She continues scrubbing, then hoses me down. In fact, I have stripped off more than my skin here. I have stripped off all the accouterments that conceal my body, that communicate an image that may or may not be me. Being naked is a fundamental part of the hammam experience, and in the hammam we are all equal and distinct in our nakedness. Jew and Arab literally drop their guards and press the flesh.
Appearances shift dramatically.
The striking blond with big hair is actually frail and vulnerable. The ordinary-looking matron is suddenly sexy, with solid haunches made for marauding or having babies. At first I am self-conscious about my own body. I haven't been publicly naked in 20 years, since my body was young and untired, when my friends and I would skinny-dip at late night pool parties and feign indifference as we strained, through the broken refractions of water and light, to catch a glimpse of a testicle here, a breast there. The hammam says to us that it's okay to look.