Sqeaky Clean and Seventeen

Can you think of any better way to spend your birthday than trapped in a room with your mother? Naked. Being scrubbed raw.  Well, that is what you get when you sign up for a birthday hammam in Morocco to celebrate the big day.  Initially it seemed like a good idea - a luxurious cultural excursion to celebrate Brianna's 17th birthday. 

We did a little research online to find a "tourist hammam" to ease ourselves into this cultural phenomenon which involves steaming, lathering, scrubbing, and rinsing away dead skin until your entire body is soft (and sore). The public hammam generally requires you to be a practicing Muslim in order to enter, so we had to cross the truly authentic experience off our list. However, there are hammams that cater to the general public which provide a more traditional experience - think giant steam room filled with naked customers and a collection of scrubbers-for-hire who will scrub you down with a special mitt that peels away more skin cells than you thought you owned and, then, dump buckets of water over you to wash you down. I am generally uncomfortable with public nudity, so that did not sound like a viable option in my book. I am still traumatized by the "couples massage" experience I had with my sister-in-law in Vietnam a few years ago, so a public scouring in my birthday suit did not sound the least bit appealing. 

Brianna and I chose the "spa hammam" experience. It began with our choice of soaps and oils, some mint tea, and a glass of water. Then, things went downhill quickly. They left us in a small locker room to change into our bathrobes and disposable, paper thongs. The last time I sported underwear that sexy, I had just had a baby. Brianna was the grown-up in the situation. She kept saying, "It's just a body, Mom. It's natural. Get over it." I couldn't stop laughing and fretting over what was still to come. As anticipated, it got worse. We were led to a steam room with two marble slabs and told to lie down. Two women came in an sprayed us down and rotated us on the table. Then they left us to steam. I couldn't stop laughing at the awkwardness of the situation. They returned to lather us up (everywhere) with black argan soap and left us to steam again. Once again, the giggling started. Then, there was nothing left to giggle about; It was time to cry. Those ladies came back with their hammam mitts and an attitude. I felt like a five year old who had been playing in the sandbox all day, and whose mother had called her in for a long overdue bath. My scrubber took to my skin with an enthusiasm that seemed mildly masochistic. She scrubbed and scoured places that I am quite sure should be neither scrubbed nor scoured. She left me raw and pink. I couldn't tell if I felt good or wounded. And, then, she sprayed it all away. Brianna was enduring the same treatment on the table next to me. I wanted to ask her if this was natural too, but I was afraid my lady would take the opportunity to scrub my tongue if I opened my mouth.  Finally the scrubbing came to an end, and we were rinsed and bundled back into our robes to enjoy more mint tea and cookies.

We lounged on gigantic pillows and listened to soothing music before being led away into separate massage rooms for our massages. Why the scrubbing had to take place in a party room, while the massage got to happen in a private space, I have no idea. It gave me something to contemplate while the craziness of the Marrakech medina was being massaged into blissful oblivion by the lady with the verbena covered hands. Sixty minutes later, I emerged from the massage room a changed woman. Brianna had a matching goofy, happy smile on her face, so I assumed her massage was equally as enjoyable. We reclined again like Moroccan princesses and enjoyed more mint tea before being sent off to the changing room to transition back to reality. As a parting gift, we were each handed our used hammam mitt in a little plastic bag. It was disgusting. We could only speculate that they wanted to prove to us that each customer gets a fresh mitt, instead of being scrubbed with remnants of somebody else's dead skin (kind of like when the garage offers to give you your old car parts back to show you that they actually replaced them). I resisted the urge to help myself to a supply of those sexy paper thongs on the way out and decided to chalk this experience up to moving way beyond my comfort zone in honor of Brianna's birthday.

Next on the Moroccan birthday list was a stop for henna at the Henna Cafe. This adventure was much more my speed (with the added bonus of leaving all of my clothes on). We spent over an hour at the cafe while Brianna chose her pattern and waited patiently while one of the henna artists worked her magic.  We found so much more than beautiful henna here, though. We met the artist/owner of the cafe, who comes from the United States. She proved to be a wealth of knowledge about many things Marrakech and provided us with some leads on finding bicycles in the local market and tasty places to eat. Her staff helped us learn a few more words of Darija and shared some local nuts(?) that we had never tried before. Brianna left with an arm covered in amazing henna and lots of fun memories.

The party continued at home where I attempted to make a birthday cake from a box. We had to buy a cake pan for the occasion, but I had neglected to notice that we didn't own a mixing bowl. The coffee pot served as a makeshift bowl. The broiler pan/oven rack proved worthy when tested, and the cake came out just fine. Andy tried his hand at making whipped cream from half and half shaken with sugar in a water bottle. After a few minutes of shaking, we wondered whether it would turn to butter, so he went to beating it with a fork. After about ten minutes, we concluded that the cake would be served with liquid cream as a topping option. As we dug into the chocolate cake and reminisced about the day's adventures, Brianna ran her hands over her smooth legs to confirm the success of the hammam treatment and discovered that the henna artwork would not be her only souvenir of the day. The red-striped abrasions on her calves were just starting to show - a visible reminder of the day's sweet pain. Never did a birthday hurt so good.