A night on the town

This afternoon around 5pm, I decide that I’ve read enough fascist newspapers for one day (¡Viva Franco! ¡Viva la nueva España!) and that what my Saturday really needs is a trip to the hammam. I pack my bag – shampoo, razor, kis (special Moroccan scrubber designed to take off the first twelve layers of skin), hat for afterward (it’s hshuma, or shameful, to walk around town with wet hair because it will make people think of you naked in the bath, yikes) – and set off.

A little after 5:00 and the street running through the old mellah, or Jewish quarter, is packed, even more so than usual. I’ve never seen so many street vendors around this plaza. There’s practically no room for the pedestrians, who push glacially forward in a single intertwined mass. It crosses my mind that there is a hshuma amount of contact going on between the men and women in the crowd, but no one seems to be making a fuss.

Just before Bab al-Rih – the Wind Gate, appropriately named, as this entrance to the medina can become a virtual vortex on blustery days – I break right, almost falling out of the stream of bodies into a less populated side street. It’s snacking heaven on this stretch, with several tiers of peanut, cashew, almond, date, fig-filled bins lining the way. Another left and I’ve hit a congregation of cheese stands. Well, not cheese exactly. Jben – a traditional Moroccan item that I can best describe as a sour, less-creamy cream cheese. It’s delicious. My favorite stand lists its prices over top of a sultry head shot of the young salesman. Looking for a wife? A modeling agent? We’re not sure.

I turn left one more time and can see the hammam at the end of the alley. Side-by-side doors located under a red and green pharmacy sign: I never would have found it if my friend Mary hadn’t brought me here when I first moved to Tetouan. I enter on the woman’s side and am greeted by a smile from the man seated at the shabby reception booth. He hands me a plastic packet of the traditional olive oil-based soap, which is a transparent brown and has the consistency of nuclear grade hair styling paste.

As soon as I walk through the second, inner door, I’m hit by a wall of steam. Mm. Yes. This is just what a chilly November evening called for. I say hello to Amina, who trades off staffing the place with her sister Latifa, and drop my stuff in a corner, beginning to strip down. Hammam time is underwear time. I’ve seen allll kinds of bodies in the hammam. And, I’d like to point out, Moroccan women – for all their headscarves and long sleeves – are far, far more comfortable with their bodies than most American women. (Please ponder what this contrast might say about the prudishness and body image problems plaguing our culture.)

The hammam, or public bath, is traditionally touted as the woman’s social haven, the one place where she can get together with the girls to sit around and catch up on the neighborhood news. My hammam is pretty small and quiet. It’s dark, with one main room and handful of showering stalls.

I bring all my bath stuff in with me, plus a large bucket and a scooper. The bucket is filled via twin sets of hot/cold faucets, and I sink down onto the ground next to it as the water pours in, using the scooper to ladle water onto myself. It’s the same basic idea as a sauna – hanging out in a steamy room to open up your pores. Expect that in the hammam, Amina joins me after fifteen minutes to pick up the kis and scrub me raw. All I have to say is: regular showers make me laugh now. There are layers of grime on our bodies that loofahs can’t even begin to touch.

After a thorough scrub down and washing up, I dump a bucketful of cold water over my head and make for the towel. Back in the changing room, Amina is shooting the breeze with three older women, complaining about the prices of meat, plumbing and electricity. I sit with them a couple minutes, as it’s considered bad for your health to head outside, and thus change temperatures, too quickly. Before departing, I slip Amina a tip: 50 dirham, around 6 dollars, more than usual because it’s Eid al-Adha next week, and the hammam will be closed.

Out on the street, the wall-to-wall insanity has diminished somewhat, although I’m still floored by the number of vendors. Maybe the police are being more lenient because of the eid? Maybe people are trying to get in a last round of shopping before life comes to a grinding halt next week? The vendors flutter around their displays: tarps full of dish towels, shoes, and cheap perfume, in addition to the seasonal plethora of butcher knives, skewers, grilling racks, and small axes. Yep, Eid al-Adha – the sacrifice holiday, when each family is expected to kill a sheep or goat – is definitely on its way.

I observe the hustle and bustle from one side of the plaza, over a 1 dirham cup of steaming chickpeas. The king’s local palace is to my right, surrounded by a series of Art Noveau columns left from the Spanish Protectorate period.

Finishing my snack, I realize I’m not ready to head home yet and take to wandering, past the men in their cafes, past cat-calling teenagers, past a veiled beggar woman whose bent head speaks of such submission that it takes my breath away, past small children, past newspaper kiosks and sandwich shops and the bookstore that’s been having a liquidation sale since March. Chatter fills the air, sliced through by the shouts of boys hawking their illegal DVDs. The evening call to prayer begins, wailing loudly over the second-rate sound system of the nearby mosque. I can smell shwarma and coffee and the rich sauce in which bowls of street snails are served.

Everything is familiar, yet foreign at the same time. I’m outside it, even as I’m in it. It’s not mine, but I sure have grown to love it.