Touch

It’s not every vacation that, in the first week, I spend an evening naked with several strangers. It’s even more rare that I find those strangers staring at me and ultimately touching and rubbing, brushing and smacking, massaging and commanding me. Let’s just say – this vacation has been one of the rarest.

The hammam is a public bathhouse where the locals congregate en masse according to their gender-specific visiting hours. Though American I am, I got over the toplessness pretty quickly: it was weirder to act weird than to act natural, so I made a conscious decision to do the latter. I was dragged through a series of large steamy rooms with high ceilings and crumbling columns where I was assigned a spot on the floor, surrounded by large buckets of water. I quickly learned to follow the “When In Rome” principle, so wasted no time dousing myself with warm water and lathering myself in waxy argan oil provided by Siham. 

My 7 year old 'sister', Khadija

I received an unwarranted but harmless rub down from my 7 year old sister, who knows nothing of personal space and boundaries. Little did I know I’d soon be the somewhat humiliated recipient of a true hammam massage.

My masseuse approached me, without eye contact, and, sitting on the floor in front of me, immediately began scrubbing me with an exfoliating glove provided by Siham. She scrubbed so hard I was rocking back and forth on the floor with each pass. When she was satisified, she gestured to me to turn around facing away from her, and she proceeded to douse my head in water. I came up sputtering after the first go, and then learned to tilt my head back, a skill that has gone unpracticed since my ‘Johnson & Johnson No More Tears’ days. She shampoo’d my hair with the aid of a handbrush (genius!), and then it was time for the dreaded bristle body brush. I nervously recalled this phenomenon from my one previous hammam experience 6 years ago.

With her hands in a spinning motion, my masseuse signaled to lay on my stomach on the wet tile floor. I obeyed, closing my eyes against the soapy clumps of hair that had accumulated near the drain.  The intense bristle brushing began on my back and legs, and it was at this time I realized I’d be leaving behind at least one or two layers of skin. I gritted my teeth and tried to find my happy place. She missed not an inch of my exposed areas, even taking the liberty to convert my bikini bottoms into a thong for maximum coverage. However sadistic it may sound, the burn was quite relaxing – until she asked me to flip. I bade a silent farewell to my nipples, and I haven’t seen them since…