Hamam-a-jama!

"Everything but the bikini!" she barked, pointing at my nether regions.

I stood there, feeling exposed, in a cold, damp room covered in sterile white tiles. It took me a moment to process the translation. Slowly, I began removing my shirt. Apparently, I wasn’t moving fast enough because she stepped in and yanked it off for me. Then, with a quick tug, she pulled my shorts down, leaving me standing there in nothing but my boxer briefs—my "bikini."

The "she" in question, I later learned, was a woman named Katie—though I suspect that might be her “stage name.” Katie was my masseuse in the hammam of our riad, a traditional Moroccan house-turned-hotel.

For the uninitiated, a hammam—often incorrectly called a "Turkish Bath" by Westerners—is a type of steam bath or public bathing area that originated in the Roman bathhouses and was later adopted by the Muslim world.

This wasn’t my first hammam experience. Fifteen years ago, when Francesca and I traveled the world together, I treated myself to a hammam in Istanbul for my 40th birthday. Unlike the touristy experience at the riad, the Istanbul hammam was a locals-only affair. No one spoke English, and the person “hammaming” me wasn’t a petite woman but a massive, barrel-chested man with biceps that could crush coconuts and a permanent scowl that screamed, "Don't mess with me."

I remember sweating profusely while lying on a scorching hot marble slab, surrounded by several other patrons. The room was a sauna on steroids. From the private massage rooms, I could hear occasional screams, which didn’t do much to calm my nerves. But no one else seemed concerned, so I tried to relax.

That is until I noticed something odd. One by one, every other patron quietly slipped out of the room. I was suddenly alone in the vast, steamy space.

And then he entered. My hammam guy.

He was enormous—shirtless, bald, and sporting a thick handlebar mustache that made him look like a 1920s strongman straight out of Coney Island. He grunted at me, gesturing for me to follow him. My instincts screamed, "Oh, hell no!" but my feet betrayed me, and I followed him into a private room.

Once there, he barked at me to lie down on a narrow concrete slab. For the next 30 minutes, he worked me over with hands the size of dinner plates. There was no small talk, no soothing spa music—just a series of guttural grunts as he kneaded my muscles with the force of a cement mixer.

Occasionally, his massive hands would work their way up my inner thigh, coming uncomfortably close to my man parts. I’d be lying if I said the thought of an (un)happy ending didn’t briefly cross my mind. But it turned out he was all business—just very, very thorough.

At times, his strength brought involuntary yelps from me, which probably unnerved the next person waiting in the main room. But I suspect the locals knew the drill. 

Fast-forward 15 years, and here I was again—lying on a similar slab in a much smaller room, with a much smaller masseuse. Katie, too, was thorough, occasionally straying a little too close for comfort, but I chalked it up to professional dedication.

Traditionally, the hammam isn’t a massage parlor—it’s a place for bathing and washing the body. The massage, I suspect, is a modern twist added to appeal to tourists.

Still, it felt undeniably strange to have a stranger bathe me as if I were a toddler. Katie had me holding my arms up so she could scrub under my armpits and even got a little too personal while cleaning my backside. But by the end of it, I couldn’t deny it: I was incredibly clean.

The massage was a nice reward for enduring the awkwardness of standing in a hot, humid room with a total stranger while wearing only my bikini.