the hammam will come rub you down – but be sure to ask someone who hasn't had a bad hair day – the experience can be quite tortuous – they don't take a chance on leaving anything behind once they are done with you. This rubbing down – or 'gommage' – can go on for an hour or longer. Every few minutes you scoop some hot water out of your buckets and pour it over the area already done – and then start again. Every now and then, when there is only some water left in the bucket, you will treat yourself to having your neighbour pour its entire contents over your head – the hot water washing away the last remnants of dirt and dead skin. You then go to the well and fill up your buckets again with fresh hot water – at the sdame time checking if any of the other women's buckets need refilling – everyone there helping each other – al the time chatting and laughing and telling stories and gossip; this is the time of the women – when their veils and burkas, their clothes and their facades, their restrictions and worries and prejudices are removed, when they are stripped down to who they truly are. This is where they come at least once a weak to shed that which weighs them down and where they can be themselves. And it is beautiful. The curves and rounds and hills and valleys, from the palest alabaster to the darkest ebony, completerly clean-shaven and glistening, weatered and wrinkled or smooth and plump, long black hair dripping and clinging in coils, here and there the filigree of henna'ed hands chasing the steam in a whirl and laughter bouncing off the tiled walls. It is truly beautiful.

The hammam in Chefchaouan was my first one on this trip to Morocco and I was so excited to get there, looking forward to the heat and steam and hot water after the days of rain and cold and sleeping in the open. Like everything else in Chefchaouan, the hammam was blue and entering it was really like stepping underwater, a strange ethereal feeling of floating. But the water was not quite hot enough, meaning there was no steam, the soap was sticky and hard and stayed clumpy on my skin and the hammam attendant kept on asking me to pay her – a little strange considering as I was sitting there on the floor, no clothes on, my purse locked away in a locker in the entrance to the hammam. If I knew a Darija swear word, I would have used it there. (are there swear words in Darija?)

Rabat was a cmpletely different experience. The hammam was ancient – the damp marks of centuries of steam and heat creating beautifully green and blue and saffron designs on the white washed domed ceilings, the sun shining through the round air vents in the dome splashing down on the wet zellij tiled floor below in prism patterns. My two 'neighbours' sitting in the next-door circle of hot water buckets turned out to be Zuhor, the retired Moroccan Minister of Cultural Affairs and Haouria, a political television reporter on French television. Zuhor had a cornucopia of home made soaps and lotions, pre-wash and after-wash, conditioners and shampoos, mittens of different abrasive levels and a font of information how best to make the hammam experience an unforgettable one. In between scrubbing and rubbing and lathering and massaging, we talked about France and Morocco and culture and music and traditions and food and sugar and spice and all things nice. Haouria has been around the world reporting on political events and it was so refreshing to hear first hand what is happening in the 'real' world out there. Zuhor was fascinated to hear about life on the truck and wanted to make sure we will not miss a thing while in 'her' beautiful Morocco. She wanted our whole group to come for dinner at her house, but when I told her there were fourteen of us, she suggested that perhaps only I came, but, as we were camping out in the forest ourside Rabat, this was not feasible. We settled for lunch – where, glowing and clean and rejuvenated, we continued our interesting discussions. What a magic hammam day that was!

Today I go off to the medina of Marrakesh to seek out the pleasures of this vibrant city's hammams. I am sure to tell you all about it on another occasion...