Of Friends and Hammams Tuesday, April 15, 2008 |
Moroccan mother and daughter who shared a cabin with us in the train ride from Rabat to FesI forgot the name of the cherubic little girl! We conversed in our limited Arabic, asking her name, her age, and telling her mother how "jameeeel" she is! Check out the beautiful henna artwork on the mother's hands. Moroccan women regularly henna their hands, for both beauty and "protective" reasons. They put my plainly henna-ed bride fingers to shame! Berber women used to adorn themselves with tattoos with Berber symbols, which in the artistic tradition of Morocco, contain a power known as "baraka" which they believe will protect oneself against evil jins. Because tattoos are forbidden by Islam, Berber women started to place their protective motifs on their body using henna when they embraced Islam.
Me helping an old Berber woman up the stairs at the train station in Rabat
She held out her hands to me at the foot of the stairs and asked me, in Arabic, for help. I was stunned for awhile, before I took her hand. Thing is, was mesmerised by the tattoo on her chin. In the olden days, Berber women are often tattooed around body openings to keep the jin from entering the body through them. So you will often come across elderly Berber women with tattoos on their chins, supposedly indicating which tribe they come from.
D with Nasr our guide in Fes, who hosted us to lunch at his home
He doesn't do this often with other tourists but because we were Muslims, Nasr opened his home to us. Though a Muslim country, we did not meet many practicising Muslims in Morocco, which is why we were very grateful for Nasr, who was a good Muslim family man who would join jemaah prayers at the nearby mosque every fardhu prayer including Fajr. He was very happy to meet young practicing Muslims like us from a foreign land, so we were well taken care of during our stay in Fes. It also helped that he stays only a few doors away from our riad. We had this meal after Friday prayers (where I had squeezed into a tiny little ladies prayer hall in a very old mosque in the medina of Fes) and he served us with couscous.... It is a tradition in Fes to eat couscous on Fridays, and wow just recalling the soft semolina-flour like grains topped with generous stewed meat and vegetables is making me hungry!
With Nasr's daughters: adorable Sophia and her sister Ihsan
Ihsan and Lil Sophia spoke limited English so I had to struggle with my even more limited French and Arabic. After lunch and resting for awhile, Sophia and Ihsan brought me to the ladies hammam, while D went with Nasr to the men's. Hammams are Moroccan public baths, separated by gender... hence I have no pictures of the hammam experience obviously, so I'm gonna try to do justice to it with words. You can also visit this site, which summarises my experience quite well. Sophia was so cute... she actually had Quran school that afternoon but when she heard that I wanted to go to the Hammam she begged and begged Nasr and Ihsan to let her skip school so that she can come along to the hammam with us! Sophia was really hard to say no to... when her father Nasr said ok she squealed with delight. They came to pick me up at my riad with huge sports bag filled with towels and other hammam essentials... it reminded me of when I used to go to the Tampines swimming pool with my mom as a kid! Cos thats exactly what it is like for them, hammams or public baths are very much part of the daily Moroccan life. Esp on Fridays, it is a tradition for men to go to the hammams to clean themselves before prayers. There are male and female hammams throughout the medina, but they are not well-signaged so you will usually need a local to point one out to you. It was a very interesting cultural experience for me and I think its a must-do for every visitor to Morocco. But don't go to the fancy tourist ones.. go to where the locals go, deep in the heart of the medina.
I was infected by Sophia's childish excitement from the start... I think she was feeling quite "adult" around me, as she had to show me simple things like where to hang my clothes, where to sit in the hammam, what to do.... and she washed my hair for me too! And she kept giggling at my self-consciousness. The traditional hammams are pretty much "self-service". Everyone sits on the floor, against the walls, to bathe, with buckets of hot and cold water surrounding you. You bring your own loofahs, traditional vegetable-based pastes that dear Sophia showed me how to use as body scrubs and shampoo. Guidebooks say the hammams are the best place for female tourists to meet local women in a social context, and I agree, as I walked greeted with warm smiles of women wearing well, the minimal. They came in all ages from children to old grandmothers... you could tell this was serious cleaning business for them. There were mothers lathering up their screaming children, aunties gossiping while scrubbing each other's backs, and young teenage girls grooming themselves (apparently the hammam is considered a prime spot for scoping potential daughters-in-law!), washing their hair and steaming their faces. The highlight of my time in the hammam was when Ihsan called the hammam attendant, a big sized woman who reminded me of a sumo wrestler, to give me a (paid) scrub. This head-to-toe scrub-down experience was one seriously abrasive massage. She gave me instructions in Arabic, which I took sometime to understand that she was asking me to lie down flat on my face on the hammam stone floor... she scrubbed me like I was some carpet, and then told me to flip. It was traumatic at first, and then I learned to enjoy it! D had a similar experience too but his massage-cum-scrub was soooo good that he went running to the toilet right after! We both went back to our riad that evening feeling soooo sleepy and relaxed... we fell asleep immediately and had such a fitful sleep that we missed dinner! Such is the benefit of a good scrubdown at a Moroccan "spa"!
A refreshed Sophia and I after our hammam bath
D with Mohammad, a small boy who helped us in a small mosque in Rabat.
He saw us looking quite lost and took the initiative to show me where the female prayer area is, showed D that shoes are to be placed on the shelves (see top of picture), and where to take abulution. Mosques in the medinas in Morocco are numerous, though small and very basic. Unfortunately, most if not all of them are only open during prayer time and otherwise locked, so its quite hard for us to find a place to pray in between. If we do find one unlocked, it is usually empty like this one... so we were grateful for this little boy's help.
Dinner with Ikram in Rabat
Hehe, nope this friend is not Moroccan. We were pleasantly surprised to see a Malay face in the souks of Rabat... Bro Ikram struck up a conversation with D while I was distracted looking at Moroccan handicrafts. He's a Malaysian student from Terengganu, who is studying Islamic studies in a university in Rabat, under a Moroccan scholarship! Rabat, amongst other Moroccan cities, have always been traditional centres of Islamic learning, and still remains one of the places foreigners come to study Arabic. We walked around with Ikram the rest of the evening and had dinner. See his blog entry on meeting us titled Siapa Lagi Nak Honeymoon Di Sini? Haha.
More to come on the other friends we made in Morocco....
Our Mahgribi honeymoon was made possible with help from our friends at Journey Beyond Travel.