Four American Girls Walk into a Moroccan Bathhouse

Getting naked with a few close friends sounds like the beginning of a crazy college story. However, when you are in Morocco in a traditional Arab bathhouse, it’s anything but.
We were four English teachers in Spain spending our Easter holiday in Morocco. When we got to our hostel in Fez, we were grumpy, tired, and smelly. Morocco is known for smells, both good and bad. We had spent four hours in a bus and walked all over the city in the hot April sun looking for the hostel through the rich smells of cumin, mint tea, and well, other things.
In the hostel we met a girl from New Zealand who told us about her experience at the bathhouse. She loved it, and the receptionist said he would take us. We knew we smelled, so off we went.
The receptionist took us through twisty back-alleys and dropped us off in front of a house. We walked down the narrow stairway and were greeted by a woman who only spoke French or Arabic. After a series of hand gestures, we realized we had to take off our clothes, and head to the next room.
Nervous giggling ensued as we stripped down to nothing but flip-flops. It was just like getting changed for gym class in middle school, except for the fact that we were in a basement in Morocco.
The bathing area was a nicely lit, clay-tiled room. The floor was wet, and in the corner were two wells of cold and hot water. There were a few women in the room cleaning themselves off. And then there was us.
We claimed a corner, filled a large red bucket with water, and started to do the only thing we could do: get wet. We had exfoliating gloves to scrub off dead skin, but that’s it. Because when you go to the authentic bathhouse, they expect you to bring your own soap, of course.
But we would have a massage! Our masseuse was a plump and happy Moroccan woman in black underwear and also only spoke French and Arabic.
She looked at us, and said something like, “who’s first?” We all graciously nominated our pretty redheaded friend. The woman motioned for her to lie on her stomach so she could scrub her feet. But our friend was just a little too far away from her. She pulled on her foot, our friend let out a surprised shout as she slid across the floor, and we lost it.
We laughed and agreed we would never forget this. We didn’t get a luxurious spa treatment, but we got to see another side of Morocco. The side that isn’t full of shop vendors and tourist gimmicks. In the midst of the chaos, we found daily life. We just happened to do it naked.