As a way of recovering from the inevitable traumas of the holiday season, Parisian women flock to the hammams, where they can sweat out the toxins of too much wine, too many cigarettes, and too many family dynamics. I had a splendid time sweating away inside the bathhouse of the Moroccan hammam at the Mosque de Paris. It was liberating to be in a room full of semi-nude women who were bonding with their friends while rubbing each other down with special black soap that exfoliates the body.

Dizzy from the hot steam in my face, I went on to the gommage process, which involved a small Russian woman scrubbing me from head-to-toe with a bristly glove. After a massage, more awkward sweating, showering, and public nudity, I was revived — adrift in understanding dreams and transported to a land far more exotic than grey wintry Paris.

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