F Train to Paris

Sunday, 02 January 2005

Happy new year to all. As our thoughts right now are dominated by the tsunami and its aftermath, here’s a link for those who are looking for a Jewish response to this disaster. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which does wonderful work mainly in Jewish communities around the world but gets involved in non-sectarian causes as well, is accepting donations by check or via its website.

On Sunday, the day of the disaster, we were en route to London via the EuroStar train for a few days of vacation. We did the usual fun touristy things—afternoon tea at a hotel, Indian food, museums, the theater (The Producers, minus Nathan Lane but still great)—but our trip was punctuated by news about the tsunami, on TV and on newsstands.

We got home on Wednesday night, and I spent Thursday and Friday shopping, cooking, and straightening up in preparation for a small New Year’s Eve gathering.

Tomorrow the kids go back to school, after what felt (to me, though I’m sure not to them) like a really long vacation.

So now that I’ve caught you up on recent events in our lives and in the world, here’s the entry I’ve been meaning to write for the past two weeks—a visit to the Hammam in Paris’s Grand Mosque.

My book club planned a field trip to the hammam, or Turkish bath, as an antidote to the cold, gray weather and the usual pre-holiday stress that gives all of us back- and neck aches. Eight women met at 11am on a Thursday at the hammam entrance. Having done extensive Internet research, we were armed with bathing suits, pareos, flip flops, towels, and toiletries. At the reception, we signed up for the "formule," which includes, for 58 euros, use of the hammam, a paper cup of “black soap,” a gommage treatment (more on that later), a 10-minute massage, a mint tea, and lunch in the mosque's restaurant. Most of us upgraded to a 20- or 30-minute massage. The receptionist doled out various tickets to be redeemed for the services we purchased. I couldn't imagine how we would manage to hold onto these little slips of paper in the humid hammam. (Next time, I’m bringing a small, waterproof makeup bag.)

In the locker room, we stripped off our street clothes and tried to figure out what to do. Bathing suit? Just the bottoms? No one seemed comfortable strutting around totally nude. One woman brought her entire collection of pareos, and doled them out to those who don't own one. We found our way through the huge, ornate, seraglio-like massage room, where women were spread out on four massage tables and dozens of others sprawled on banquettes around the edges of the space. We passed through a door, and we were in a different climate.

Soon we were ensconced in an alcove in the main steam room, relaxing on the tiles. Everything was pristinely clean. The heat was intense but bearable, and we all quickly got used to it. Our alcove had its own cold water faucet, and a couple of buckets that we filled and then used to cool ourselves and each other. I have absolutely no memory of what we talked about, but my body remembers how it felt—the warmth, the humidity, and the sense of complete comfort and relaxation. (Since then, on cold days, I have been able to warm up by imagining myself back in the hammam.) We formed a circle and rubbed each others back, using the black soap, which is actually brown and smells like olive oil.

Eventually, one or two at a time, we drifted off, either to try out the hottest of the steam rooms or to line up for a gommage. Imagine lying down on a table and having your body scrubbed with Brillo pad—afterward, you’re glad you did it, but the experience itself is a bit disconcerting. Two women were performing the gommage, and one (not mine) was apparently a bit more gentle than the other. In the shower right afterward, I rinsed off layers of dead skin.

The next stop was back to the room where we’d first entered, to await our massages. The first of our group to finish her gommage had signed all of us up, and we each had a number. As our numbers were called, we gratefully headed for the massage tables, to have our bodies gently but firmly kneaded and stroked. One by one, as we finished, we headed for the showers and the locker room.

Then, reluctantly beginning the transition back to the real world, we gathered in the restaurant for a late lunch. The waiter dubbed us “Les Gazelles”—we don’t know why, but we decided to view it as a compliment—and he patiently shepherded us through the menu of tagine and couscous choices, brought us a heaping platter of pastries afterward, and bid us farewell as we left the mosque and went to pick up our children at school.

The weather, which had been so cold all week and even that morning, had warmed up considerably during the hours we had been in the steam. Or so it seemed to us.

posted by: pariskleinmans at 14:40 | link | comments (3) |

Comments:

#1 02 January 2005 - 17:30

The Hammam sounds great. I've had a gommage and it felt like a brillo pad, as you described. But the results were wonderful... especially for my husband:]