A Hammam in Amman

The last 4-hour leg of my journey to Jordan from Qatar I looked out the window and down below me was a whole lot of nothing! Faded orange coloured nothing.

As the plane landed in Amman, the capital city of Jordan, I looked out the window again and thought ‘there is still just a whole heap of faded orange coloured nothing’.

It was not hard to get into a cab from the airport, though in every country I’ve been to it never is hard. However this time it was a little bit more difficult getting out of the cab.

The driver insisted, and I mean persisted, in buying me a coffee. It was a sweet idea but I had left home 35 hours earlier, I had a terrible cold, period cramps and I was about to meet an ex I hadn’t really seen in 7 months, after a mildly tumultuous break-up. I wanted to get the meet and greet niceties over with and flop on a bed and sleep for at least 3 days.

Driver: Just one coffee. You are my guest to Jordan

Me: That is lovely, really, but I have a friend waiting.

Driver: Why is your hair cut like this? And your ears… why are they this size?

Me: (shifting awkwardly) Um… fashion?

Driver: I don’t know this word.

Silence.

Driver: One coffee, five minute. You are my guest.

Me: Thank you, really, but I really must meet my friend…

He pulled over beside a tin shed on the side of the road and put two fingers up. Shortly after a man appeared at my window with two coffees. The driver paid and we sat in mostly silence in his car on the side of the road while he chained smoked and I struggled to stay awake. The coffee was strong, way too sweet and was undoubtedly infused with cardamom. I really liked it.

I didn’t quite get three days sleep, but I got a full 11 hours, which was enough to get up and out of the room early and straight to a hammam.

Already feeling completely self-conscious and awkward in a completely new culture, maybe I was on a mission to throw all modesty to the wind and strip down bare in front of strangers who I didn’t doubt will be commenting disapprovingly on my tattoos and undercut.

I had never been to a bathhouse before… If Molly wasn’t with me there is no way that I would have gone in alone. I wasn’t at all comfortable stripping naked and sober in front of a room of women I don’t know from a culture that I do know is very conservative. After a lot of procrastinating, going to and from the toilet, folding and re-folding my clothes I finally stepped through the thick wooden doors and into the steam.

I was grateful to be engulfed by darkness, though the heavy hot air briefly took my breath away. Small coloured lights hung from the ceiling, a large stone bath bubbled away in the centre of the room and I could just make out the shadows of naked bodies lounging around the edges of the room. The smell of oils and soaps were promising.

We were directed to the shower and the woman stood watching us. I felt like I was in the army or a prison and about to be inspected for lice and rashes.

We were then hearded through a stone archway and into a room so hot my face burnt. I grabbed the white washer handed to me and wrapped it around my face gasping for air. Molly and I bumped into each other blinded as we clenched our face shut, shunning away from the steam that burned us. Strong hands pushed us down on a stone step and we sat giggling and gasping for air. I wasn’t sure how long I could sit there and stand that intense heat. It was quiet inside. We were alone to feel the weight of the heat and the stickiness of our skin.

Another woman wandered into our little steam room in and sat in front of us. Her entry was far more gracious then ours, she sat and was lost immediately in the dark less than a meter in front of us. Molly got up and left. It was so quiet in the room, still unbearably hot and heavy. All I could see was darkness around me except for the other woman’s legs right in front of me slowly opening and closing, quiet seductively, more so because I couldn’t see the rest of her.

I also couldn’t breathe anymore. So I got up and showered.

The shower was followed by a steam bath and more showers… I couldn’t handle the heat. It made me light headed and nauseous and I started to wish I could leave.

But then we were called for our scrub.

We lay on hard stone slabs and a woman threw buckets of cold water on me. She then put big black gloves on and scrubbed me down starting at my feet and briskly working all the way up and down my legs. There was no self-consciousness on her behalf. She rubbed her hands up my inner thighs, brushing my genitals, around my stomach, under and over my breasts. She kept asking about my tattoos and I kept wanting to get up and put clothes on.

I then moved on to another slab of stone and got an oiled massage. This one was less shocking. But of course I got more questions about my tattoos and my scars.

“I have to use strong hands. You are strong woman.,” she kept telling me.

We wandered up the street in what we quickly figured out was the trendy ‘Western’ part of town. We got some cheap falafel rolls and freshly squeezed juices and sat on the peak of a hill looking out across the city.

Amman is a maze of steep hills covered in identical buildings; each one a 2 – 4 stories tall yellowish sandstone colour, with no exceptions. The facades are bare and the windows glassless. The streets are narrow and littered with rubbish and the cars are stopped at every crossroads playing stand-offs with other cars facing every direction, horns blaring wildly. From a distance I find the grit and this chaos charming.