al-majus

Salty Eye, Sweet Play. Written in Four Vignettes, No. 3.

Thursday afternoons at the public hammam were hot and uncomfortable and to be avoided at all costs. Besides the white veil of steam that cast a certain mystery over the otherwise simple old bath house, the hammam was not half as romantic as the European paintings of dimpled, black-haired beauties lounging about in marble apartments would suggest.

The hammam smelled of dead skin, soapy crevices and the kind of sweat that only a lover finds exhilarating.  This, brewed together with crushed lotus leaf shampoos and the gamey aroma of sefid-ab exfoliants made for a perplexing olfactory combination.  Just as one took wing on the jasmine tresses and perfumed wrists of one woman, along came a spicy waft of underarm from another to knock one back down into the bubbling depths of the khazineh.

Walking through an assortment of naked body parts , Niku held her breath and tried her best to keep her eyes on Ameh Shokat’s sagging behind.  Ameh Shokat always insisted on bathing at the very end of the hammam, as it was the cleanest and least crowded section.  This was mainly because all the heat gathered there, making it unbearable to everyone except for her.

“Stand still already,” she ordered on this day, pouring cold water on Niku’s dancing feet.

Niku exhaled a series of little sharp breaths.  “It’s hot! It’s hot!” she yelped, hopping up and down on one foot, then the other.

Ameh Shokat kicked the cold water she had poured on the floor over into a corner.  “Here you go, Madame,” she said, sitting on her copper tray with the giant simorq etched in the middle.  Her cracked breasts drooped in opposite directions like two sisters who weren’t speaking to each other.  Her wimpy mediator of a belly lay trapped in-between.

“No, it’s too hot over here.  I’m going to play further down,” said Niku, grabbing a bar of soap.

Further down was where all the real action was.  Tired women, hunched over glumly, sat scrubbing the world off their bodies with the help of topless hammam attendants.  Topless hammam attendants, armed with a variety of sheep and goat sourced paraphernalia, stood perching over them, their knobby backs silvery and glistening in the misty bars of sunlight.  Striped kissehs, and lumps of sefid-ab kneaded the week’s dirt off a hammam-full of skin, disposing of it in grey, doughy rolls.  Irritated mothers violently polished their teary-eyed children.  Nervous servants kneeled over their bossy mistresses, colouring their hair with globs of henna.  On the steps of the khazineh, a trio of proud, young brides, washing the previous night’s intimacy off their bodies.  Smirking at them, a pair of smug elders, performing their own ablutions.  In the lounging area, a fancy lady drinking tea on her gold-embroidered suzanis, and a not-so-fancy lady combing the knots out of her nest of hair.  

Women, everywhere women. Women jiggling about awkwardly as they scoured their feet with volcanic rocks. Women lathering their hairy bits with vajebi. Women with fruit market anatomies that men sang about in songs; with breasts like bright, new lemons or rosy pomegranates. And of course, the anatomies that no one sang about. The large striped watermelon stomachs and the ripped fig uteruses that dangled out of their bodies whenever they bent over. Hairless women like skinned peaches. Thick, verdant ones like Eve.

Although exhilarating enough, all this bustling nudity was not sufficient to keep Niku entertained for very long. To Niku, the hammam was not for gawking, and definitely not for bathing. It was, in fact, little more than a water park. Besides the scalding, bottomless khazineh, which she had learned early on to stand clear of, there was another larger, shallower pool in the lounging area which children could safely splash around in. This, in addition to the handful of small fountains popping out of the walls like pregnant bellies, and the rows and rows of loutish showers spitting in every direction, left Niku with a rather decent day’s worth of amusement.

Her favourite feature was the system of drainage channels that ran all along the edges of the hammam.  Carrying water soiled with traces of green vajebi foam and depilated hair, the channels were perfect for the kind of disgusting fun that Niku was partial to.

Alas, it wasn’t until she was all clipped and pruned and ready to go, that Ameh Shokat even remembered she had a grandniece. But by then it was too late. Niku had already been wading around in the filthy vajebi water for over a half an hour by that time.

Caught in a particularly dirty corner, with loose hair stubbles and froth stuck to her knees as evidence, Niku stared down at her toes, ready for the afternoon’s scolding.

“I’m going to throw up,” grunted Ameh Shokat, dragging her grandniece’s bony body over to the showers.  “While the rest of us are scrubbing the skin off ourselves to keep clean, this one wants to see just how filthy she can be!”  She gave Niku a hearty shake.  “Don’t you know that that water comes from people’s rinsed private parts?”

But Niku never knew and never cared.  She stood silently with her eyes clenched into artichokes, as Ameh Shokat scrubbed her under the scorching hot water.  Walking out, pink-skinned and patchy, Niku eventually forgave her grandaunt for her brutal hammam behaviour, although, as always, it took a bit of cajoling first.

“Nice weather today isn’t it?” began Ameh Shokat, as they headed towards the house.

Silence.

“Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally walked into the men’s hammam?”

Nothing.

“I’m a little hungry.  How about we pick up some poppy seed bread on the way home?”

Finally, the faint traces of a smile.

written by Alaleh Mohajerani

an earlier version of this text was first published by Cardiff University in 2008

collage citations: sponge ; soap ; sefid-aab ;  hammam sign ; tile ; samovar ; grapes ; Qajar lady