Hammams

Visiting a bathhouse is a traditional way to get clean and to relax.  Within the society of the Two Kingdoms, bathhouses are good places to congregate for food, discussion, and cleanliness.  They are often used as gathering places for families, visitors, and especially for business.  Every large town or city has at least one hammam, or bathhouse, where gallons of hot water wait for the traveler's comfort and an entire staff of servants cleans and serves the patron.  There are always separate hammams for men and women (with hal-lista allowed entrance to either).

Nudity is required in hammams, an indication tat the patron is present for the purpose of cleaning; naturally, there are many other reasons to visit, but it is necessary to keep up the illusion and at least pay lip service to the intended use of the hammam.  Handfuls of soapy clay known as ghassoul are used to remove grease from the body and to wash the hair.  Going to a hammam usually costs around 5 gold pieces, but more expensive baths can cost as much as 30 gold pieces for a single wash.  Some hammams offer massages at extra prices, and prostitution is not unheard of in such establishments.

There is a strong tradition of same-sex bathhouse romances in the Two Kingdoms, often valorized in the literature as a place where one can release the guards one usually carries with them at all times and be truly vulnerable.  The connection and the passion that develop from this is often the most powerful relationship in a person's life.  It also rather strictly ends at the walls of the hammam, with some partners in bathhouse romances refusing to even catch each other's eye outside those walls.  Details, of course, including the basic details of who is with whom, though intensely public inside the hammam are never mentioned outside of it.  Many majnujin (followers of the syncretic, bohemian, mercantile religion of majnun) have produced great poetry and art around the theme of bathhouse romances.