Traditional Hamman (Bathhouse) in Tangier
Women's traditional bath house in the Medina
I heard of hammams for about a year before coming to Tangier. I had blissful ideas of sitting in steamy pools with towels and mud baths and attendants.
In rooms with stone and marble arches and tile mosaics...like in the old tales from the Arabian nights and such.
Then I learned hammam is basically exfoliation with special goopy soap, a scratchy glove and water poured over you.
This can happen in spa-like settings in a private room with attendants or in a large communal room.
I didn’t want a tourist spa experience, but a real Arabian nights-lounging-in-steam experience with Moroccan ladies.
I couldn’t tell where to find that with google (there are plenty of spa-like places) but finally Mohammed from the hostel told me about the local hammam in the medina.
I was scared to go, though. Kind of.
Why?
When you live in a foreign country without speaking the native language AND do something completely new with only locals...this usually means a couple things:
1. Lots of time being confused
2. People talking to you in loud voices you don’t understand.
These two things happen to you daily anyway in small and large amounts.
So when you are faced with a really BIG new thing, you want to be really on top of your game so as to not get overwhelmed.
You don’t want the stress of doing the Big New Thing to outweigh the benefits (lounging in an Arabian Nights bathhouse in this case).
I had scoped out the location of the hammam in advance and this place was HIDDEN.
No obvious signs on a dimly lit street in the heart of the medina. A man in the street saw me gawking and pointed out the women’s and men’s entrance.
A few weeks later, I felt it was time for the hammam!
This is what happened:
1. I entered into a darkish small room with a counter and women in various stages of undress. It was a little steamy.
2. Women were talking loudly and the attendant (an elder tiny lady) somehow helped me understand I needed to put my things in a bag and undress right there.
3. I paid the 50 dirham ($5.00) fee to enter plus 100 dirhams for a hamman and massage
4. I had no idea what to do next so I just stood there
5. A different and rather rough-around-the edges lady came and grabbed my arm and pulled me along into a hallway through ARCHES (!)
6. I passed a small room with two built-in cement slabs where people were getting massages and scrubbed.
7. I went under an arched doorway into a larger room, very steamy, with women with large buckets of water sitting on the floor and on a few benches.
They were pouring water over themselves, scrubbing, chatting, scrubbing children.
And staring at me.
I was the only non-local (western, pale skinned) person there. And already pretty used to being stared at.
8. We went through another arched doorway into a second room with a large rounded stone basin with hot water flowing into it from the wall.
This room was hotter and steamier. Women of all ages sitting on the floor, scrubbing and talking and pouring water over themselves. The water just flows into drains on the floor.
9. The lady pulled me along and filled a large bucket of water and pushed me into a corner and motioned for me to slather myself with the Black Soap (brownish olive oil hammam soap...see the photo)
11. I did that. And waited. Sometimes a woman or child would give me a shy smile.
12. The lady came back and dragged me along to the concrete slab room.
13. I lay down and felt like a wet fish slipping around on that damn slab while I got scrubbed with the special scratchy glove.
I liked this scrubbing lady pretty well, though. Gentle personality and not too rough.
13. Then I got moved over to the second slab for the massage. Wow.
Thought I was gonna fall off that slab. A sturdy masseuse threw me around and didn’t let me fall.
I thought about being a fish out of water or a seal sliding on rock and was laughing sort of hysterically internally while getting thrashed (I mean massaged) by the masseuse who randomly shouted stuff in Arabic.
15. Finally it was done and she led me back to the entry room. Where I retrieved my stuff and got dressed and left.
Was it worth it?
Heck, yeah! Best experience ever.
The experience for me was both exotic and super interesting.
I imagine this exact kind of bathing has been done this way for centuries.
The people were normal everyday people; mothers with kids, sisters, elders. They come regularly.
And I got to be part of it.
Was I relaxed? No.
I did go again and brought my own black soap and glove. It was less stressful but still not super relaxing.
Still super interesting.
I tried another hammam in Casablanca because it is known to be the best in Morocco. It was amazing. And relaxing.
And has a pool!
Maybe I will write about it later.