I May Never Be Happy with a Shower Again

I got home last night to find a young Brit in my living room. On learning that his name is Finn, I was told that he is here teaching English at Université Mohammad V and has been here for a month. He technically lives with my sister Hanane, who has the upstairs half of the house to herself and her husband. He was very impressed with my French and my Arabic because they're both better than his own, and he was further impressed with my lack of Southern accent and ability to take on his Sussex accent with no problem. You see, linguistics is practical! He had been with some of his friends in Marrakesh for the last week while the university had its post-finals vacation. He is quite nice overall.

I went to hammam for the first time last night! Hammam, for those who don't know, is the public bath houses prominent in all of Arabia. The tradition starts with the Romans back in whatever century B.C. One pays 9dhm for admission, 50 centimes for the special pre-soap, and 1dhm to rent a bucket and little stool. You undress down to underwear, or at least I did; most of the natives were fully naked. Then you take your bucket(s) into the hot rooms. There are always three rooms ranging from "cold" to "hot." The first room, the "cold" room is probably 75 degree, and meant as the recovery room after having bathed in the second "warm" room and sweated in the third "hot" room. I went with several girls from the program and had a blast. Always one starts in the second room, probably around 90 degrees, and you always fill your buckets with the hottest water you can stand from the taps along the wall. First, you smear the pre-soap all over you, an odd concoction with a green-brown color and no odor. You then take a scrubbing glove and rub all of your skin off. I am serious when I say this because if you yourself don't do a good enough job scrubbing, a nearby woman will take your glove from you and proceed to scrub you until you're as pink as a newborn babe. Twenty minutes of scrubbing is a minimum. After you have rinsed off all of your skin by scooping from your buckets, you may bathe as normal with soap, shampoo, and conditioner. It is considered very bad manners to dip from another person's bucket and also to pour water on yourself while standing. When you have finished all of your bathing and rinsing, take your bucket and dump it over your head. Then, after drinking a cup of water provided by an attendant, you proceed into the third "hot" room, which is easily 100 degrees. You sit there as long as you can stand and sweat everything out. You then go to the first "cold" room, drink another cup of water, and then go back into the main room to reclothe and go on with your day. I thought we spend a long time in the hammam after an hour and a half. My mother laughed at me, saying that she spends closer to three hours each time she goes. Never has my skin been so soft and never has my face been so aglow!

Mother insisted that have my head covered when I came home from hammam for fear that I would catch a cold with my wet hair in the evening air. I was forced to take a second bowl of hot soup for dinner as well, for fear that my body had lost its ability to make itself warm. There's a sort of superstition that a person's very first time to hammam is traumatic to the body because it has never known such cleanliness or so much warmth. I was also given an extra blanket at bedtime and told that now that I have started, I must go to hammam at least once a week. I have no objection to this. Even now, fourteen hours later, I feel cleaner than I think I ever have following a shower.

The Arabic quiz proved tricky but it was not a problem for me. What will be a problem for me is the oral presentation that I am giving this afternoon with two of my classmates, Matt and Monica. We translated the itinerary for our excursion this coming week, and while I know it very well, I have never been good with presentations.