Just a warning: This is about a public bath so it will include discussion of partial/full nudity.
ISA organized small group trips to the hammam for our first time, so my first time was with a group of about 5 girls along with Iman, our female ISA director. We brought our shower supplies and towels, as well as mats, little water scoops, small plastic hair brush things, black soap (made from some part of olives), henna powder, spare underwear, and these little scrubby mitts. Well, ok Iman brought most of that the first time but I now am in possession of all the hammam supplies! We walk into the first room, which looks like a locker room, where a few women are laying or sitting down in their towels. They are clearly done and are just hanging out, relaxing, before they get dressed to leave. While Iman pays and gets us large buckets, we wonder if we are just supposed to start stripping here or not. Tentatively, we start, and then a woman walks in and strips as fast as I have to during quick costume changes in dance shows! This makes us more comfortable, so we strip down to our underwear (no bras), wrap up in our towels, and wait for Iman. When we are all ready, we walk through a door into a steamy room that is mostly empty, and through to an even hotter and steamier room where there are women seated all around the walls, bathing. There are two pipes running around the room, one blue for cold water and one red for hot, with little faucets every few feet. We find a spot where most of us can fit, set down our mats, and start filling out buckets from the faucets. We sit down and Iman tells us first to just use our scoops to pour warm water on ourselves. After a few minutes of this, she mixes the black soap and henna powder with some water to make this green slime and tells us to rub it everywhere. During this, another dancer in my group and I ask Iman if it is ok to take off our underwear since about half of the women in the room were not wearing any and it kind of got in the way. She seemed surprised, but told us it was perfectly fine, she just never expected American girls to be comfortable with it. We told her that as dancers and performers, sometimes you have to change in front of other people, so a lot of the time you just get more comfortable with it. I know it seems weird from an American perspective, but bathing in underwear is just not that comfortable. Note: Apparently full nudity does not fly in the male hammams. After covering ourselves in the green slime (or as I like to call it, playing “swamp thing”), we rinse it off. Iman then shows us how dead skin comes off in rolls if you rub a finger over your arm. This next part was definitely the most different and memorable part of the hammam experience. Two at a time, we go to the middle of the room with our mats and our scrubby mitts to where a couple almost naked women (just underwear like everyone else) are waiting to scrub us. I lie down, and she takes some of the black soap and proceeds to scrub me cleaner than I have ever been in my life. Without language, she has to point and prod and sometimes just grab me and move me where she wants me to be. Almost every inch of me was scrubbed, and hard. It even hurt sometimes, but I just tried to grit my teeth and bear it. You can say “shwiya, shwiya” (one of our most used words meaning something like “a little”) to get them to lighten up, but I wanted to see what it was like to just let them do their thing. After being scrubbed, we returned back to our corner to wash our hair and then use our own “nice” smelling soap before a final rinse off. We used the little plastic brush things while washing our hair and I have actually started using the brush in the shower, too. It makes it easier to rinse out all the shampoo or conditioner and makes my hair turn out smoother and less tangled. After this, we walked back out to the locker room, sat for a little bit, got dressed, covered our hair (Moroccans believe wet hair is the quickest way to get sick so you have to cover your hair or they will cover it for you), and went home to relax. I loved it so much, I have been back about every other week since :)
ISA organized small group trips to the hammam for our first time, so my first time was with a group of about 5 girls along with Iman, our female ISA director. We brought our shower supplies and towels, as well as mats, little water scoops, small plastic hair brush things, black soap (made from some part of olives), henna powder, spare underwear, and these little scrubby mitts. Well, ok Iman brought most of that the first time but I now am in possession of all the hammam supplies! We walk into the first room, which looks like a locker room, where a few women are laying or sitting down in their towels. They are clearly done and are just hanging out, relaxing, before they get dressed to leave. While Iman pays and gets us large buckets, we wonder if we are just supposed to start stripping here or not. Tentatively, we start, and then a woman walks in and strips as fast as I have to during quick costume changes in dance shows! This makes us more comfortable, so we strip down to our underwear (no bras), wrap up in our towels, and wait for Iman. When we are all ready, we walk through a door into a steamy room that is mostly empty, and through to an even hotter and steamier room where there are women seated all around the walls, bathing. There are two pipes running around the room, one blue for cold water and one red for hot, with little faucets every few feet. We find a spot where most of us can fit, set down our mats, and start filling out buckets from the faucets. We sit down and Iman tells us first to just use our scoops to pour warm water on ourselves. After a few minutes of this, she mixes the black soap and henna powder with some water to make this green slime and tells us to rub it everywhere. During this, another dancer in my group and I ask Iman if it is ok to take off our underwear since about half of the women in the room were not wearing any and it kind of got in the way. She seemed surprised, but told us it was perfectly fine, she just never expected American girls to be comfortable with it. We told her that as dancers and performers, sometimes you have to change in front of other people, so a lot of the time you just get more comfortable with it. I know it seems weird from an American perspective, but bathing in underwear is just not that comfortable. Note: Apparently full nudity does not fly in the male hammams. After covering ourselves in the green slime (or as I like to call it, playing “swamp thing”), we rinse it off. Iman then shows us how dead skin comes off in rolls if you rub a finger over your arm. This next part was definitely the most different and memorable part of the hammam experience. Two at a time, we go to the middle of the room with our mats and our scrubby mitts to where a couple almost naked women (just underwear like everyone else) are waiting to scrub us. I lie down, and she takes some of the black soap and proceeds to scrub me cleaner than I have ever been in my life. Without language, she has to point and prod and sometimes just grab me and move me where she wants me to be. Almost every inch of me was scrubbed, and hard. It even hurt sometimes, but I just tried to grit my teeth and bear it. You can say “shwiya, shwiya” (one of our most used words meaning something like “a little”) to get them to lighten up, but I wanted to see what it was like to just let them do their thing. After being scrubbed, we returned back to our corner to wash our hair and then use our own “nice” smelling soap before a final rinse off. We used the little plastic brush things while washing our hair and I have actually started using the brush in the shower, too. It makes it easier to rinse out all the shampoo or conditioner and makes my hair turn out smoother and less tangled. After this, we walked back out to the locker room, sat for a little bit, got dressed, covered our hair (Moroccans believe wet hair is the quickest way to get sick so you have to cover your hair or they will cover it for you), and went home to relax. I loved it so much, I have been back about every other week since :)
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