Word Count: 491
A massage therapist usually leaves the room so that you can strip down to your knickers in private. You position yourself under a towel, face down on a bed with a hole cut out of it for your face, and the massage therapist comes back into the room. Modesty is preserved. If they need you to turn over at any point, they hold the towel up and look away so you can reposition yourself with relative dignity.
In a hammam in Morocco, there was no such thing as dignity. I was not prepared. In a large communal changing room, I stripped down to my knickers – nothing private about that – and wrapped a towel around my torso. With broken French and vague hand gestures, I managed to communicate to the staff that I was ready. With Arabic words and more hand gestures, I was brought into the main room. It was just a big, brightly lit tiled room with large pipes and taps. There was no gentle music, no soft lighting, no furniture. Just naked bodies everywhere.
I was instructed to hang up my towel on a peg and to sit on the ground. I didn’t have my glasses on, and the room was full of steam, but I could still see all the bodies around me. Every shape and size of woman was represented. Some were sitting on the floor like I was, some were lying down, some were walking around, grabbing buckets of hot water. Those last ones were the workers, and they were as naked as I was, just in black knickers with a number printed on the side.
I was left to sit for a long while, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I could see blurry forms washing other blurry forms, and a few of the women getting massaged. Then it was my turn. Buckets of water were thrown over me as I sat cross-legged on the tiles, with barely a chance to catch my breath between sluices. I was scrubbed within an inch of my life all over my body, and my hair was washed. I was instructed to lie down, and I kept slipping on the tile floor, sliding around with suds everywhere. I was a beached whale.
At one point, the woman looking after me told me to take my knickers off. At first, I said yes, then thought better of it and said no. The woman frowned at me as if I were being an idiot. Of course, I should take off my underwear. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. She mimed holding her hands out, palms up. I did as she asked, and she squirted some soap into my hands. Then she mimed washing her own groin. I had no embarrassment left. My modesty was gone.
I was just another body in a sea of bodies, and these women had seen it all.