Like most grand Islamic cities, Marrakech grew around the cult of water. Underground qanat canals funnel snowmelt from the Atlas Mountains that ring the southern Moroccan city.
These channels irrigate the palmeries and olive groves that gifted Marrakech its original wealth. The cooling wells that cleansed its people — an obligation in Islam — watered the camel trains that shipped Berber fabrics from Fes to the Atlantic, and carried Tuareg nomads to Timbuktu. Dough would be left to bake on one side while the customer bathed next door, both bakery and bath being fuelled by the same fiery furnace.
The first tepid changing room gives way to a warmer salon where hair and skin are washed with gloopy black beldi soap — often laced with eucalyptus oil — purchased from the medina old town. Female bathers are liberated in more ways than one. Firstly as they make a rare disrobement from head to toe. Secondly as they can natter for one, two or three hours outside the confines of the marital home. Boukourai worries that social status could draw a slow veil over the traditional hammam. My first visit results in a knockback.
I have made the grave and apparently amusing error of entering a hammam during female-only visiting hours. Steambaths are strictly single sex, with men usually admitted in the afternoon. Local hammams are no-frills affairs so I have purchased my own plastic bucket, beldi soap and kiis exfoliating glove. As frontal nudity is considered offensive there is a protocol to undressing in male changing areas.
Men slip into football shorts or boxers then cart themselves off to the tepid room. Clothing items are left on hangers under the eye of a hammami bath assistant.
