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To save water, drought-hit Morocco is closing its famous public baths three days a week
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A Moroccan traditional bath, known as hammam, is empty of customers, in Rabat, Morocco, Monday, March 4, 2024. Climate change and a yearslong drought have forced Morocco's famous public baths to close a few days a week in an effort to save water. - photo by AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy
RABAT, Morocco (AP) — 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.