Rinse, lather, roll, repeat

Simply put, a hammam is a steam room and communal bathing area where Moroccans go to bathe once a week, sometimes more.

"You want to go to the hammam with my mum today?" 

It was a simple question with an obvious answer. Because what I heard was, 'would you like to take a shower in a room larger than a walk-in closet that doesn't involve a small bucket and a hole in the wall?'

So I said yes. After a week of trying to figure out how to efficiently use a Turkish bath at home in a way that doesn't create a sopping mess of the bathroom floor (which I still haven't quite figured out), nothing sounded more appealing than a trip to the hammam.

So, with buckets full of the necessary supplies, a towel and a change of clothes in hand, I walked with my host mom and two sisters down the street to the closest one. It cost 10 dirham to enter and an extra 50+ dirham for the full treatment ($1 and $5+, respectively). Full treatment, as I've deemed it, entails the benefit of someone else washing you from head to toe. I decided to splurge this one time, because it seemed like a foolproof method: What better way to mask your confusion than behind the commands of someone else? In other words, I figured I didn't need to know what to do, so long as someone told me. We paid, and the attendant tossed us three bags of dark brown dirt-like material. A google search now tells me that it was rhassoul clay, a natural skin and hair care product. 

Nothing, not even four years of changing in a high school locker room, could have prepared me for what I was about to walk into.

I pushed past the door and found myself in what you could compare to a high school locker room, where we would strip down and store our belongings in lockers behind a counter monitored by a staff member.  Directly across from where I stood, two older women (I'd guess them to be in their early 60's) sat stark naked side-by-side, chatting as they dried. I looked at my little sisters (5 and 6 years old) and thought, okay; this is normal. No need to act as if it's not.

From then on, it was a game of monkey see, monkey do. My plan for the next hour involved any cliche that would get me from start to finish. When in Rome, right?

Following my host mom's lead, I peeled off each article of clothing. Having made the decision that I'd keep my sports bra on while I bathed (I'd read that this was an acceptable practice), I stood next to my family in just my under clothes. My sisters prodded and laughed at me, indicating that I had to take off the bra, too. No, I insisted; not this time. Once we were ready, we gathered our buckets and belongings and entered the hammam.

Thirty or so women between the ages of 4 and 70 waded around the hammam, which also took on the appearance of a giant locker room. All but a few of the women wore nothing but their underwear, and some didn't even have that much on. Suddenly, I felt more self conscious in my sports bra than I thought I would without it. Thus, off it came. I stood in a shallow pool of warm water, feeling completely vulnerable and unsure of what to do next while my host mom filled our buckets. Faucets on each wall churned out hot water for buckets, people walked between the two rooms, and the steam from the heat dampened my skin.

My host mom mixed the rhassoul with hot water until it formed a greenish, brown mud-like substance, and began lathering it onto her daughters. She offered me a handful so that I could do the same to myself. I felt like a child playing in the mud, which seemed counter-intuitive, given the circumstances. I rubbed in the clay as thoroughly as I could, often aided by the hand of my mom. She helped me get the spots I couldn't reach or had absentmindedly missed. To make things less awkward (for me, at least), I imagined that I was at the beach and she was lathering on sunscreen, no different than the way my real mom did for me when I was younger. 

Once the clay was sufficiently spread, I was ready for the "bath" to begin. Using the two buckets -- one small, one large -- I began splashing hot water on myself to rinse off. At this point, I was sitting on a stool meant for a child no older than five. Once I finished, a middle-aged woman took over. She grabbed a hand cloth that looked more like an Ove' Glove than something I would wash myself with, and began to scrub. She scrubbed hard. The point was to get the dead skin off, and off it came. Following her instructions, I lay down on my family's shower mat and did as I was told... which generally involved rolling from one side to the another. She scrubbed me from head to toe. Once she decided I'd had enough, she rinced me off and proceeded to my hair. She massaged in my shampoo, rinced and combed it, and braided it down my back. With nod to me and a few words to my mom, I understood her to mean that her work was done. She tossed one last bucket of warm water on me, got up and disappeared into the sea women.

At several points, I had no idea what the lady asked of me. It was one of the first times I felt helplessly stuck behind a language barrier, in which neither French nor Arabic could've saved me. My blank face stare and incorrect movements visibly frustrated her, but I tried my best not to let it get to me. From her point of view, I was an incompetent American at the hammam for a taste of another lifestyle so that I could tell everyone at home what it was like. If this is what she thought, then I can't say she's completely wrong. What she might not have realized, however, is that like everyone else in that room, I really just wanted a relaxing, hot bath. Fortunately, my mom and the woman next to me recognized my desire to understand, and they aided me as best they could. 

Shock and humiliation aside, I got through it. In actuality, it wasn't as strange of an experience as I might have thought. No, I'd never been in a room full of naked women or been cleaned by someone else since I was a child, but I'd also never seen such a community effort for something as simple as taking a bath. Mothers helped daughters, sisters helped sisters, friends helped friends, and strangers helped strangers. Age and relationship didn't matter, and people of all body types found themselves in a place where they could feel safe. I've tried to think of a similar predicament in the United States, but I've yet to find one.

I can't help but question certain sanitary aspects of the hammam (the floor is covered in about an inch of warm water rushing into drains, carrying the soap, rhassoul and dirt of the hammam goers), and yet I left the baths feeling the cleanest I'd felt in ages with skin smoother than I'd ever known. I might never know what that mysterious clay mixture is made up of, but a good part of me is willing to accept ignorance.  Next time, I'll save myself the extra few dirhams and the trouble of the hammam staff, and I'll do the cleaning myself.