Missy Higgins and the Moroccan hammam spa

As a young girl, I remember my Father used to play a lot of Missy Higgins on the surround sound system

Usually on a Sunday morning, when he was feeling slightly more optimistic about the trajectory of his life

Still yet to learn the concept of a metaphor, the graphics of her lyricism alongside my literal interpretation impacted my adolescent mind

He left a card, a bar of soap and

A scrubbing brush next to a note

That said “use these down to your bones”

I recall being slightly alarmed at the rawness of her expression

As I listened, I envisioned a woman sloughing her body with such force that layers of her skin were being shed away, revealing bloodied flesh and eventually bones

I had not thought of this imagery in almost fifteen years, until yesterday at approximately eight pm inside a hammam spa in North Africa

Exhausted from three consecutive months of alcoholism and drug abuse, I was here on a self-inflicted stopgap

I had told myself that flying to Marrakech was cheaper than rehab

So I handed an elderly lady at the front door of the Hammam a wad of cash and stripped naked

She was my kessal

The vulnerability I felt was not innocent; it was dirty and shameful, and I was scared that she could smell my impurity, as if it was seeping out of my skin like foul fluid decaying from rotting produce

She saw nothing but a body

She was the height of my pelvis, and placed both hands on my iliac crest, guiding me to a room at the back of the spa house, instructing me to sit on the stool and beginning to throw buckets of warm water over my body

I looked around at the women surrounding me; mothers, grandmothers, sisters, small Moroccan infants, all equivocally unashamed of their nakedness and ruthlessly rubbing savon beldi across each other’s soft, curvy bodies

Shame turned to confusion

Confusion turned to panic

Panic became an unruly case of imposter syndrome

I was like an American tourist in Paris who had purchased a beret from a vendor

I was sick with stupidity

I heard the hobble of my kessal as she approached me, and not a word was spoken, but she knew the involvement of my admission in the hammam required greater attention than that of my fellow bathers

She rubbed me down

Washed every inch of my body with the savon beldi

Walked me to the bathing tables

Scrubbed me for what felt like hours with her gant kessa and pushed harder when I grimaced

She was ruthless

I began to wonder if maybe she could, in fact, see my miasma

Regardless, I knew I was in no position to ask for forgiveness, let alone gentle treatment

That was when I remembered,

…a bar of soap and

A scrubbing brush…

“use these down to your bones”

The song was playing over and over in my mind as the colour of my skin turned from white to erythema red

But this ritual did not feel like the punishment that Missy Higgins refers to in her lyricism

Although I felt I deserved this kind of personal erasure in the form of exfoliation

This felt different

It felt primal

Like a mammal matriarch who was scrubbing the dirt off a small and helpless child in their flock

Like it was her duty to cleanse me

Although I knew I was not physically dirty,

I was impure from my lack of self-respect and glutinous tendencies

Lyrics were flooding back to me like the warm water running down the drains of the hammam floor

And before I knew I had shiny skin

And it felt easy being clean like him

She moved on to my oedematous face, massaging the pain and fluid retention away with her wrinkled and twisted fingers

I started to smile

A laugh escaped from the corners of my open mouth, and I opened my eyes to see if she had heard

She was staring at me intently

Like I was a complex craft project, she was intent on finishing before morning

More at ease, I could retain more words to this song, Scar, which evidently had been something locked in the inner sanctuary of my mind

A triangle trying to squeeze through a circle,

You tried to cut me so I’d fit

As a child, I had imagined a man in a basement carving a triangle into Missy Higgins’s chest and pushing her through a hula hoop

But pondering her words now, I could better comprehend her motif and applied it to my own gloom-veiled existence

I realised the error of my ways has been forcing myself into places that I do not fit; contorting my body to unsustainable sizes and subjecting myself to industries that thrive off indoctrination

You fit where you coalesce seamlessly, and striving for anything other than authenticity results in the diminishment of serotonin

My kessal poured a white, thick glue over my head and braided my hair

I nearly cried

She had done her very best

And to my surprise

It was enough

Because for the first time in what has felt like eternity, I let myself toy with the idea of becoming well again

I was not pure, sure

But I was absolved

I stood up

And I forgave myself

As I walked to my Riad, I felt like I was a brand new member of the outside world

And that night, I slept well for the first time in many moons

And will now forever hold space for the elderly woman at the hammam spa in North Africa