Part II: What (You May Not Want) to Do in Chaouen

Pretty much every door here is blue photographable

(I obviously didn´t take any pictures inside the hammam, so I´ve included a few photos of the town.)

After a day of sweating out my nerves with false tour guides, a long bath was crucial. And nothing seemed more logical than going to the Hammam, the town’s public bath house that uses up most of the hot water supply.

Before going to Morocco, I had read and heard magical stories about Hammams. Three of my friends who went to hammams in Marrakesh highly recommended experiencing one. Tales of gooey olive oil soap, scraping off dead skin, and interacting with Muslim Moroccan women behind closed doors had me racing to the center of town an hour before sunset, when the hammam closed for women and opened for men. Sarah and Joyce stayed behind for this adventure.

Spices and Dyes

I wanted to scrape off my dead skin. But more than that, I wanted to defy my stereotypes of Muslim women by seeing how they act, well, naked and in a big group of women. While putting my clothes in a locker, a teenaged Moroccan girl wrapped in a towel sauntered into the locker room and smiled at me. She looked refreshed and rosy. “Nice,” I thought, “Maybe I’ll make some acquaintances inside!”

In I walked. The humidity was intensified by the smell of dirty bodies and, frankly, the overflowing, hole-in-the-ground toilet, which I later found. There were two rooms. The first was a sauna, meant for sitting and sweating. The second a bathing and massaging room with a large well of hot water. A heaving naked woman, except for magenta underwear and a scarf tied around her waist, was bent over a French tourist and kneading her back. There were no Moroccans inside except for the masseuse, and besides her it was just me and two French women. I sat dumbly on the marble bench and waited for my turn to get a massage. When it finally came, the French women had gone, and I was the last customer for the day. The masseuse called to me in French to lie flat on my stomach on a thin mat on the wet marble floor. All was quiet except for her heavy breathing and the water trickling out of the spout. She pushed the last bit of strength that remained into my back, sending me into a sleepy stupor. The final call to prayer echoed through the sauna walls, and I felt like I was really in Morocco. Then, she commanded in coarse French that I turn over on my back. Having been in the sauna all afternoon, she was sweating profusely. Her giant breasts hung so low, they were millimeters from brushing up against me. She rubbed me down with thick olive oil soap and scraped it off with an abrasive cloth, pulling off sheets of dead skin. My arms and back were just starting to feel baby-soft when her three-year-old daughter skipped into the sauna.

She had to go to the bathroom. The masseuse stood up, pulled down her daughter’s pants, and lifted her up over the drain next to my left foot. The little girl peed right into the drain, with aim so good it looked like she was potty-trained to do it. Then her mother wiped her dry with her bare hand. Relieved and happy, she skipped out of the sauna. Her mom sprinkled water on her hand, really a couple of drops, and resumed massaging my back. Shocked and disgusted, I was silent, just like in the car with Bob and Billel. Then she told me extremely slowly that her husband died and she was all alone with her daughter, so would I please leave her a tip? She even slid her index finger across her neck and widened her eyes to make sure I understood that he was really and truly dead.

I expected to go to the hammam and have a “cultural exchange” with local women, but instead I got a pee massage. I left her a tip, maybe out of fear of how she would react otherwise, or maybe because I felt like it was my duty as an American tourist in a third world country to share the wealth.

Typical street in the Medina. As Sarah put it, walking in Chaouen feels like walking on clouds

Travelers my age all seem to crave a “cultural experience,” but really have no idea what that means. I think it would be incorrect to glorify my massage as a cultural experience, but it certainly was one-of-a-kind. Supposedly hammams in bigger cities are a lot nicer, but Chaouen’s is full of surprises.
Chaouen´s mosque
First Arabic Coca Cola Sign Sighting