So here we are at the Hammam

If you are in a hurry, just remember this: go to a Hammam. I went to this one.

Next to my university is la Mosquée de Paris, a huge & beautiful Mosque with a reputation because of its tea shop, restaurant and hammam. We once had an Economics lesson there during the student strikes against the CPE (Spring 2006) which is when I first went. After stepping in to a parallel universe off the street, you land in a leafy courtyard, which leads to a huge restaurant that is divided into several small rooms all done in a Moroccan style. One eats delicious tagines off huge brass tables plates (the tables) and drinks mint tea. But I digress. Souzana, Laura and I ate there on Monday (to celebrate the holidays!!!); today we tried out the Hammam.

We met around eleven, and went off, this was a first time for all of us. Through the courtyard and in to the first lift sized little hall. One door on the right leads to the restaurant, another ahead to the garden and on the left there are hundreds of pastries on display. The Hammam is behind a door, at "8 o'clock" when you come in, next to the pastries, and difficult to see.

First small room, like the hall with Moroccan furniture, mosaics, overhead lights, all very Arabian and nice. Then it's slam bang into the hammam through a large wooden door. On the left is the cash register. We took a formula (38 euros) where you get black soap, an exfoliation, a massage and tea.

To get to the changing rooms, you have to walk through this first room which has got a fountain in the middle and huge, raised cushions all around to lounge on. Around the founain there are four massage tables, and (mostly) topless women lay about waiting for their number to be called.

To the left is a corridor which leads to another corridor, this time with lockers in it. Everyone changes in this very narrow room (no way could two people pass each other in it). Laura put on her bikini: "no way am I taking the top off"; Souzana put on her sporty swimsuit; I realised I had left my hideous (yet functional) bikini at home. Underwear (thank god I put on the cute black nylon ones and not my white cotton mega pants) and my bra. We slipped down the corridor (as one would in a Moroccan decor swimming pool) and through a small door. In front of us a flabby old Maghrebine matron was rubbing some poor soul with a black glove. We tiptoed round them in to another small grey marble room where women were waiting for their turn to be rubbed. There were four showers at either end. Then it's into the hammam per se.

A first room looks grey, and is empty except for a stone ledge and, wait for it, a 15 meter hose with a nozzle that looks like a spaceship. More of that later. It's warm and humid and stuffy at this point, but then we go in to the main room. This is huge, with pillars, mosaic, marble, a huge raised dais in the center for lounging, niches all along the side, all very quiet with just the sound of low chatter mingled in steam. Within seconds the three of us were topless, like everyone else.

At the end of this beautiful center of the Hammam is a small, square room that it darker with a deep orangey steamy light coming from the glass window. This is the hottest room. One sits or lies on the ledge near the door and SWEATS. Not a couple of drops down the forehead, or all over claminess, but rivers running down, dripping, blinding. Every few minutes, a new wave of heat belches in here, fresh from the furnace or whatever. There is an (empty) star shaped pool up some steps at the end of the room, with a ledge that runs all round it, but it was physicaly impossible to walk up the steps or approach the basin. in fact standing up was a challenge because of the layer of heat that sat above us. This was not the blast of heat you get when you get out of the plane in India, this was very hot oven hot, impossible to breathe, choking, blistering skin hot. This was, in essence, steam that has just come from water that had been thrown on a fire. Does that make it 100°? It certainly could have been.

It's ok to sit in here because heat rises, but after a bit it makes one dizzy, probably from the dehydration, so we decided to black soap ourselves in the main room. We found a niche of our own, the size of a large car, and got down to soaping up, ourselves first then the others' backs. This black soap is like jam, and is made of olive oil mostly I think. Very slimy and rich. We let it soak, then went in to the empty hose room. The hose is a instrument of genius, exactly how I imagine the Karcher Sarkozy said he would use to hose away the banlieue scum. Its blast, from ten feet, hurts if you press too hard so one releases the grip and it just flies like a industrial sprinkler. And the water is cold. After the heat of the Hammam it is an incredible experience.

We moved back to the rooms (hot and main) for a bit then started queuing, still naked and all prudishness gone, sitting along the stone ledge in the corridor we had come through earlier. Everything, showers and rooms are open and everyone is fine with this. As we get closer, we see that Mad Maghreb Matron is rubbing the poor victims with the same strength as before, and they looked in pain. A woman we asked as she crawled to the showers confirmed. Laura went first and it went fine, then it was Souzana and finally me. First on my back, she rubbed all over my chest, legs, tummy and arms, afterwards she rolled me on to my front, and attacked my back and back of legs. Suddenly she grabbed my knickers, slapped them in to a thong and yanked them down. She did my arse, under the watchful eye off all those queing, and Laura who was in hysterics in the shower.

Showered off dead skin and felt soft. Time for massage. We took our mint teas and lounged nudely on the cushions in the fountain/massage table room. We had to wait an hour and a half in the end. We sipped tea, chatted, watched people go past, younger girls in swimming costumes looking vaguely uneasy, the Japanese whom we had thought prude at first with their sarongs but were now bearing all, older French women in packs. We lazily watched the women being massaged with liberal amounts of oil, went back for a blast of hot room and hose, had a shower, lounged some more, taking in the stained glass windows, the Moroccan architecture. It is impossible to describe how relaxing this was: waiting for a massage while the muscles recovered from the heat and steam and humidity.

At last it was my turn. The nice middle aged lady ordered me about: "tourne toi ma fille, plus haut ma fille, la tete là ma fille". First she did my front, covering me with gallons of oil, not massaging hard deep in to the muscles, more rubbing them softly with circular hand movements to get the oil in. She found my sciatica and gently rubbed oil in along my leg, warming it. She found my bad back, from too much hunching over computer (Laura and Souz had the same one!) and softly ran it between her fingers. After 10 minutes I was dozing and have never been so relaxed. I went back to the cushions while Souz and Laura were being done. Warm and relaxed and feeling drowsy. We showered off about ten liters of oil (leaving a slick layer on our skin all the same) and got back to the vestiaire.

We left feeling dozy and relaxed and incredibly clean, as well as a little bit stoned. We felt as if we had just swum twenty miles in the ea then had warm soapy showers.
Once outside reality hit us. We're in Paris, near the uni, and we're late for our rdv with Lucyna. We're hungry, we're thirsty, we've got to find the bus, our hair is full of fucking oil!! We floated about, strolled, giggled at Lucyna who had been waiting for an hour and a quarter at St Michel, ate. Went back home feeling exhausted. I had a whisky with a neighbour and almost fell asleep.
As I write, stiffness is leaking through as if I'd exercised rather than just sweat on a cushion. My tummy feels flatter and my skin is soft and silky and I feel terrific, in and out.

Amazing. I'm addicted