I’m a hammam-lover and avid hammam-goer as well. You can find me, every two weeks or so, hailing a taxi in the street, loaded up to my armpits with hammam gear, on my way to my favorite place: Hammam Sekkaya. Sekkaya (which should be spelled “souqaya” if you ask me) means “tap” or “robinet” for you Francophones - “tap” as in the place the water comes out of in your sink.

What I love about Sekkaya is its sheer size. The hammam I formerly attended, which shall remain nameless, had small, dark rooms (I actually liked the ambience) and the taps were spaced very closely. You’ll see why this is a bad thing in just a moment.

You see, in the hammam, women sit nearly naked (about half leave their undies on), sweating and scrubbing dead skin off of their bodies. It might sound gross, but it’s one of the most wonderful feelings in the world. What actually is gross, though, is what happens when you’ve got a small hammam space with taps spaced closely - You get someone else’s dead skin on you.

Now, maybe that’s my American squeamishness coming through, but the idea that someone else’s dead skin is flowing over my almost clean body - gah!

Anyhow - I entered Sekkaya tonight only to find that I’d be suffering the same dead skin madness. I couldn’t turn around (Hamza had dropped me off to pick me up an hour later), so I entered anyway. A young mother was nice enough to scoot her daughter’s belongings over, and I prepared my usual ritual: sweat it out, slather on savon beldi, sweat some more, scrub my feet, pretend to stare at the wall, sweat, then ask the lady to scrub me. After my scrubbing, I returned to my spot (which some large Francophone woman had almost stolen from me - thank goodness for the young mother’s defense!) only to find that the worst possible thing to ever happen in a hammam had happened.

The water had turned COLD.

I quickly turned to the girl on either side of me to ask if they were experiencing the same thing.

“Sukhoon?” I asked, hopefully.

“Berd,” both girls replied.

I looked around - everyone was sitting in silence, unsure of what to do next. The taps had all been turned off, women were visibly shivering (despite the fact that the room was still sweltering hot - but I’m sure I’ve mentioned how terrified of cold air, cold water, cold Coca-Cola, etc everyone here is).

Ten minutes later, the hot water returned and I quickly finished up my business (by that time, it almost was cold!) and made my way out, vowing never to go to the hammam on a Sunday night again.