Men In Briefs: The Series

Morocco’s been more or less the same since I last checked in. Dar­ija has been get­ting slightly eas­ier; I keep thank­ing my lucky stars that sim­ple pop songs like “Gimme More” exist so my friends and I here can keep prac­tic­ing the new words we learn (“Oh na na, wesh smitee?”).

I’ll start off and dif­fuse any tit­u­lar mys­tery: I went to the ham­mam this past week­end. For those who aren’t famil­iar, the ham­mam is a sort of a bathhouse/spa that is incred­i­bly impor­tant to Arab and Turk­ish cul­ture. Eliot’s and my host brother, Mar­wane took us there this past Sunday.

But first we went to get Marwane’s hair cut. The process took about two hours in a tiny room filled with men chat­ting. Though a mun­dane detail, I thought it sort of sym­bol­ized most of Moroc­can life: sched­ules are less impor­tant, things take more time; instead of stress­ing, peo­ple go some­where and relax and enjoy their com­pany. Mar­wane left pink and zween from his beard being threaded, but lit­tle did I know how zween we were actu­ally about to be.

The ham­mam is vis­ited by women in Morocco about once a week or once every two weeks. Men go about once every two weeks or every month. You’re sup­posed to go the day before a spe­cial event or occa­sion; the ham­mam is a puri­fy­ing expe­ri­ence that makes you feel cleaner than you’ve ever felt before.

But the ham­mam is also a social expe­ri­ence, in its own way. I can­not attest to what hap­pens beyond the closed tiles of the women’s sec­tion, but in the three cham­bers of the males’ ham­mam, men wash each other, relax, and wear really ill-fitting under­wear. Not much is said, but that might just be because of the heat–after all, the word Ham­mam (cap­i­tal H means pro­nounce it like you’re try­ing to fog a win­dow) comes from the root Hamm, which means to make some­thing hot.

In actu­al­ity, I ques­tion how ster­ile the ham­mam is–it’s a per­fect tem­per­a­ture for germs to breed, and much of the wash­ing takes place lay­ing on the shared tiled floor. But I cast any ger­mo­pho­bic fears away and pro­ceeded to entirely engage in the experience.

First, you acquire buck­ets of hot water and wash in the hottest room, relax­ing. For some, the entire expe­ri­ence takes three to four hours. Next, you cover your­self in soap and then wash it off. Then, you pro­ceed to scrub your­self with a kis (think steel wool for your skin!) and rub off every fin­ger­print that’s ever touched you. Our mom adds, “Like spaghetti!”, hint­ing at how skin rolls off of you in small, spaghetti-like shapes. Yup. Now think back to the shared tiled floor…

For the back, your friend helps you. I asked Mar­wane, and he says he never goes to the ham­mam alone. While he said this, he spun me over and pro­ceeded to scrape my back as if it were a grill cov­ered in 10-year-old food residue, but the food residue in this metaphor is actu­ally a part of me.

Fol­low­ing the body-raking, you enter the sec­ond room which is less hot for sham­poo­ing and more soap­ing. We fin­ished our ham­mam expe­ri­ence in about an hour, and when we exited to the chang­ing room and hit the cold air I thought but one thing: Zween.

You think clearer. You are clearer. I was ten shades less tan and prob­a­bly looked ten shades more Amer­i­can, but hell was I clean. I think. Sci­ence may say oth­er­wise. But still, it is enjoy­able to go through a phys­i­cal, trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence with friends, let alone brothers.

In news that does not involve buck­ets, AMIDEAST has arranged for me to teach Eng­lish at a local orga­ni­za­tion to inter­me­di­ate speak­ers. I get to design les­son plans and every­thing. And on the intern­ship front, I’m now offi­cially work­ing at an orga­ni­za­tion called The Ibn Rochd for Stud­ies and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, a pro-democracy NGO which has a fancy for ambigu­ous titling. The founder of the orga­ni­za­tion is one of the key play­ers in Morocco’s Feb­ru­ary 20th Move­ment, the most impor­tant Moroc­can protest in Arab Spring to date.

The stu­dents on the pro­gram and I have been try­ing to mix things up over the week­end here in Rabat. Last week­end, we rented a riad right next to the ocean and had a sort of “com­pany retreat” there which was a great way to get to know every­one bet­ter and involved a lot of shawarma. This com­ing week­end, most of us are going to Casablanca, only an hour away. The ladies are itch­ing to get their hands on some soy latte frap­pu­ci­nos at the only Star­bucks in al-Maghreb.

Also, spring break plans have been set! I’m jet­ting off to Lon­don to see eight great friends who live there and then fer­ry­ing over to Dublin for Saint Patrick’s Day to pay homage to the saint and the color green.

Talk about zween.