In the afternoon, I met a small group of students at the hotel to go to al-hamam, the Arab baths. A Moroccan employee of the language center, let's call him Hamza, led us to an unmarked building, where we walked up the stairs and into a small office with a tiled floor, a welcome desk, and some cubbies along one wall. As Americans, we didn't know how the process worked, so we just did as the Moroccans did and stripped to our undies and followed Hamza into the hamam itself.
The hamam was a series of three plain white rooms, all with tiled floors, high ceilings, and two horizontal pipes that ran along the walls with small spouts spaced out evenly. Under the pipes runs a shallow drain to carry out the water. Hamza gave us each a large plastic basin, a small plastic bowl, and a scrubber. He led us into the last of the three rooms, which was the hot room. The floor was so hot I couldn't stand on it with my bare feet without hopping. We all picked a spot on the floor by a spout and sat down. One pipe poured out piping hot water and the other pipe poured out cold water. We turned on both spouts to our liking to fill our basin. We used the small bowl to scoop out water and pour it on ourselves to bathe. I kept filling my small bowl with cold water to pour over my spot on the floor so I could sit comfortably.
Then Hamza went to each of us in turn and gave us saboon balidy (traditional soap that looks like black gelatin) and then gave us a traditional Moroccan scrub. He did it for free but usually you pay a small fee to have a man do this for you. The Moroccan scrub involved Hamza telling me to sit on the floor, spread my legs and grab my ankles. Then he used a scrub brush to give me the fiercest sponge bath I have ever received. It's somewhat like being a kid again and having your dad give you a bath, except he's really angry at you. Dead skin flakes off in black clumps. After that, you rinse off with you bowl and lie down on the furnace-like floor, which is very relaxing once you adjust to the heat.
Then Hamza instructed us to empty our basins and led us as a group into the second room, which was a little cooler, and we repeated the process from the beginning. Then we moved to the third and final room, where we filled our basins one final time with cold water and then poured them over our heads to conclude our visit. I have to admit, you really do feel clean after leaving the hamam, and quite relaxed.
In the evening, my host mom invited me to go shopping in the old city with her, and this led to me back to the one place in Morocco I vowed never to return: the Cloud of Bees. The sooq was packed with people shopping in preparation for Ramadan, which begins the first week of August this year. My host mom continued her tradition of overfeeding me at the souq, encouraging me to try a large variety of olives. I also ate a doughnut-like pastry called shfenj from a hanoot (store) where you can watch the men shape the dough, dunk it into a giant boiling cauldron, and then pull the finished pastries out and string them together for you. Then we stopped by a cart that sold a cactus fruit called karmousse that a vendor cuts and peels in front of you. And then (yes, even more) my host mom bought me a pastry called baghreer that feels like an oily pancake and tastes like honey.
I got to see my host mom bargain for a new suitcase, which was very entertaining to watch. Both she and the seller really put on a show for each other ("Why do the wheels look weird?" "Ya alala, these wheels are specially designed for rough streets...!"). On the way out of the sooq, we walked by the meat section, where we walked by piles of goat heads and stepped over puddles of blood and animal fat.
And yes, the bees were there too. But don't worry, they're friendly. Only one attacked my host mom's face.
No comments:
Post a Comment