At the third time of trying I managed my second visit to the hammam. On the first occasion I got sidetracked, on the second I took a wrong turning but, yesterday evening, success! With my new-found technical wizardry I can now show you in pictures as well as words the wondrous inside.
Every time I think of the place I am reminded of the owner of Wimbledon Football Club when they were a local South London team and even managed to win the F.A. cup once. If my memory serves me right Sam Hammam was the owner; fancy, a crappy club owned by a toilet! There was once a goalkeeper named Bert Glazier who played for Crystal Palace (whose nickname was The Glaziers – long before that name became synonymous with Manchester United).
Whilst there I fell into conversation with three large mzungu. They transpired to be Swedish Trades Unionists in Palestine to help relaunch a transport (and general workers?) union and Trades Union Council. Our conversation turned to Health and Safety and how, in the non-industrialised world, this is ridden roughshod over – the not too distant tragedy at the factory in Bangladesh being a case in point. It is something that the Daily Mail editorial board and Little Englanders would do well to remember before berating too much red tape. The Health and Safety Executive only exists because unscrupulous capitalists put profit above workers welfare.
Back at The Miss Havisham Suite I couldn’t help noticing a change. There had been an old style school desk, a metal frame with seat and desk attached, by the wall. It had been moved from beside my room to beside the khazi – and a step ladder placed precariously on top, leaning against the wall. Raqi had been putting more rain defences in place. So much for the health and safety rant, then.
Stepping back slightly in time, on my way back on Sunday I was invited for coffee by Waseem, the neighbour. I had to decline but said I would be back on Monday by 6 o’clock. Closer to seven though it was, he was still there, puffing on his nargilah and waiting to offer me coffee. Then his sister popped her head round the corner and asked for a hand with translating something to do with her course.
She has to prepare a presentation about the role of the large intestine and had found a quite humerous you tube cartoon which is gruesomely detailed. With her hijab clad mother pouring coffee and the thought of a picture at the Language Resource Centre of a man in underpants and the rear view of a naked woman, both used to show the parts of the body, where the female buttocks have been defaced in an attempt to erase them, how to describe terms such as anal sphincter, just for a moment escaped me. Like Dan Dare in the clutches of the Mekon, with one bound I was free! She is due to be at the university tomorrow, so we will have a tutorial there – but I still need some basic words that will not be considered obscene.
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