Day 12 -- Ouarzazate & the Marrakech Express

Switchbacks in the High Atlas Mountains on the road to Marrakech

It was a clear, sunny, and warm enough day—good for traveling. We left at 8:35 a.m., our usual time and stopped at a Berber village in the countryside where we saw embroidery. This was gorgeous stuff and a lot more reasonable in price compared to the Berber carpet shop of the other day. Yet, I resisted the temptation to buy because I am likely to get better bargains for the same stuff in Marrakech. This shop was another cooperative and they do all hand-made things: table cloths, napkins, bed spreads, blankets, scarfs, carpets, table runners, furniture covers. The materials are wool, cotton, silk, linen, velvet, and various combinations of these. The colors were vibrant because the cloth was made from natural dyes: red from poppies, blue from indigo, green from mint, and yellow from saffron. The white table cloths were washable and bleachable. The colored fabrics were machine washable and presumably didn't stain. Some items were reversible.

The prices were dependent on the number of days it took to make. The work is hard and the women there work only 2 hours a day. They have other jobs to help make ends meet. They make their own designs and do not work from a pattern. It's all imagination. The loom technology there goes back to the ninth century. I guess it's a case of if it works, don't fix it. A man runs it with his hands and feet. Industrial cloth is made with computers and the design is perfect. These textiles were pretty near perfect. A table cloth can take between 1 month and a year to make while a much larger and more complicated one took 2.5 years. The prices were all fixed, but, of course, everything is negotiable. For instance, I was eyeballing a round indigo table cloth and a comparable red one for $180 each. If I bought 2 of them, the man would give them to me for $170 each. When I left the store, he came after me and wanted me to come back inside for another deal. I really had to resist—and I did. Marrakech, here I come. Actually, what I want to buy are some colorful wall hangings for my guest room—the sunrise and sunset theme. I've noticed that Moroccan homes decorate their walls this way. Maybe it's a paint substitute. I'm also really into table runners these days and may get a small one.

We moved on our journey between the High Atlas Mountains and the older Anti-Atlas Mountains to the “promised land” of Marrakech on an old caravan road built by the French Foreign Legion in the 1940s. There are dry rivers along this route whose flash floods feed the dam lakes nearby.

These lands are also part of the Souss Valley, one of the highest agricultural production centers of the country. Citrus fruits are mostly grown here. It is notable that the Anti-Atlas (that goes south) and the High Atlas (that goes toward the Atlantic Ocean) meet.

The land is pretty barren all around and the telephone poles and towers are deliberately missing. These are lands that the film industry has used for many films like Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, and Gladiator. The TV series, Game of Thrones was also made here. The area has good light and beautiful scenery. However, filmmakers today have gone elsewhere because Morocco still charges them for use of the land while other governments offer its use for free. They figure a movie shot on site can employ 3,000 to 4,000 people not only for the films but in the hospitality industry. Some Moroccans contend their country should follow suit.

One of the main attractions on this road is the Ait Benhaddou, a 17^th century kasbah (military fort) built by King Ismail (1672-1727), the founder of the current monarchy. It was one of 300 forts he commissioned to unite the country. It was built by the Glaoua family (see explanation in Day 11 in Tineghir). The kasbah is made of mud and “melting down,” but since it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is being restored courtesy of the Moroccan Ministry of Culture and the film industry. People lived in the kasbah until the 1970s when they built a new town across the river. Flash floods would prevent them from crossing the river. Today, only 10 families live there out of the town of 450.

Ait Benhaddou was a caravan town and the people here provided housing for the men who moved with the caravans. Today, some people have shops for “tourist caravans” like ours.

Shops for tourists

 
One of the residents of Ourazazate was a soldier extra in Gladiator (2008), and he has made a career out of his brief moment of fame by giving tours of his cave (troglodyte) and adjoining house, which has a little stable on the top floor.

It is extremely hot in the summer here and the cave provides some cool relief. The cave is not natural; it was dug out of the rock. As we entered the cave, he lighted candles he had placed around the space—and then offered us tea and some delicious almonds. He showed off his sword and shield and pictures of himself on the set. More recently, he has appeared in Game of Thrones.

Our host lights candles in his cave.

So many people have been sick on this trip. The coughing inside our bus sounds like a TB ward. We have been in close quarters for a long time and are probably sharing each other's germs. I'm on either an extended cold/cough or a second round. But we all soldier on because the sights of Morocco and the experiences we are having are too good to miss.

Actually, I feel especially jubilant today. I had a good night's sleep, finished my blog, and find the trip to be exhilarating. I, and most of my fellow travelers, have been very satisfied with the trip that OAT has planned and Yemani has led. Every day is different and all of the activities have been fun and interesting.

Morocco is a very good place to visit and my instincts to do so were right. What I have found is that the Moroccans have been very welcoming, very pleasant, very open to us as they share their lives, homes, and hospitality. The buying and selling is a bit of a hassle, but it takes some time to get used to the bargaining culture here. One thing to remember is that you don't engage the vendor unless you are interested in buying. I find myself curious about prices first and then consider buying. This is one reason the vendor chase after me when I talk with them. Just looking is not the way it's done here. On the other hand, Morocco is not a place where women have to be careful about being hassled by the men as they are in Italy or Latin America. Also, the scenery here—both cities and countryside—are so different from our American experience. As a result, I am moved to find out more about the Sahara Desert, the caravans, and the traditions of the desert peoples.

One of the women and I were on a comfort stop break, and we talked about different words we'd use to describe Morocco. Here is what I came up with in answer to her very important question:

• dazzling and enchanting (her idea)
• kind people (her idea)
• civilized
• blending of cultures; tolerant to differences
• adaptability, buoyancy
• resourcefulness
• maintenance of the past while looking toward the future
• construction everywhere
• industriousness
• enterprising, entrepreneurial
• constantly striving
• “democratic prices”
• a people who yearn for good things for their families
• endurance for the hard lives they lead
• life (at least in the countryside) is not about entertainment
• life isn't even all about religion

Another thing that has fascinated me is all of the difficult (or extreme) places people live in this country. And yet, they make due. The cliché is “bloom where you are planted.” We usually refer to this in the USA as a self-development slogan. However, here, people are born in the desert or on the side of a mountain, and they learn to live with it. How can this be? Why don't they go someplace easier to live? I am once again led to this question of sense of place. People meld with their surroundings. They identify with them. They learn to live in them. Maybe I can understand this through a recent experience I had with a chance to move away from Kalamazoo. It would have meant full time work, which I have been seeking for 7 years, and yet, I decided against it. I am tied to the city. It is a part of me. I am a part of it. Maybe that's why the nomad woman stays in the desert even though she admits it's a hard place to live.

A cafe au lait toast to Morocco!!

People Shots

It's difficult to get the extraordinary people shots that I want to take because most people don't want their photos taken and I don't have a long-range lens.  I have managed to collect a few.

Day 11 – Dades Valley

My mother always said she dreamed of living out of a suitcase for a couple weeks. Well, truly, I am living out her dream. We spent two nights in Tineghir and will now move on toward Marrakech (for our last three nights) with a one night stopover in Ouarzazate (pronounced wha' ziz zat). It's pretty intense doing it the OAT way, but everyday is an adventure, which is what we paid for. Today would be no different.

We started out our journey with a visit to the Dades Valley where the mountains look like claymation.

Our first stop was at a Berber home where we had pizza for a morning snack, and, of course, mint tea. 

The man who owns the hotel here invited us to his house first to see how pizza was made and then to eat it. We sat in his beautiful guest room with our shoes off and indulged ourselves. The pizza is made from wheat flour with salt, lamb fat, butter, cilantro, onion, saffron, and green pepper. It's then popped into a flaming oven to cook and served with either honey with thyme or olive oil. I found it to be better with the latter, although the freshly-made bread we had first tasted especially good with the honey/thyme.

Yemani, Brahim, and nephew

Our host, Haj Brahim, (the Haj part of his name indicates that he has been to Mecca) told us about his huge house. He is one of 14 children and his father started and expanded the hotel and the house. Brahim took over the hotel and expanded the business to include renting mini-vans to take people to the gorge up the mountain. Six families currently live in the house and when it is full once a year during the summer, there are 60 people there. He also trades sheep and honey and provides a local transport service for the local people who do not have cars.

The dining room and sitting room are used as guest rooms. They are decorated in modern industrial ceramic (all the designs are the same) with plaster walls with borders that are hand-painted. The long couches that line the wall space are all there, as is typical of Moroccan sitting rooms.

The government is trying to develop the tourist trade and Brahim is way ahead of the curve with his business. However, since the economic decline in Europe, Morocco has lost 50 percent of its tourist trade. Frenchmen used to come to Morocco three or four times a year. Now they only come once a year. Rich Moroccans travel around the country and like to go to beaches on the Mediterranean Sea or spend weekends in the mountains.

Caves are dark holes in upper part of picture

After our morning snack, we climbed into the mini-vans and went up the mountain to get a good look at the gorge below. We stopped in a couple places to see the view and it was spectacular. At one point we passed a herd of goats and later on a flock of sheep. They probably belonged to the people at the bottom of the gorge who live in caves. They are called troglodytes. They will climb the steep hill to pick up a ride to the market, however.

 Here is a view of the gorge with the river in the background and the road in the foreground as it winds around the mountain.

We were on the road in the bus most of today. We are traveling through the corridor between the High Atlas Mountains (on our right) and the Anti-Atlas Mountain (on our left).

Snow-capped High Atlas Mountain in background

Day 10 – A Day in the Life of Tineghir

Overview of Tineghir from my hotel room

Today we participated in OAT's special program of feeling a part of a place by going shopping for our dinner. That meant that we would go into the market with a list of food items we were to buy and they would be sent to the restaurant that would cook them. Yemani divided us into three teams: meat, vegetables, and fruits. I was on the vegetable team.

The thought of this exercise didn't appeal to me at first. I was having a culture shock type of day where I was tiring of all the differences around me—and my cold is lingering and/or coming back. I'm also finding the trip to be so intensive and so full of information that I was getting tired. It's been 10 days of travel and constant movement on and off the bus, up and down stairways, in and out of hotels. It is also a bit difficult relating to a group of people every day. Thank God we are only 14 in the group! I've been in travel groups of 50. The trick is to rotate hanging out with different people on different days. Although this is the kind of thing I like to do, it gets a little wearying about this point of the trip. We have had very little down time. Keeping up a journal doesn't make it any easier. But I would later take some time off in the afternoon by myself and that would revive me.

As it turned out, the shopping exercise was fun. Our vegetable group dove right into it and it wasn't too difficult communicating with the vendors. They spoke French and that helped. Pointing at items helped, too. The chef had made a list of items that included numbers like 1 kilo or 2 kilos, and we'd show them in order to buy what we needed. The vendors were also used to travel groups coming through and they were especially nice to us. I think they are curious about us or at least find us amusing as they try to figure out what we are saying. It also wasn't very busy. It was not like being in the Medina in Fez where there is so much going on all around you.

So our mission was to buy 2 kilos of potatoes and onions, 1 kilo of tomatoes and green beans. Yemani gave us 200 dh and we still had a lot left, so we bought eggplant and red peppers with the hope that the chefs would add garlic and make that special dish. (They did and it was delicious!) Then we found some peanuts, which we had enjoyed at the desert camp, and bought them. In all we spent 80 dh or $10.

Mawktar

Mawktar, a “blue man,” joined our group today as our local contact as we would go through the oasis and meet some of the people who farmed there. A “blue man” is a Berber who wears traditional blue clothing. They live mostly in south Morocco and are descendants of the Tware tribe that originally comes from Mali. They first interacted with the Moroccans in the 16^th century. One big difference in their clothing between them and the Arabs is that men wear veils and not the women. This is for the sand storm.

After our shopping expedition, Mawktar took us to the Jewish section of the old town. Some of them left in the early 20^th century and went to Casablanca. About 100 families were left and they emigrated to Israel, France, the U.S. in the 1960s along with the 600,000 other Jews. They were a real loss to Morocco because they had founded various industries and employed people in their factories. Now their old mud homes were “melting down.” We saw some poor kids were playing among the ruins while a couple of them sat around a charcoal fire on this fine, warm morning. It turned out that many of the Jews who went to Israel found life there difficult. They missed the warm temperatures and the friendliness of the people here. In fact, some of the Jewish families return here from time to time to visit their old friends and see their old homes.

Alfalfa grass is cut by hand. Nancy, dressed in traditional garb does the work.

The Berbers seem to be a very friendly and jovial people who love life. They have easy smiles and are willing to be especially helpful to others. Maybe because life is more leisurely here in an oasis town. They certainly do not live the harried lives of the larger cities we have visited. We would find this warmth especially in the oasis as we walked on a dusty path through date palms and small plots of wheat, barley, fava beans and alfalfa (for the livestock) that were separated by foot-high banks. Each family that owns a plot takes care of it. That includes owning a cow and spreading its dung on the plot. All the food here is grown organically. Men typically do the plowing while the women cut the alfalfa. However, many of the men are working job abroad in Europe, so the women do most of the agriculture here.

The oasis is huge measuring 50 km long and 200 meters wide. Our walk through it was refreshing and cool. The path was dusty and it got on my socks more than the sands of the Sahara. As we left it, I thought of the biblical advice that if you are not accepted in a town, to shake the dust off your feet and move on to the next one. While I like this town, the meaning of the quote makes me think that I really need to plan a trip to the Holy Land soon. Morocco has given me a taste of a desert culture and I think going to the Middle East would immerse me in it totally.

A donkey is used as a beast of burden and it can carry up to 100 kilos on its back.

Overlooking the oasis is the Glaoua Kasbah. The Glaoua (pronounced glowie) people owned salt mines and they exchanged it 1:1 for gold, skins, and other goods from Marrakech. Tineghir was a caravan town, so it provided caravan hotels with bedrooms upstairs for the merchant travelers and stalls downstairs for their goods and their dromedaries. Sultans ruled the day at the time. They were like kings with power because they collected taxes in goods from the different tribes that passed through town. There is a story about a sultan who lived at the end of the 19^th century who went on a tax collecting trip. He caught a cold and stayed with a family here. He left behind a cannon with the family who lived in the Glaoua Kasbah. This cannon gave the family a decided advantage and it became powerful. After the French conquered Algeria and then moved into Morocco in 1908, they used this family to subdue the people here. When Morocco gained independence in 1954, they expelled this family. Hassan II invited the family to return. A book was written by Gavin Maxwell about this family. It is called The Lords of the Atlas. Sounds like a fascinating book I'd like to read.

We stopped to see the ruins of a Koran School or madrasa, a Muslim boarding school that adjoins a mosque. Although it is “melting down,” especially after being affected by a small earthquake 15 years ago, a caretaker lives in one of the rooms. He has, in fact, restored the prayer area. The government is not interested in restoring a mud building because it is concentrating on building new buildings and mosques in concrete and steel that will last.

The niche (mihrab) faces the direction of Mecca as the Immam leads prayers to rows of prayerful people behind him. His chair (minbar) is where he stands when he gives his Friday sermon.

The boys In Koran schools, usually between 8-10 years old, learned the Koran by heart. Then they are able to work in mosques as immams or as teachers in Koran schools. There were 50 students at this school at one time.

This Berber shower was in the courtyard outside the madrasa. To use it, you crawl through the entry way and sit inside it. It was covered with mud on the outside while heated water was poured into it.

Today, people don't think that madrasas are a good idea for education. They prefer modern schools. Immams were not traditionally trained in a seminary as priests and ministers are. They would set up shop on their own and be accountable to no overseeing body. Today, would-be immams must have a degree and go to school. They get scholarships and “licenses” from the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

After we refreshed ourselves at our hotel, we went to Dar Et-Taleb Education Center to meet some high school students and have lunch with them. This center is actually a place where 120 boys were boarded while they go to school elsewhere. (There is another center for girls, but we didn't visit it.) The center is one of the Grand Circle Foundation's projects. (They are associated with OAT.) Grand Circle has provided funds for showers, restrooms, and a soccer field.

Three of us met with three boys at our table. They were selected because they spoke English. Only one boy spoke it well. Some of the boys here come from town while others come from a distance. They get help with their studies and they have a place to stay so that they are more likely to complete them. Education is key to developing a country!!

The boys were very polite and obviously prepared for our visit. They came up to us and invited us to their tables. They were quite open about their lives. Most of them we met wanted to be teachers or engineers. The center is giving them the chance to do so.

Before we had the afternoon off, we stopped at a Berber carpet cooperative. The head man there spoke excellent English and was very entertaining as he explained how carpets are made, what they are made of (camel hair), and what their designs and colors mean. Then he took us to a showroom, served us tea (with an explanation about how it was made), and then treated us to see all the different kinds of carpets they sell. This was all a warm up for us to buy. I wished I could get a wall hanging, but the expense was way too great, and the pressure to buy was way too high. They started at $1800. I baulked, as a good bargainer should, but I didn't come back with a counter offer because I was not in the least interested. He forced it out of me and I said $500. He asked me my name and told me his: Abdullah. As I tried to leave, he chased me around the two-story store to make me buy not one, but “three carpets for a good price.” He called after me: “Canada, Canada.” (I was wearing my red jacket that had Canada written on its back.) This was a little too much for me and I ran to Yemani to rescue me. He told me how to get to the bus. I had expected a more suave approach from the salesmen, like in the leather goods store in Fez. This was a good experience, nonetheless.

We met for dinner at 6:30 and drove to a hotel that had prepared our dinner from the groceries we purchased that morning. We had a delicious potato/tomato/??? soup, grilled lamb chops, eggplant/red pepper gnash, a tajine of potatoes, onions, green beans. For desert we had fruit, chocolate wafer cookies, chocolate sandwich cookies, and peanuts. I felt more full than I have been feeling at our meals during the whole trip. I think it was the cookies that did me in.

We also had some entertainment by a “blue man” band. Sylvia, who has been taking Middle Eastern dance, performed a dance for us. A couple other people joined in. She is really good at it!!

Day 9 – The Road toTineghir

We left the desert after two nights of glorious camp life where we had carpeted tents, a bed with plenty of blankets, a small light, a toilet, and a hot water bottle to keep us warm at night. Nice touch! We also had Hussain and his team of five to cook for us, provide tea/coffee and appetizers, and bring a bowl of hot water in the morning to wash with. The dining tent was heated and lit and a welcome refuge from the cold in the night or the early morning. We also had 4x4 drive us around to different places we visited or to meet and pick us up at a destination.

“I love camping,” I said at breakfast today. “Honey, this isn't camping,” a couple people responded.

“But it's Sahara Desert camping through OAT,” I replied, “and it's good enough for me.”

Yemni later told the group that the camp has made refinements. The toilets used to be outhouses and the carpets were of the plastic kind rather than wool.

My tent reminded me of a picture I cherish of the famous anthropologists, Margaret Mead and Geoffrey Bateson typing their notes after a day's work in the field. I pretended to be like them last night when I spent a couple hours writing for this blog. After all, we are “in the wild” gathering data about new and exotic things. I am writing about them. This kind of adventure travel is different from most tours where visitors don't usually have the opportunity to meet local people or obtain a broad view of the political, economic, social, and cultural contexts of a place as we are—as OAT provides for us. Leave me alone to my fantasies!!

I got up for the sunrise at 6:30 again and this time only a couple others were there. Arthur, a Kosher Jew, watched the sunrise a dune or two away from me. I thought how lucky I was to share the moment with a man and his God. Later at breakfast he shared that seeing the glorious sunrise reminded him of a Jewish prayer: “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and earth are filled with your glory. Hosanna in the highest.” This prayer was adopted as part of the Catholic Eucharistic prayer that is said before the bread and wine are consecrated to be the body and blood of Christ. So it has particular meaning for me especially now that I have been in the desert near the region where my religion was born. What a wonderful gift!

On the Road Again

After a nice breakfast we left camp for our next location, the oasis town of Tineghir. We crossed the J'bel Sahro Range (at about 5,000 feet) and passed through the High Atlas Mountains on our right and the AntiAtlas Mountains on our left. We were on an old caravan road and that added to the mysticism of our journey except that we were in a comfortable bus clipping along at 50-60 miles per hour rather than on a dusty trail sitting atop camels. Along the way we saw several “sand traps” made of cross-hatched palm leaves about 2 feet high. They catch the sand and keep it away from the agricultural plots in the region.

When we reached the region where the Khattara tribe lived, we stopped at an old irrigation project that is now being developed into a tourist attraction by our guide, Karim, and his family. There were a series of wells (hatar) dug every 20 to 30 yards that sat atop the ground; they looked like beehives. It was what there was below that was so astounding: a tunnel dug to connect all the wells. The tunnel represented a “pipeline” that at one time collected water (about knee deep) from the mountains that flowed downhill to the kasbah at the other end. Each well was 50-60 meters deep and the mud had to be continually scooped out to maintain the wells and the tunnel below.

Families that owned land had access to the water, but they also had to dig out and maintain the wells. They worked for as long as they used the water. For example, if they needed two hours of water every day, they worked on the well for two hours every day. A wooden bowl with a small hole in its center was the timekeeper. It measured out an hour when it was full. We went down a series of uneven steps into the seven-foot high tunnel. Karim's assistant had lighted the way for us with candles. The only light coming into the tunnel was from each well. 

 

This irrigation project had been operating for several centuries until the 1960s when the government built the dam lake in Errachidia, which we had seen a couple days earlier on our trip. This modern irrigation system collects water in the lake or reservoir until it is needed. Then water is moved down a channel and aqueduct to water the fields.

“Without irrigation, nothing in this region would grow,” said Yemni.

A couple times on this road we saw a well with some nomads and their camels and donkeys surrounding them. The nomads were drawing water from the well for drinking and washing clothes. In the small towns we passed through we'd see students walking or on bicycles going home from school for lunch from 12 to 2 p.m. They carried backpacks or school bags with a strap on one shoulder. We will meet some students tomorrow when we visit a school. They are in school for four hours a day either in the morning or the afternoon. They have Sundays off.

We, too, had lunch about 1 p.m. and stopped at a small roadside restaurant for a picnic lunch of cold chicken, olives, bread, and cheese. It was a little too cold to be outdoors, so the proprietor moved everything indoors. An abused dog hung around the restaurant, which was sad to see. Dogs are not well liked here. A cat, however, made his presence known throughout our lunch with a constant meowing. He was begging for food from our table.

We head out again and a couple hours later finally reached the busy market town of Tineghir. We will spend two nights here and have our first hammam experience (public bathhouse) after we check into our hotel. Tineghir is built around the mountains and it is a beautiful city. We took a couple picture stops to photograph both the old town, whose mud houses and buildings are “melting down” after a 100 years of use. A new town made of concrete blocks and steel rods is being built. These buildings will, of course, last a lot longer. Like in the desert, people abandon the old mud buildings because they are too expensive to restore. The empty buildings reminded me of Detroit. However, this is part of an expected “melt down” process here, while the City of Detroit is decaying because of neglect and terrible corruption. Nevertheless, cities change all the time.

We passed through the town to get to the Todra Gorge, one of the few places where we saw water gushing along a river. Here the rock goes straight up 500 feet and except for its small spaces, it reminded me of Machu Picchu when I first witnessed the power of God in the strength of the mountains. Even though these are limestone mountains (sedimentary rock layed down by ancient oceans) and not igneous rock formed from the hot lava from volcanoes, there was no doubt of their enduring quality, which was what I experienced in the desert as well. We walked along the river and I found a spot where I could touch it. It was not cold as I had expected. Of course, there were people selling souvenirs—and a man and woman climbing up and down the rock. Then appeared what looked like a colorful, little doll house of a hotel. Perhaps the gigantic size of the rock made it look so small. We stopped there for refreshment, and I had a cafe au lait, which has become my favorite treat on this trip. We were served by a young man in a black turban and a leather jacket and jeans, part of the cross-cultural quality of the upcoming generation and Morocco itself. Our buses picked us up to take us to our hotel.

The Hammam

 

The Hammam goes back to the Romans who loved water and bathing. The Arabs—or in this region, the Berbers—adopted the sweat baths as part of their own culture. These public baths provide people with a chance not only to bathe but to make a ritual out of cleaning their bodies from the desert dust and sand. Six of us women and three of the men from our group participated. We were guided through the process by assistants who not only showed us what to do, but they did it for us, and that made the experience all the better.

We undressed down to our underpants, in compliance with Islamic laws of hygiene and purification. We walked into the steaming baths where we saw several other women, some of whom had small children. The stripping down was a bit embarrassing, but we all got over it after we got into the bath.

We sat on the floor on a plastic sheet that had been layed there, maybe for us, and maybe for others who received the treatment rather than do it themselves as most of the women there did. First, our aides poured hot water on us from plastic buckets they would constantly fill with water from the taps nearby. Then they gave us olive paste that we were to rub all over our bodies. This was rinsed and they scrubbed us down with another soap with a scratchy cloth that removed dead skin. This was rinsed and they used another soap. We lay on our backs and then our stomachs. They massaged our backs and one of our group who had a knee problem, had her knee done, too. On this last soap down, we had our hair washed and our heads massaged with a plastic brush. It all felt so good, and the steam of the place helped to clear our froggy throats and sinuses that many of us have been suffering with on this trip, including me.

This experience was unforgettable and one of the women later said that she felt a new closeness to those of us who participated. I guess when you strip down to nothing and bathe with each other, that happens. We dressed slowly, as we were still light-headed from the hot steam. But we felt good and revived, especially after our desert experience. What great timing!! (Yemni regularly makes the hammam part of his revival, too.) We marveled at how soft our skin was and so free of dead skin that it felt very different. Even my dry legs were clear of scaling and unusually soft to the touch. It wasn't perfumed with natural scents like lavender, as I expected, however, but the “makeover” our assistants performed was well worth the $12.50 we paid for such a wonderful treatment. Too bad we don't have the hammam in the States!