Drought Hits Morocco

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For years, Fatima Mhattar has welcomed shopkeepers, students, bankers and retirees to Hammam El Majd, a public bath on the outskirts of Morocco's capital, Rabat. For a handful of change, they relax in a haze of steam then are scrubbed down and rinsed off alongside their friends and neighbors.

The public baths — hammams in Arabic — for centuries have been fixtures of Moroccan life. Inside their domed chambers, men and women, regardless of social class, commune together and unwind. Bathers sit on stone slabs under mosaic tiles, lather with traditional black soap and wash with scalding water from plastic buckets.

But they've become the latest casualty as Morocco faces unprecedented threats from climate change and a six-year drought that officials have called disastrous. Cities throughout the North African nation have mandated that hammams close three days a week this year to save water.

Mhattar smiled as she greeted families lugging 10-liter buckets full of towels, sandals and other bath supplies to the hammam where she works as a receptionist on a recent Sunday. But she worried about how restrictions would limit customer volume and cut into her pay.

"Even when it's open Thursday to Sunday, most of the clients avoid coming because they are afraid it's full of people," Mhattar said.

Little rainfall and hotter temperatures have shrunk Morocco's largest reservoirs, frightening farmers and municipalities that rely on their water. The country is making painful choices while reckoning with climate change and drought.