“Shedding Skin”
Elizabeth Smith
The sun rises above the rooftop terraces of Rabat, crisscrossed with webs of clothing clines. It’s our final day in Morocco, which means my last taste of sugary mint tea, my last day fending off leers from Moroccan men, and my last chance to visit the hammam, the bathhouse and center of socialization for locals. I promised my friend Courtney that I would brave the naked crowds and discomfort with her. So once morning came, we dressed ourselves in the same flowing outfits we’d been wearing all week. We made a pact of no judgment. Soon we would be shedding all our layers and just… be naked.
We hardly say a word to each other on the walk over. My mind is busy with my own nervous thoughts. It’s just bathing. Good old communal bathing. I should have shaved my legs… It’s 9 a.m. and the typical Moroccan heat hasn’t yet overwhelmed the shopkeepers. They come out from under the awnings of their shops with sales pitches, buffed up with equally unsolicited compliments.
“Spice Girls, over here!” they shout. We keep our fair-haired heads down and walk with hurried steps, trying to outrun the calls of the paparazzi. Men seem to appear out of nowhere, coming out of the woodwork to compliment us? Scare us? It’s a cultural thing, at least that’s what we were told. They don’t mean any harm. Not really. They couldn’t possibly; it’s 9 a.m., but the cat calls give me the anxiety that accompanies walking through a city alone after midnight, a time when – as my parents always warned me – nothing good ever happens. So we quicken our pace.
Turning the corner, we find ourselves in a virtual ghost town. It’s still and quiet, its peacefulness resonating as slightly eerie. We stop in front of an unimposing building with no signage or windows where a stout woman unveils a sign in Arabic script. This is it. She looks us up and down and spews out some rapid-fire Arabic. Our blank expressions construct an insurmountable wall between us. But Courtney is brave, so I look to her, and she takes my cue.
“Bonjour, we would like to bathe,” Courtney says boldly. Hopefully she understands French. Nope. It does not even register with the woman. I step in with some scrubbing motions, and she steers us in the direction of a young guy behind a countertop. I pull out my makeshift wallet, a plastic bag full of Moroccan Dirhams, and fan out the bills. He averts his eyes as he equips us with soap, towels, and loofas.
Wielding our new bathing tools with strained smiles, we enter the central room and wait. It’s a glorified locker room. Women in various stages of undress repose on benches. Flip flops smack against the tiled floors. Conversations pour out from a steam room and dozens of other women rush around us, naked head-to-toe. Out of the forty women here, no one looks like us. No one else is even under thirty. I try not to look around too much. I can suddenly feel the fabric of my clothes against my skin. It’s getting very warm. I’ve never seen so much nudity in my life. It’s a bizarre paradox: on the streets, Moroccan women show nothing, not an inch of skin (except maybe on their faces). Here, they leave nothing covered. Is it immodesty? No, it’s just cultural.
I survey the room. Two women stand naked, toe-to-toe, with their breasts nearly grazing the other’s. How will I ever part with my bra? Another woman slides the billowing canvas of her underwear down her legs, revealing her backside, a cellulite-covered canvas. Don’t stare. So many different body types, sometimes scarred, sometimes with hair, sometimes extraordinarily tan.
Pushing six feet, I tower over every single woman. But unlike the men in the streets, they don’t gawk, even though I’m different. A woman with loose skin that hangs off her body like melting cheddar cheese waddles past me. Suddenly, the stretch marks on my thighs from my back-to-back growth spurts – something that usually plagues me – don’t seem so significant. She joins her friends, immediately erupting into laughter. We aren’t part of the posse, not proud, not confident, definitely not comfortable. Courtney and I huddle sheepishly in the corner, slowly being pushed closer and closer to foggy double doors, through which so many women are entering, but none have returned.
Alright. Let’s go. First, the shoes come off. Then we peel off our shirts. My long hair, colored honey from all the sun, falls strategically over my chest. We step out of our pants, perfectly in sync, never breaking eye contact. Before parting with my modest clothes, I grab some coins. Just in case. Now we’re ready. We stand in nothing but our panties, which is actually a cop-out, considering that the typical hammam uniform consists of nothing at all. I put the coins under the band of my underwear and twist it into knots to secure them. We get herded like sheep into a steamy room with all the other women, who waste no time in dumping buckets over their heads, never faulting in their Arabic conversations. We let their warm runoff glide over our feet. I stand naked and unsure of everything, with my gaze locked on the floor, following the mesmerizing swirls of soapy water, flowing in twirling ribbons toward a central drain. Suddenly, we are grabbed by two women. They’re naked and young, like us! They push us into a corner, segregating us from the hammam regulars.
We lower ourselves down onto the cool tiles, laughing as we examine each other in this weirdly intimate environment. The steam helps to soften our perceptions of each other. The women helping us go over to a spigot on the other side of the room and fill up large tubs with hot water. Like Courtney and I, they’re laughing. It must be because we’re Americans – Americans who wear underwear to the hammam.
When they return, they dump the water over our heads, grab the soap and get to work. They’re rough with our limbs and bend our arms in all directions, lathering up every inch of skin. The abrasive wash cloth grinds a whole layer of my skin off, which accumulates in piles on my stomach like eraser shavings. Her cloth feels like sandpaper against my skin. She commences a circular sequence down the length of my spine until she has reached my underwear. Closer and closer to my butt she goes. I probably could have worn something a little cuter. She pulls my underwear high up above my hip bones in one swift motion. The coins that were once so secure crash to the floor, getting swept up in the current of sudsy water rushing down to the drain.
***
Giving into the mesmerizing kneading motions of my assistant’s hands, I embrace the feeling of being tenderized like that chicken-fried steak I have been sorely missing while abroad. I forget that I’m naked in a room full of women who I do not know. I forget about the fact that I haven’t shaved my prickly cactus legs. I forget about the unsightly, peeling burn on the tiny sliver of chest that I shamefully left exposed from the subtle scoop of my shirt. I forget about all the comparisons of bra sizes Courtney and I had done in the past…
It seems like she had forgotten too. Courtney’s chest is pressed against the tiled floor, while her assistant straddles her and applies pressure like a steam roller. Courtney giggles, squeezing the sides of her large chest and I worry what the women are thinking. Stupid American girls, probably. And then I am flattened too.
Our bodies, all soaped up, glide effortlessly over the surface of the white tiles.
“Think of how many other boobs have been here,” Courtney says wondrously to me.
From what I can tell, it’s a lot. I turn onto one cheek and catch a glimpse of two older women. Both of their bodies display the effects of time and gravity with pride. They talk in a language that – despite the promise I showed during my brief stint with Arabic the other morning – I do not understand at all. They wring out their own towels, massage their own legs, and go at their own pace.
“Probably a lot of boobs,” I finally reply.
***
Through grunting and gesticulating, my assistant instructs me to sit up I drape an arm over my chest, trying to be modest for the finale, a facial. She guides the cloth down the ridge of my nose, down to my sternum. She draws concentric circles around the knobs of my collar bones, and then she vanishes. Courtney and I are left with our eyes closed. In my mind, it’s totally dark and finally totally comfortable. My arm drops from its coy, Birth of Venus-position across my chest. Just as it falls to my side, a shower of warm water falls over me, and I’m left looking like a wet dog, but feeling comfortable – tingly and confident in my entirely new layer of skin. This is why these women do this…
