A public wash house, (google it) the hammam is also a social place for Moroccan women who don't sit in cafes like the men do all day.
Of course it's segregated and steeped in tradition and ritual. Some Moroccans go every day, it makes up part of the cleansing before mosque or can simply be a necessity because you have no hot water at home.
I went to the hammam at Beldi country club spa, it was a private hammam so I didn't have to embarass myself by not knowing the protocols and traditions (OK I was terrified of going into a communal bath/steam house and having to sit on some dirty stone floor with a bunch of old Arab men and rub myself with a pot scourer.. I said it)
Back to Beldi hammam: I was given a robe and a cotton lap lap (hmmm nice, unusual)
Undress, tie the lap lap cord around your waist with the cotton flap at the front. The flap then passes through your legs and gets tucked up under the waist tie at the back .. Kind of sumo style, easy.
I'm lap laped, robed and ushered to a beautiful Moroccan conservatory for a glass of mint tea to wait for my hammam assistant Karim.
He is about thirty and wearing navy blue, nylon, Nike running shorts, he escorts me into a beautiful white marble wet room with two big white marble slabs at each end like alters, the ceiling is a dome with small stain glass windows and it's HOT and wet and steamy.
Bloody HOT.
On the marble slabs are scattered sprigs of assorted fresh herbs, I sit down and the white stone is hot and wet beneath my bum.
Karim begins to tip buckets of water over my head from a wooden pale. Hot water is bubbling from a font adjacent to my slab. Bucket after bucket after bucket.
Right, the wet down is done and the cotton lap lap might as well be made of glad wrap, but what the heck ... When in Rome.
Next comes the scrub.
Now I want you to go and get a new plastic scourer from the kitchen cupboard and start rubbing it vigorously on the delicate skin of your neck. Harder, scrub it harder!
OK now you know what a hammam scrub feels like except they use a glove to get into all the nooks and crannies like your ears and underarms.
Karim was very thorough and I've got to say I was blown away by how much dead skin came off (eeeww)
I think some living skin came off too.
I am an exfoliation freak but this was something else, my skin was amazing for days afterwards.
Typically you are supposed to use black soap in this scrubbing process: "Savon noir." But I guess they spare the westerners that unusual, traditional speciality.
Check out the photo of the savon noir above (plus a typical local hammam entrance) I thought it was sump oil or grease for your Donkey cart when I first saw the buckets of dark, glossy goop.
Until I saw a bucket with a sign in French.
Anyway suffice to say I got SCRUBBED clean both front and back, followed by many, many more buckets of hot water poured, tipped and thrown over me.
Sheesh I'm clean already Karim!
To finish, some Argan oil was poured over my head, arms and torso before I toweled dry.
Phew, hammam done.
Survived, Tick.
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