Atlantica - 01.10.2006, Page 38

36 AT L A N T I CA
PARISa
“Ç a sort bien,” grunts the stooped old woman
approvingly, her massive bosom towering
over my prone body as she scrapes my arms with
a glove. Tiny gray rolls of excess skin are collect-
ing at my extremities as the hammam’s employee
enthusiastically scrubs away the day’s accumulated
grime.
“Ça sort bien,” she repeats, proud of her achieve-
ment, and flaps off in her mismatched flip-flops to
another customer. I am clean again, and thoroughly
exfoliated.
The sweaty dampness of a hammam, the public
bathhouses made famous under the Ottomans and
popular throughout the Islamic world, is the per-
fect interlude from a strenuous schedule of filling
myself with couscous and pastries.
For Paris’s many residents of North African
descent, hammams are a vital link with the past.
“For my parents’ generation, visiting a hammam
regularly is part of their culture and traditions,”
explains an elegant woman of Algerian origin who
I meet inside the mosaiced room. “But I just come
once or twice a month for esthetic reasons.”
I find hammams the perfect blend of pamper-
ing indulgence and practicality. I love the slippery
cleanliness of the marble slabs where I relax, pour-
ing buckets of cold water over my shoulders, and
the pervasive steam that seems to cajole every last
drop of dirt from my body.
This hammam is housed in a working mosque
near the Latin Quarter of Paris. Today is one of
the four women’s days (hammams are single sex),
and the two marble steam rooms and shower
room have a steady trickle of visitors. The woman
I speak to tells me that more people go on week-
ends for fun and to chat. “But I always go alone,”
she explains. “It’s too hot to talk here anyway.” I
take the hint.
In addition to a thorough exfoliation, I am
treated to a 20-minute massage by another gen-
erously portioned, flip-flopping woman. She chats
in Arabic with her colleague while she massages
away, dousing me in menthol oils. I block out the
noise of the background traffic until the very end
when it merges with the entrancing sounds of the
afternoon call to prayer, which floats through the
brightly stained windows to my ears.
Part of my EUR 38 fee is a free glass of mint
tea after the steaming, served in the café adjoin-
ing the hammam. I drink it in the shade of a giant
fig tree, still within the limits of the mosque. Cedo,
a young student sitting at the table next to me,
describes the regular crowd here as very “bobo”, a
term meaning bourgeois bohème which was coined
by American journalist David Brooks to refer to
descendents of the 1990s yuppies. Judging from
the crowds of students gathering from the nearby
Sorbonne, I agree.
The sweaty dampness of a hammam is the
perfect interlude from a strenuous
schedule of filling myself with
couscous and pastries.
>
BOBO INDULGENCE
A hammam in Paris
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