So everybody I know told me that I had to visit a typically middle eastern bath house when I went to Marrakech. My own mother described her experience as:

'so cleansing. I came away feeling like somebody had just ripped my skin off'. You can see where I get my poetic talents from.

The first morning we were in Morocco we were woken by the call of the Muezzin, or to phrase it better, the calls of about 50 muezzins. It was a beautiful dawn call, and one that I missed as soon as I got home. Having such traditions in such an architecturally stunning old part of twon really evoked a sense of place: the sound accompanied with the rising sun over the clay baked buildings could be nowhere else but Marrakech.

Sam and I had decided that we wanted to experience a Moroccan bath, and partly because we had no money and partly because it's what our riad proprieter suggested, we were towards a Berber bathhouse, where my clothes were promptly whisked off me, and I was left, naked and bemused sitting high up on a wooden plank for about 10 minutes. The lack of english, french or arabic didn't really help the situation, and the Berber woman's ability to mime was frankly dire.

Our game of charades continued, unfortunately with me still very white and naked, whilst she unwrapped yard after yard of material from around her person. Unsure what she was about to do with her material, whether I was going to be trussed up and stewed in the bath house in some kind of sadist rite, or whether we were going to wash her enormous sash, she suddenly disappeared and emerged, far thinner, naked, and with a bucket. This bucket wasn't your average bodyshop bucket. This bucket was from the pound stretcher bucket family, the kind of bucket you would buy if the only thing you really wanted to do with your bucket was lose it immediately.

From the bucket, she procured a rag. It was grey, smelt slightly of rot, and to make matters worse, she spat on it and beckoned me over. Now it was my turn to play dumb. Semaphoring back to her 'go away you witch' I began to back away, which unluckily or luckily was straight into a hot water tap. Within seconds, this hawklike old lady pushed me down, whisked a bucket of hot water over me and began to saw at my skin with the rag. Hoping that I could just bathe myself and forego this awkward nudity scrub, I signalled that maybe I could do this myself. Once again proving herself useless at physical communication, the old lady took this as a sign of my absolute joy and happiness and emptied her bucket of freezing cold water over my face.

At no point was this ordeal relaxing. I felt uncomfortable, fraught and distinctly frustrated with this unbelievably dense old woman. Her claw like hands began to massage me, and I think, were the setting different, perhaps in a dimly lit, perfumed room, with nobody else present whatsoever, and if she were many, many miles away, I might have enjoyed it. As it happens, the strip light-lit garage full of about 15 other naked bodies put me on edge from the start, and I'm a pretty liberal person.

After what felt like the longest hour of my life, she began to rub me down with a towel. Just as I was getting ready to put my clothes on, and most importantly my bra, she looms back into view carrying a plate of charcoal and a towel. She began to mix spit into the charcoal and rub it onto my face. Had I had warning of more than half a second I would have leapt as high as my legs could carry me on to the overhead shelf and crouched there until she had fallen asleep or died, but as it happens, I was well and truly caught. Charcoaly kohl dribbled down my face and I feigned a smile, trying very hard not to open my mouth in case we swapped saliva.

As soon as her back was turned I whisked a towel over my face, got all my clothes on and was outside, blinking in the hot winter sun, feeling overwhelmed with a sense of liberation and freedom. I was just about to sprint down the road and hitch-hike to as far away from that woman as could be managed, when Sam appeared, jovial, clinking a glass of green-tea with his masseuse.

'So relaxing. I feel wonderful'.

And in a state of shock mixed with pangs of paranoia (glancing behind every ten seconds to make sure that the berber lady wasn't trailing me and trying to camouflage into washing lines and clothes shops as she went), we headed into the main square of Djemma al-Fna and had a glass of orange juice and a moroccan crepe.