(CNN) - 10 years ago. I am traveling to Germany with my boyfriend at the time.
I'm pretty useless as a traveling companion because I can't drive and I don't speak German, so my boyfriend does both. We cross the border from Switzerland and then stop in a small town near Stuttgart.
Our first day is a sunny Saturday morning in July. We decide to visit the "hot tubs" of the city, which is a glamorous name for a municipal swimming pool with a sauna / hammam. As in many places in Europe, swimsuits must be worn in the pool, but you must enter the natural sauna.
We paddle in the pool for an hour, then I agree to meet my boyfriend at the cafe. I take my clothes off, grab a small towel and go in search of the sauna.
I follow the smell of cedar up to a dark door. Opening it, I blink in the dark to see the distinct shape of naked middle-aged German men. Someone yells something gay at me, and I walk away from there and I go down the corridor towards two unmarked doors.
It goes without saying that, opposite the men's sauna, there is the women's sauna. On a whim, I take the one on the left and it slaps behind me.
It's not the sauna. It's the fire escape.
I am trapped, naked, inside the fire escape.
Nobody knows where I am
It is two stories high, dark and dusty. Above me, huge fans embedded in the wall rumble at the volume of the airplane engine. I cry out for help, knocking on the door until I get bruises on my wrist. There's nothing so pathetically vulnerable to hearing your own suddenly very naked voice, yelling "Help!" in the abyss.
Crying, I go down the metal stairs, trying to figure out which part of me I should cover with this tiny towel - my face maybe? I knock on the doors of the lower floor for another 10 minutes. Nothing.
I realize that nobody knows where I am. I have visions of my boyfriend calling the police, a nationwide search, my graduation photo with news, then, months later, my naked body ends up on a fire escape, a washcloth modestly covering my face.
On the ground floor, I spot a slit of light and I am overwhelmed with relief - it must be the exit!
But no, it's an industrial engine room, a cacophony of roaring pumps and inexplicable monstrous motors with cages around them. Everything has an "electrocution" sign on it.
While sobbing, I gallop naked in the industrial machine room, grabbing the small towel. There is no way out. There is however a service elevator. In pure panic, I run in the elevator.
Primordial Shameful Superpower
In the elevator, I smash all the buttons, hoping that I don't even know what. I take a few unnecessary walks up and down the fire escape. Then, I locate in the upper left corner, the bulb of a security camera.
A horrible thought comes to my mind - I really need someone to witness it, my biggest moment of embarrassment, because then they will come to my rescue. I pass the small towel around the strategic areas by waving the security camera.
After a while, there is a German speaker announcement, and I just know, through a primitive shameful superpower, that this announcement concerns me - that someone is giving me instructions.
But they don't know that I don't speak German. And how can I communicate this to a security camera? I make "I'm stupid" movements while crying louder and waving the camera.
Finally, the elevator is installed on the ground floor and the doors open. A spa worker stands there. He is at most 19 years old. A child. No one has ever managed to wear clothes as successfully as at that time. He says something to me and I cry. He sighs, his deep disappointment somehow even more mortifying for me right now.
He unlocks a door in the wall, and I realize, to my horror, that it opens onto the street. The only way out of the fire escape, apparently, is to leave the building completely and go back to the spa reception. I curl up behind the door, hysterical. At the bottom of the street, people line up in front of the reception doors, on the sidewalk and in the parking lot.
At this point, I experience a shameful transcendence. I travel fully in embarrassment and on the other side. My whole body is numb. I look up, pull my shoulders back, drop the washcloth and follow the man down the sidewalk. Families park their cars. Children point. I can't see them. I can taste the universe.
Saved by a lobster
The reception is filled with people in line and my chaperone must call so that I can cross the crowd. Spa enthusiasts turn around, tutored, looking for the culprit who jumps the queue and finds me.
The spa worker pushes through the crowd to speak to the receptionist. Meanwhile, I have to stay there. Wait. Next to me, an elderly lady wearing a flowered swimming cap offers me her pool float. It has the shape of a lobster. The claws become my makeshift bra.
The receptionist finally said something to me and my generous neighbor, a lobster interpreter. "She wants your ID card."
I only carry one lobster.
Where, oh where, will I keep my ID card?
Despite the language barrier, I guess the receptionist has no trouble interpreting my expression, because she lets me pass the turnstiles. They are however quite narrow, and after some false starts bouncing on the rails, I admit defeat and give the lobster to my savior in the hood.
As I rush to the locker room, I have a shameful 10-minute shower with the compulsory scrub and sob, I throw myself into my clothes and run to find my boyfriend at the cafe.
And after all that, he has the audacity to be cranky, because he has been waiting for an hour.
Anbara Salam's next novel, "Belladonna", is available in the summer of 2020.
