Go All the Way

Lying on a scorching hot, wet tile floor with all my clothes off was certainly not a place I ever expected to find myself--so much skin and steam. This is not the beginning of a really bad adult movie, but rather an account of my visit to a hammam, also referred to as a Turkish bath, while bicycling in Morocco.

During my travels to the Sahara desert town of Merzouga I was lucky to make some local friends who took it upon themselves to ensure that my traveler partner and I had true Moroccan experiences, which included a trip to the local hammam. Upon arrival, our friends helped arrange our fees and a person to “massage” us. We shared very little language and so were left to decipher what to do based on mere observations. Seeing as everyone in the room had left their clothes hanging on the wall, it was quite evident that we were to undress into nothing but our skivvies. The woman who was to be our masseuse seemed somewhat unimpressed at first by the sight of us, standing there naked and awkward, but she soon took us under her wing.

We were led through one steamy room into another even hotter room where the viscous air clung to my lungs. Here we were told to lie down on the hot tile floor. The room was full of other women--their beautiful, dark, secret hair cascading down their bodies as they bantered away in bathhouse talk. We were certainly the outsiders here, but after exchanging smiles and laughs, I quickly realized that bodies are just bodies and women are women all over the world.

A hammam experience involves multiple latherings and scrubbings of your entire body and when I say scrubbing I’m not talking your ordinary puffy loofah. Oh no, I’m talking a mitt as rough as 40-grit sandpaper. The use of the word “massage” is a joke; exfoliating is an understatement; scraping is the only logical word that comes to mind. Layers upon layers of my dirty, dry traveler skin sloughed off onto the public floor that I was sprawled out on.

The best part of going to the hammam was the moment that I realized I wasn’t going to be able to fight off this stout, little woman, so I’d better just take a deep breath, accept what was happening, and enjoy it. She was going to scrub the heck out of places I’ve never had scrubbed before: under my breasts, in my tummy rolls, and even my inner thighs. The results were amazing. I walked out of the hammam feeling like a snake that had shed her skin: relaxed, refreshed, and ready to have another Moroccan adventure.