Suddenly, an idea lit up his eyes.
‘Wouldn’t you like to give me a hand when you aren’t at school?’
I accepted without demur.
‘I’ll pay you one dirham a week.’
I hastened to say that I had a friend and that I would very much like him to come with me. Hamza had nothing against it. He would receive the same pay, there were lots of things to do in the hammam.
When, some minutes later, Khali came to give me the traveller’s kiss, he was surprised to see my eyes dry and smiling. I told him that I was going to work, that I would earn one dirham a week. He wished me success in my labours; I wished him success in his.
The Year of the Hammam
905 A.H.
8 August 1499 — 27 July 1500
‘When I think that all these people are washing themselves with manure!’
It took me a few moments to grasp what Harun had just said. Then we both broke into loud peals of laughter. My friend was quite right, because it was indeed manure that was used to heat the water in the hammams of Fez.
That day we were paid to know it, as the owner of the bath had sent us, equipped with a pair of mules and several dirhams, to go the rounds of the stables of the quarter and buy up the accumulated manure. Then we took it outside the city, to a place to which he had directed us. A man was waiting there to receive the load; his task was to spread out the precious harvest to dry it, a process which took a month in summer and three months in winter. On the way back we brought a pile of manure with us, as hard as wood and ready to burn; it was with this that the boiler of the hammam was fed. Of course, once we had delivered the final load, Harun and I had about us the colouring and the smell of the stuff we had been carrying.
So we hurried to scramble out of our clothes and run into the warm water chamber. Our trip had been fun. Whenever we recognized a friend in the steam room we would delight in asking him whether the water did not seem different that day.
For all the people of the city, the hammam was the most pleasant of meeting places. They left their clothes in cabins near the entrance door, then met together naked, without the slightest shame. Young schoolboys would chatter about their teachers, and tell each other about their pranks, passing over their beatings in silence. Adolescents would talk about women, each accusing the other of pining for one woman or another, each boasting of his amorous exploits. Adults would be more circumspect on that subject, but would exchange advice and recipes to improve their bodily vigour, an inexhaustible topic and a gold mine for charlatans. The rest of the time they would talk dinars, discuss religion and politics, out loud or in low tones according to the opinions they held.
The men of the quarter would often meet at the hammam for lunch. Some would bring their meal with them, while others would send the steam-room boy to buy something at the neighbouring market. But they would not begin their collation directly; they would go to the tepid room, where boys would wash them and rub them with oil and unguents. They would rest a while, lying on felt carpets, their heads on a sort of wooden bolster, also covered with felt, before going into the hot room, where they would sweat. Then they would go back into the warm room to wash themselves again and to rest. It was only then that they would go into the cool room and sit around the fountain, to eat, gossip and laugh, and even sing.
Most of them would remain naked until the end of the meal, except for important persons who would not deign to show themselves thus, keeping a towel round their waist and only removing it in private reserved rooms, which were always impeccably maintained. In these rooms they received their friends, or were massaged, and the barber would also come there to offer them his services.
And then there were the women. A certain number of hammams were kept entirely for women, but most of them catered for both sexes. The same places, but at different times. In the place where I used to work, the men would come from three in the morning until two in the afternoon. For the rest of the day, the steam-room boys were replaced by negresses, who put a rope across the entrance to show the men that they could not come in, and if a man needed to say something to his wife he would call one of the women attendants to deliver the message.
Each time we had to leave, each time that we used to see the rope across the entrance and the women arriving, Harun and I would ask each other what could possibly happen in the hammam when it became the women’s domain. The first few times we tried to convince ourselves that exactly the same things happened as we knew from the men’s sessions, the same massages, the same rubbings, the same chatter, the same feasting, the same towels to cover the notables. However, watching the entrance in the afternoons it was clear that not only did a great number of market women arrive with their shopping bags, but all sorts of mysterious women, fortune-tellers, healers, perhaps even magicians. Was it true that they were distilling magic elixirs, putting spells on men, piercing wax figurines with magic pins? It would be an understatement to say that we were intrigued; it became an almost unbearable obsession.
And a challenge.
‘I’m going tomorrow, whatever happens. D’you want to come?’ said Harun one day.
I looked at his eyes. He wasn’t joking.
‘D’you want to come?’
It took all my courage to say no.
‘Better still,’ said Harun. ‘I’ll go on my own. But be here at midday, at this very place.’
The next day it was dark and rainy. I took up my post at the place we had agreed, from which I could see the entrance to the hammam without being seen. I had not seen Harun all day, and I wondered whether he was already there, or whether he would be able to get inside. I was waiting for him to be thrown out, I was also afraid that he would leave pursued by twenty women at his heels, and that I should be forced to flee through the streets in my turn. The one thing that I was sure of was that the Ferret had not given up his mad plan. From time to time I looked up at the sun, or rather at its outline visible through the clouds. I was becoming impatient.
There was no unusual movement at the entrance to the hammam. Some women were going in, others coming out, some enveloped in black or white, others with only their hair and the lower part of their faces covered. Little girls accompanied them, sometimes even very small boys. At one point a fat woman came towards me. When she drew level with me she stopped for a moment, inspected me from head to foot, and then set off again murmuring incomprehensibly to herself. My furtive air must have made me seem suspicious. Several minutes later, another woman, entirely covered from head to foot but much more slender, came towards the place where I was waiting. I was most uneasy. In turn, she stopped and turned towards me. I was going to take to my heels.
‘You’re here, in perfect safety, and you’re trembling?’
It was Harun’s voice. He barely left me the time to express my surprise.
‘Don’t make any sign, don’t make any noise! Count to a hundred and then meet me at the house.’