I just returned from a visit to my second homeland, Casablanca, Morocco. I lived in that beautiful country for four years and never went to the hammam \u2013 the Moroccan version of a communal Turkish bathhouse where women and men (in separate quarters) go for weekly bathing rituals in a somewhat spa-like setting.<\/p>\n

The experience always sounded terrifying to me because I was only aware of two facts: women walk around naked and an attendant scrubs you down from head to toe. No part of that sounded \u201cfun\u201d in the least. I don\u2019t walk around my husband naked, let alone strange Muslim women.<\/p>\n

On this particular visit, however, my friend Khadija tried to convince me into going to the hammam together. \u201cIt\u2019ll be fun!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While still skeptical, I acquiesced to Khadija\u2019s cajoling \u2013 mostly because she threw out the word \u201cbrave\u201d when referring to westerners who try the hammam \u2013 and I SO want that word to define me\u2026<\/p>\n

Bring it!<\/p>\n

After paying around eight dollars each, we entered the locker area and stripped down \u2013 leaving only our underwear on. Khadija explained that this was necessary because Islam forbids total nudity. I didn\u2019t exactly feel \u201cless nude\u201d just because I had my little black bikini Target underwear on.<\/p>\n

Khadija told me to just relax and \u201cenjoy\u201d the experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cUh-huh. Okay, Khadija\u201d<\/p>\n

The bathing area consists of four connected rooms \u2013 each one large, bright, and cavernous with white and marble-y grey tile walls and ceiling, and white and grey swirled marble sinks, fountains and slab tables. Loud echoes bounced around the rooms from rushing water, splashing children, laughing women. This was most definitely a place to let your guard down and engage. I tried to let my guard down but couldn\u2019t quite get past all the boobs. Every size, color and shape. Boobs for days.<\/p>\n

One thing I know for certain about our God: He IS a creative.<\/p>\n

We walked through a large room that had at least a dozen marble sinks around the perimeter, each with hot and cold faucets \u2013 many of them running freely without anyone nearby. They do not worry about wasting water at the hammam. There were several naked women sitting on little stools at some of these sinks. They each held a small, brightly colored children\u2019s sand bucket in their hands and were either soaping up their bodies or dumping water over their heads with their buckets. Water was overflowing the marble sinks and flowing loudly into a drain in the center of the room.<\/p>\n

A couple of little girls were splashing around in the water streams. No one seemed to really notice us. Everyone was just so matter-of-fact going about their cleansing business. Still – I couldn\u2019t help but feel like a white sheep who had just walked into the black-sheep pen.<\/p>\n

Khadija and I walked through the sink room and entered the sauna room. Its purpose was to sweat-open our pores so the scrubbing we were about to receive would be the most effective.<\/p>\n

In the sauna, we also personally scrubbed down our bodies with this soft, pasty brown soap that every Moroccan uses every time they visit the hammam. I don\u2019t know why they do it, they just do. Sometimes it\u2019s best not to ask too many questions. As I was soon to discover\u2026<\/p>\n

After the sauna, my \u201cattendant\u201d, Souad, came to greet me. She was thrilled to have an American as a client! She said, \u201cMe. I speak English!\u201d I said, \u201cWonderful! I\u2019m so relieved! I don\u2019t speak Arabic!\u201d And she said, \u201cNice you speak Arabic.\u201d I said, \u201cNo, I said I DON\u2019T. I only speak French. We used to live here and I was able to get by using only French.\u201d And she said, \u201cNice you live here someday.\u201d<\/p>\n

I held back, but so<\/em> wanted to say, \u201cYou. You no speak English.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, as it turned out, it entirely didn\u2019t matter and it in no way affected my experience.
\nSouad brought me to yet another room where there were six or so marble slab tables. At the head of each table was a hand bar. I never read the book or saw the movie of the same name, \u201c50 Shades of Grey\u201d \u2013 but it was, honest to goodness<\/em>, my first thought of use for that bar\u2026\u00a0\u00a0 I looked at the other women being scrubbed down on their marble slabs \u2013 and sure enough, their arms were up over their heads holding onto that bar for dear life just to keep from slip-sliding off the wet tables as they were vigorously scrubbed down.<\/p>\n

I had to dig deep to find my bravery at this point.<\/p>\n

Souad had to clean the marble table first from the previous bather. So she hosed it down and took her arm and swept away any excess water on the table. Third world living had definitely taught me how to do \u201cmind-over-matter\u201d, so I quickly deleted from my mental hard drive all that I had learned in nursing school about sanitizing equipment and everything I knew about proliferating germs from working two years in Infection Control at Spectrum Health. I did not want to be hindered from \u201cenjoying\u201d this experience due to unnecessary knowledge\u2026<\/p>\n

There. Gone from memory. Brave again! Let\u2019s proceed!<\/p>\n

Souad wore a harsh, gritty scrubbing glove on her powerful right hand. It was only slightly less abrasive then the SANDPAPER I had used on the plastered walls of our Fixer-Upper! <\/a>Souad squirted some warm oily soap over one small area at a time and with hands more muscular than most men, she scrubbed me down. At first, I felt the scrubbing to be a wee bit painful and I was searching my vocabulary for some Arabic words to tell her to \u201cchill out a little, would ya?\u201d \u2013 but after a few minutes of more mind-over-matter and mentally replaying Khadija\u2019s words of advice, \u201cJust enjoy yourself\u201d, I began to relax. Soon, I forgot I was naked and that a stranger was scrubbing every nook, cranny and crevice of my body. She yanked my underwear up and down to be sure to reach every hidden part \u2013 (except, of course, the unmentionables because of that part of Islam\u2026.). She yanked so hard on my underwear that the elastic burst and I had to hold them up the rest of the time.<\/p>\n

She scrubbed my front side. She held my legs high in the air, she steadied them one at a time in her armpit to wash the interior side, she held them off to the side, jerking me into positions I didn\u2019t know I could do \u2013 all to access every square inch of my body. She rolled me over and scrubbed my backside. She went back over my legs and arms several times \u2013 even seeming, I think, a bit frustrated as she increased force.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until I sat up that I realized what exactly had transformed for the past half hour. I was surrounded by a pool of grimy, dirty piles of skin. MY grimy skin! What the @#%*!? Have I never washed myself??? Do I not shower every day??? What the heck AM<\/em> I doing in the shower if I actually have this much grimy residue left behind?<\/p>\n

I wanted to gag. I also wanted to run away from embarrassment. I didn\u2019t even want to make eye-contact with Souad for fear that she was gagging, too. I tried to think of a quick lie that might explain why I was so dirty, like, \u201cWell, you know, I just returned from a month-long camel trek in the desert with no water available for bathing\u2026\u201d But I realized Ms. Souad the \u201cEnglish speaker\u201d wouldn\u2019t understand me anyway.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until at least an hour later when I finally found a mirror that I realized what had happened. I was at least two-shades lighter. Whiter. Souad had simply scrubbed off the tan that I had spent all summer trying to acquire. I said a quick prayer hoping the body scrub also removed the negative carcinogenic effects of the sun\u2026<\/p>\n

After the scrub down, Souad took me to yet another room, where, instead of marble slabs, there were padded massage beds. Again, she \u201ccleaned\u201d the bed by hosing it down and wiping off the water with her arm. I clenched my saggy underwear with one hand and climbed on the bed. With one strong shove, Souad rolled me to my stomach and stretched my arms above my head. She then proceeded to apply some kind of grey mud that smelled like lavender to my entire body. And she massaged me \u2013 from freaking tip of my head to freaking tip of my toes. And here, here is where I nearly fell asleep and entered some kind of nirvana. I forgot where I was and I didn\u2019t care that I was naked with nothing but stretched out underwear on. I didn\u2019t care that Souad and I couldn\u2019t communicate or that she had probably seen more terrain of my body than my husband. I didn\u2019t care about anything anymore.<\/p>\n

This was bliss.<\/p>\n

From the massage table we went to the sink room and washed our hair and dumped water all over ourselves with those colorful little plastic buckets. It was kind of tricky as I had to hold up my underwear with one hand, but it was like a bunch of grown women playing in a splash pad\/water park. I loved it. I stopped noticing boobs.<\/p>\n

After the splash pad, we showered in traditional showers. To my memory, this made the fifth full-body washing of the day. We ended the experience by wrapping up in towels, grabbing a cold drink from the desk attendant and sitting in lounge chairs while watching Arabic MTV for about half an hour. My body a calm, contented, noodle \u2013 I could have easily fallen asleep. I couldn\u2019t remember the last time I had been so relaxed. \u00a0We sipped our drinks and laughed about our aging bodies, confessed how we sometimes screen phone calls and ignore texts, and talked seriously about Middle Eastern politics for a while.<\/p>\n

I ended up tipping Souad about the equivalent of her day\u2019s wage. Again, I didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

Souad is some kind of soul-sister to me now.<\/p>\n

Lastly, Khadija reassured me that everyone leaves behind piles of grimy skin \u2013 even when they are visiting the hammam weekly and that\u2019s how you know the attendant did her job well! She also hypothesized that Moroccan women have less issue with body shame and striving for unattainable goals of body perfection because they grow up in the hammam observing the real<\/em> female form. They develop a solid sense of self from seeing \u201cnormal\u201d female bodies far more than observing those airbrushed models on the lying covers of magazines. I had to agree. She also told me to feel my skin and said, \u201cFeels like a baby\u2019s bottom, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d She also said we should go to the hammam together more often.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t agree more, Khadija. I couldn\u2019t agree more.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the thing: I think Moroccans are on to something with this whole hammam-gig. In addition to the \u201creality-check\u201d it serves women with body image, I think the whole experience is also far more about bonding with girlfriends, getting real with one another and eliminating relationship inhibition than it is about bathing.<\/p>\n

And we see this in other cultures, too:<\/p>\n

Our oldest daughter is in her first year at university. She lives in the dorms and they have community bathrooms. She says the best bonding moments come in the bathroom \u2013 sometimes with tunes blaring, dancing in their bath towels and singing into toothbrush microphones; other times it is serious conversation with shared tears and prayers \u2013 but somehow, beautifully, these college girls develop intimate lifelong friendships in those bathrooms.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something about being naked literally that makes one dare, but also want, to bare their souls as well. And it seems to me that sharing of our souls with a couple of our safe, bestie girlfriends is essential to becoming whole.<\/p>\n

Hammam anyone???<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just returned from a visit to my second homeland, Casablanca, Morocco. I lived in that beautiful country for four years and never went to the hammam \u2013 the Moroccan version of a communal Turkish bathhouse where women and men (in separate quarters) go for weekly bathing rituals in a somewhat spa-like setting. The experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,22,25,26,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n