Hammam, Ma'am?

I meet a Canadian girl at the Hotel Riad in Hama, and despite our differing schedules, we manage to reconnect here in Haleb (Aleppo) where we discover that both of us want to try out one of the local bath houses. We jump at the chance to do it as a pair, not knowing exactly what will lie behind the doors of the ancient Hammam, where generations of Syrian women have had their skin and self consciousness scrubbed away.

The famous Hammam Yalbourgh an-Nasry in Aleppo has been closed for some time now, so we head south from the Citadel in order to locate the Hammam al-Sallhia, which the hotel receptionist had ascertained will be today open for women until 6pm.

After a few navigational setbacks, thanks to the Lonely Planet's less than accurate city map, we find the sign pointing to the Hammam, and the doors that will lead us in to it.

I'd read about the Hammam experience. The steam, the scrubbing, the prodding . I was ready to be pummelled by a strange Syrian woman whilst lying de-robed and face down on a marble floor.

What I wasn't prepared for was the scrutiny of the several septuagenarians who spent the duration of my Hammam experience pointing and laughing at my uncovered body, while they sat resplendent in their own nudity in the centre of the bath house, covered in henna and olive oil soap and rolls of Jabba the Hutt like flab.

We two foreign women are on a tight schedule, needing to meet our German friend back at the citadel in one hour.

But these women seemed to have all day to sit in the steam and be scrubbed by the younger women fussing about them, making sure they were adequately soaped at all times, scraping the drips of henna from their expansive backs. They were the queen bees of the bath house, giving orders and laughing knowingly to themselves as they surveyed the other participants of this age old tradition.

I've got soap in my eyes and can feel the make up I forgot to remove running down my cheeks.

The dominant female catches my eye and rubs her index fingers together, nodding jerkily in my direction.

I've seen this before, and guess that she's asking if I am married.

'Naam', I reply. 'Ana sowja'.

I continue the charade of being a married woman, which has helped fend off over zealous Syrian men, and it pursuades these women to shift their attentions to my friend, who, after admitting she is not married becomes subject to much umming and arring and lengthy up and down glances. Sussing her out for one of their sons?

The women turn back to me.

'Bebe?', one asks, making huge belly extension gestures.

I am hoping she's not asking whether I am pregnant, but rather whether I have had children.

'Inshallah', I reply, an answer that satisfies them.

The whole procedure takes exactly an hour, and we are out of the Hammam in time for our rendez-vous at the citadel.

Our skin is glowing, our whole bodies relaxed. I feel so clean.

I think about the women at the Hammam, who were there when we trepidatiously arrived and remained in the same spot when we hurried out, and will likely only dry themselves off at 6pm when the Hammam closes it's doors to women and becomes a male only space.

For them, it seems, the steam and the scrub is secondary to the social aspect of the Hammam, the chatting, the laughing, the closeness with their friends and family.

I wonder what their lives are like outside the Hammam, constrained by convention, their hennaed hair and smooth bodies covered.

I prefer to remember them in the freedom of the Hammam where they are rulers of the marble chamber hiding behind nothing, laughing at the inhibited foreigners who bare arms and legs to the world, yet cling to their coverings here in this womb of soap and steam.