The Hammam
If you find yourself in Morocco, you have to take a bath.
Nov 13, 2018
The Mint Dragon
The metallic serpent stared me down. Steam rolled from its huge silver belly, up it’s long neck and out of it’s mouth. There were thirty tea cups next to the giant silver pot, one for each of us. One of the women from the Hammam patiently poured the tea into each glass. The other women hurried up the stairs behind us to the baths, carrying hot towels and oils. I blew on my tea as it was passed to me and all twenty nine of my classmates. All of us cramped in that small baby blue room. Some of us sitting on the bright pink ottoman, but most of us on the floor.
My classmates and I traveled with a company called “Morocco Exchange” and the logistical masterminds behind it were forced to course correct. We were supposed to have this meeting earlier in the day, but everything was pushed back since the storms on the Gibraltar delayed our boat. So, our guides paid the ladies of the bath for a few giant pots of tea, crammed all of us into that tiny foyer separating the men’s Hammam from the women’s, and presented the meeting in the twenty free minutes we had before our scheduled baths.
A woman working for the Peace Corps in Morocco explained her profession to us while we drank tea. I had as many cups as I could without calling myself selfish. And the cups of my friends who didn’t like the mint drink. And the cups of my friends who were feeling generous. They had to make a third giant pot entirely on my account, which I did my best to drain as well. I’m just being gracious to their hospitality, I would tell myself.
I am obsessed with tea. I have had Amazonian Yerba in Brazil, proper English tea while I was in the UK, and some amazing darjeeling in the Indian district of Paris. But the best tea in the world, in my humble opinion, is the highly caffeinated mint tea of Morocco.
After the meeting, our guide, Hassan, separated us six men from the twenty-four women of our group. He took us out of the building and through the walled streets of Rabat to the men’s side of the baths. Hassan was like most of the Moroccan men I met during my stay. Very friendly, a bit of a ham, and prone to make a joke whenever possible. He told us that a bath in the Hammam would cost us somewhere around fifty Duram, and if we wanted a massage it would cost another twenty five. All this totaled less than twenty five dollars, US.
We walked down a tunnel-like hallway and found ourselves in the Antechamber. Men were walking out of the dungeon doorway from the baths steaming, as if they had just narrowly survived a dragon attack that burned off all of their clothes. We followed Hassan who took all of our money and clothes, and gave them to a man at the desk. He returned with seven buckets and seven packets of what looked like astronaut food. We followed Hassan into the inferno armed with our buckets, the packets, and nothing else but our boxers.
Enter the Inferno
The Hammam is broken up into three vaulted chambers, all connected by a small walkway in the center: Hot, hotter, and you-have-to-be-fucking-kidding-me hot. In that final chamber is a fountain with a huge well. From it, water on the brink of becoming vapor spills out, and it heats the room around it. That heat moves from the fountain, down the chambers, gradually cooling it. I walked into the first chamber and immediately found my head soaking with sweat. I thought I was going to die.
We followed Hassan down the walkway and into the inferno with the well of fire water. With each step I felt my mind slowly separate from my body, floating up like the steam from my evaporating sweat. I wouldn’t have believed I could make it if I didn’t see each chamber filled with men, doing fine. They were relaxed against the walls or on the floor, washing themselves with their buckets, or rubbing on some of the oil from their packets. At the well we found a line of buckets with water that had been left there to cool. We filled up our own and contributed to the conveyor belt: give a bucket, take a bucket.
Soon the heat delirium wore off. I found myself calm, completely surrendered to the super-hot gasses surrounding us. There were no windows in the chambers. To be honest I don’t remember seeing lights of any kind in there. But there must have been because the entire bath had a soft orange glow. It made me feel like we were in a Jack O’Lantern.
My constant stream of anxious thoughts slowly drifted away and became almost Taoist. I couldn’t get depressed about not knowing my true self, or give myself an anxiety attack about expectations for my life. The heat wouldn’t allow it. It took me out of my head and into my sweaty body. I couldn’t think anything, all I could do was just… be. I became aware of my heart rate, calming. My breathing, slowing. My pores that were opening up.
Hassan instructed us to pour some water onto the floor to clean it and to lay down. I remember us fearfully looking at each other, until a man and his small eight year old son walked past us and laid on the floor without a thought.
I sat on the floor, rubbed some of the astronaut food on me and breathed in the scent. I used some of the scalding water to wash it off, used my hands as a pillow and just lay there looking at the ceiling. The man next to us mistook me for a pale Moroccan because of my huge beard and made some joke to me in Arabic. When he found out I was American he switched to a British accent and asked me, “It’s hot as hell isn’t it?” Because of his accent I could tell that he learned English at school, not on the television. When his boy grew up he would probably speak with a Californian accent, and probably learn it from youtube and Fortnite videos. While I was laying there he and I made eye contact for a moment. He smiled at me, winked at me like he was king of the world, and went back to his silent Zen state.
The Human Pretzel
Hassan shook me my from my heat induced stupor and guided me to the first chamber. It was time for my massage. The old masseur sat on the floor with a bald head, bushy white beard, a bucket, and a sponge glove on his hand. He sat me down and poured some of the water at the base of my neck. Next he poured some soap on the glove and began to scrub. And I don’t mean a light scrub, I mean a let’s-get-the-barnacles-off-this-boat kind of scrub. The object was to remove the entire top layer of dead skin from my body, and I believe he succeeded.
Next, he instructed me to lay my now pink and peeled body on the floor. He sat on my back and proceeded to fold me into a pretzel. Boxers get mighty thin when the humidity is 100%, and I had to adjust to that while he sat on me. With my face to the floor he pulled my ankles and wrists together and pulled them tight like a bow. Pop! Damn near all of my vertebrae popped from top to bottom like the buttons on a pair of pull away pants. He then rolled me back and forth like I was the railing on a rocking-horse — and he was the horse. He sat me up, pulled my arms apart and slapped my ribs. Same thing with my legs and my thighs. He rolled my neck like I was in a Mexican restaurant and had just taken a shot of tequila from a gun holster. He slapped my back with a goodbye pat, and then moved on to my friend Adriel. The massage was Over.
My friends informed me that with my freshly peeled skin and limp features, I looked like a dead fetus during the massage. But I felt great. It felt amazing just to sit there in my body. I breathed deeper. My movements were more intentional. After the massages were done we filled our now empty buckets with icy water from a fountain in the first chamber and poured them on each other at the base of our necks. Then we left the bath for the antechamber, feeling different. Feeling quieter.
We sat there on the room temperature benches for ten minutes. Relaxing. Saying nothing. Breathing. Then we collected our clothes, and left.
That night I remember laying on the ottomans at our host family’s home with my two housemates, Jackson and Adriel. We talked a little bit about the bath, but I mostly remember just sitting there with them saying nothing at all. Feeling peaceful and eventually surrendering to sleep. That feeling stayed with me for a few days, but the craziness of travel, and all rest of the adventure that Morocco had to offer filled up the stillness that the baths had given me. I can’t wait to go back.
