Your First Hammam

You will be naked. Or close to it. This is the part nobody mentions in the brochure.

A hammam is a public bathhouse. Every neighbourhood in every Moroccan city has one. The tourist ones in Marrakech charge 300-500 dirhams and hand you a robe and slippers and eucalyptus-scented something. The local ones — the ones Moroccans actually use — charge 15-20 dirhams and hand you a bucket.

Here is what happens. You undress in the changing room. Men keep shorts on. Women strip to underwear or nothing, depending on the hammam. You bring your own towel, your own flip-flops, and a change of underwear. You enter the first room: warm. Then the second room: hotter. Then the third room: very hot. You sit. You sweat. You pour water over yourself from the bucket. This goes on for about twenty minutes until your skin softens.

Then the scrub. A woman — if you are a woman — will take a coarse mitt called a kessa and scrub your entire body with a force that feels like she is removing a layer of you. She is. Grey rolls of dead skin come off in ropes. You will be horrified. You will also be fascinated. This is the gommage. Moroccans do it weekly. Your skin has never been this clean. It has never even been close.

After the scrub, black soap — savon beldi, made from olives — goes on. Then a rinse. Then ghassoul, a mineral clay from the Atlas Mountains, on your hair and face. Then another rinse. You are done. The whole process takes forty-five minutes to an hour.

Bring: flip-flops, underwear to change into, a towel, 20 dirhams for the bath and 20-50 dirhams tip for the woman who scrubbed you. Do not bring: modesty. You will lose it in the first five minutes, and you will not miss it.