I am on record as a hammam slut. There is something so gloriously decadent about holding still and being bathed by someone else. It’s good to be pasha.

Hammams are a distinctly Muslim invention, deeply embedded in the cultures of our last leg: Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey. But that won’t keep me from searching for the equivalent wherever we go. I’d done my homework before we got here and determined that the closest local equivalent to a hammam would be a body scrub at one of the many spas that dot the landscape here like measles after a Kennedy.

Given how I felt after a) five weeks of packing and moving boxes and furniture, b) approximately 36 hours of transit time to get here, and c) the stress of managing both the hospital experience and Dorothy’s fear and pain, two hours of Four Hands and an hour of body scrub seemed the very least the universe could muster in recompense.

The Four Hands delivered. It was like they were synchronized swimmers and I was the pool. Sometimes they worked in concert, each taking a leg or one side of the neck/shoulders axis of evil. Other times they worked in counterpoint, one at my head and the other at my feet, for example, snapping me like taffy. But always in delicious rhythm.

With my nonexistent Khmer (I know the words for Thank You and Sorry, which is actually most of what I have to say) and their iffy English, the only phrase we could agree on was “No cry.” I think it was meant as a question, making sure I was OK, but I took it in the imperative, as a challenge. “Do your worst, imperialist running dogs, I’ll never tell you where the microfilm is hidden. You’ll see no tears from me!”

The only tiny blemish on an otherwise perfect experience was that twice one of the masseuses grabbed my belly, gave it a playful shake, and enunciated in her best English, “Baby.” Which I’m sure in retrospect was Khmer for “Sweet abs!” That happened in Istanbul, too, where the nice man hamamming me locked onto the handles, looked into my eyes soulfully and asked “Kebab?” It’s almost like they’re trying to tell me something…

The reason I thought that the body scrub was the closest local analog to the hammam was exfoliation. The hammam bath always entails exfoliation, ranging from luxurious (Morocco, Turkey) to indifferent (Tunisia). I figured since you could get a body scrub for an hour, it would land on the luxurious side, and it did. At least the exfoliation part.

This was basically another full hour of massage, just with grit in the massage oil. The compound came on cold before friction fixed it, so that was exciting, but the whole experience was lovely. Obviously a gentler massage than the Four Hands, but I wouldn’t have wanted something that intense with sand. Or coffee grounds, or whatever it was. The menu didn’t say. I’d signed up for exfoliation, not flensing, so it was fine.

But the payoff was going to be the bath afterwards. That was the hammam experience I’d actually come for, so imagine my dismay when I was led naked to a shower and left to my own devices. Cool water, low pressure, and nary a loofah or cloth in sight. The mixture had pilled all over my body, not just the obviously furry parts, but even my arms, which are hardly bearlike. The only option I had was to rub my skin under the weak stream of water and literally pull the clumps off.

While I made slow progress on the parts I could reach, no way would I be able to de-pill my back, so I hollered for help. My masseuse returned and did my back, but when I turned around to ask for a tool of some kind so I could finish she made horrified eyes and violently shook her head No, and I replied in kind. Of course, I’d had no such thing in mind. She scampered off and I was left to pluck at myself like an ostracized baboon.

So that was kind of a fail. As pleasant as it was, the massage was too light to be useful, because of the exfoliant, and the cleanup fell well short of my dreams. It’s possible that another scrub, like their salt scrub, wouldn’t pill, but it was the hammam experience I was chasing, and that clearly isn’t the local custom. Not that I couldn’t find someone who’d take money to give me a bath, but that would be a different professional. And way more than $12.50.

On the asset side of the ledger, I was objectively very, very smooth.

At $27.50 + tip, two hours of Four Hands will be a weekly treat for me while we’re here. I mean, that’s eight hand-hours at less than $3.50/hand-hour. That’s the duty-free crack of wellness culture.

The only coda on this is that after three hours of massage, I came home still obviously tired from all of the stressors of the previous days but super relaxed. I laid down at 6:00 PM for a nap and got up for the day at 3 AM. It will clearly take a few days to work this all out.