At 7:03 PM on November 27th, 2024 I walked into my first hammam. I was not the same man when I walked out. It wasn’t because I had less skin or because I smelled better than I had in years. Both are true. It was because I felt a deep, unexpected connection with two men. One was my Hammamist*, Anis—pronounced Ah-nis, not how you first thought. The other was a toy man named Stretch Armstrong.
Before we scheduled our hammams, we did our “research.” We spoke with other tourists. Their experiences matched what we read on a few other blogs and websites, including Chat GPT. There were steam rooms, buckets of hot water, soaps and oils, exfoliation, and a light massage—then bliss. There was always bliss.
We immediately scheduled our hammams.
Lindsey went first. She received the soap, exfoliation, and sweet, sweaty bliss! Bliss with a side of mud. Mud on her face. Mud on her arms and legs. Mud nearly everywhere. Muddy, sweaty bliss. Oh, and there was singing.
Mine was something else. No mud. But there was bliss. Perplexing, life-changing bliss. I had to weather the storm first.
While Lindsey’s hammouse* sang to her, my hamman* used me to make the music. He was a drummer. I was the bongos. It was as if I paid a nearly naked, sweaty Moroccan man to use me as a punching bag and tie me in knots. At least he sudsed me up first. No dinner, but lots of decadent, organic, sensuous suds on almost every inch of my body. Almost.
Then came the buckets, a torrent of steaming buckets. They were thrust with precision and strength. When my face was the target, Anis pinched my nose to stop the water from obliterating my brain. He was strong and (!) courteous.
This torrent of water transitioned into an extended period of intense stretching. Maybe it was a short period. Was it minutes? It could have been hours. I didn’t know.
Space and time disappeared in the hammam. At times I didn’t know where my body ended and Anis’s began.
Is this your sweat or mine, man? Tastes like mine.
Other times I lost track of my arms and legs.
Are my arms behind my head? No, they’re behind my back. And Anis’s feet were on my back as he pulled my arms backward toward the ceiling. Anis was a sugared-loaded kid on Christmas morning. I was the Stretch Armstrong he just unwrapped.
Then came the massage. It started out soft and gentle, peaceful. It was borderline blissful. Anis was like a pianist lightly tapping keys to determine their tension.
I let out a big sigh as I thought, this is exactly what I need. Here comes the bli—.
There was no bliss. Anis bamboozled me. I realized this when his heel dug into my lower back, up my spine and neck, and massaged my jaw with his big toe.
Where my muscles were tense and knotted, he punched, pinched, and pried. Where they were loose, he took it as a challenge to loosen them more. I winced. I certainly grunted and flinched. There was definitely flailing, like a fish flopping on a tile floor. I was unsure of how much more I could take when he asked me through ragged breaths, “Ok, Sam?”
“Uhrhuhh!” was all I could muster with my cheek buried in the tile floor. He slapped my back once. “Good! Stay!” was all he said. He left me on the tile floor to sweat and process what happened while I assume he cooled off and caught his breath.
As I started to regain a sense of space and time, Anis returned. He wielded a renewed vigor and a sandpaper glove, 100 grit. I didn’t know sandpaper gloves existed. Nor did I know I had so much dead skin. It came from everywhere. The glove stripped skin from places I never knew had skin. There were globs of it. Chunks. As Anis assailed me with more buckets of hot water, bits and pieces of me flowed to the drain next to my face, swirled twice, and disappeared.
Then Anis directed me to a second shower wing. He told me in French to strip off my boxers. My French is not great. I only understood his demonstration. I slipped my boxers off. My exfoliated ass lit up that tiny alcove.
The shower was frigid. If hell is an inferno, then heaven is an ice-cold shower. And I spent the next few minutes in heaven. Then I turned the shower off and wrung out my boxers. A scratchy white towel hung from my waist as I walked out.
Anis waited for me in the lobby. He wore a matching towel and carried two golden bowls. They were bowls of heavenly water. He handed me one and bowed his head. I bowed back. We sat on a wooden bench and drank in silence.
In the silence, the bliss arrived.
It was likely endorphins rushing to my Stretch-Armstronged body. It might have been that my body had never experienced such precise brutality or kindness from another human. Maybe it was a variation on Stockholm Syndrome. Regardless, I put the bowl down and leaned back. I basked in post-hammamal bliss next to Anis, who had something akin to chewed gum hanging out of a hole in his boxers. I laughed.
Bliss happens in unexpected places.
*These are words created by me. They all mean a person who performs a hammam.
