Hamam - Turkish Bath

     I am cleaner and softer today than I have been since close to birth. One of Turkey’s iconic experiences, the hamam (Turkish bath) I think occupies a particularly exotic and mysterious place in the American/Western consciousness. In many ways, Americans idealize privacy along with freedom, upward mobility, and the automobile. Fences are abound, one keeps polite interactions with one’s neighbors, and topics of a personal nature are taboo with all but the closest friends or family.

     In Turkey, these standards are not a consideration. Neighbors spill into one another’s yards, a whole host of topics are more acceptable for discussion (I’ve particularly noticed the public way in which my Turkish teacher discusses each student’s shortcomings on various assignemtns), and the notion of personal space is generally nonexistent. It’s in this culture that taking a long, luxurious bath in public is not only acceptable but embraced.

     I went to a hamam on the Asian side of Istanbul (I am still tingly every time I take the 15-minute ferry across the Bosphorus to a different continent) with two friends, one of whom had been to this hamam many times. We brought towels, shampoo, and a change of underwear.

     We arrived to a nondescript building with a sign indicating the men’s entrance at the front. At the back was the women’s entrance, which led directly into a two-storied room occupied by a couple mostly-naked women milling around, and one professionally dressed woman poised to greet us. Anna, with her slightly superior command of practical Turkish took the lead and arranged a room, sandals, and scrubbing mitts for three. We went upstairs to one of the small, windowed rooms lining the wall where we undressed to bathing suit bottoms or underwear, grabbed our soap, towels, and sandals, and locked our things in the room.

     Magda and I follow Anna back downstairs, imitating her confident stride. We walk through a door to the next room back, where we leave our towels and use the toilet. The door to the third area releases a hot, humid cloud, through which we see a marble, octagonal room. In the middle is a marble table-bench, large enough to fit four or so women laying down. Above is a lightly decorated dome, letting in some light. Around the middle are eight or so little alcoves, each containing three drain-less marble sinks with two taps. We are pointed to one such alcove, where Anna explains we fix the temperature of our water with the faucets, and then douse ourselves with it. We splash a bit, slowly taking in the sight of old, almost-naked women chatting while washing their hair, and one younger woman now sprawled on the middle stone being scrubbed by a no-nonsense middle-aged woman. The combination of the ease and familiarity of this experience for them and the utter foreignness for us is surreal and immensely enjoyable. We follow suit and wash our hair, play with the temperatures, pour bowl after bowl of water on ourselves (there is a sort of moat set into the floor around past each alcove, draining off to somewhere else). Slowly we relax and conversation turns to other, mundane matters unrelated to our bathing experience so far. Soon Anna leads us to the last door, which opens to a pleasant little sauna. Perhaps it was the wood, or cleanliness of the hamam, but the sauna was the sweetest-smelling one I’ve been in. We tried to relax for a couple minutes, speculating about how long the sand-clock ran and trying to convert the thermometer to Fahreinheit for my benefit (Anna and Magda are from Greece and Cyprus). Soon enough we rush back out, to pour cold water over our heads for a couple minutes until a woman with a mitt beckons Magda. Soon after, a second woman beckons me, then another Anna. Mine impatiently gestures for me to lie on my stomach, as I fumble to show her the scrapes on my leg (fell down at Cappadocia) and pleadingly request that she be careful around. She understands, and more patiently places me on the edge of the bench.

     With my head resting on my arms, too late I think to brace myself. The travel guides I had me anticipating a rigorous scrub and pummeling. She pre-empted my anxiety, though, and for the better. It wasn’t bad at all, in terms either of aggression or personal invasion. As she scrubbed every (every) inch, moving onto my front then arms and neck, the process felt completely natural and a little indulgent. Having been warned, I wasn’t quite as shocked by the pills of dead skin her mitt removed in startling quantities. I vaguely wondered if she takes notice and thinks poorly of foreigners for obviously having never bathed properly in their lives.

She lightly slaps my arm with the mitt to indicate she has finished, and instructs me in Turkish to rinse before my massage. Excitedly I tread back to my alcove to rinse the pills of skin off myself, continuing to suppress bewilderment at their quantity.

    The massage as well doesn’t live up to the intensity of which I had been warned. She lathered me up with my shampoo and a (okay- I have no idea what these are actually called. In my family they are referred to as buff-puffs. A sort of meshy ball? For soap). Then she runs over me with her hands massaging my neck for a moment, my arms, back. At my feet I use all my power to suppress a tickle-reaction, to which I know she will react with a nudge back into place. Another swat with the buff-puff directs me back to my alcove where I collapse into a sudsy heap until slowly I rinse myself and sit up.

     Magda and I laugh at how red we are from the heat and scrubbing, and fall again back into slow conversation and liberal sluicing of variable-temperature water. Cleaned through, and rinsed thoroughly, we begin to feel faint from the heat and slowly stand and collect our things. In the middle room we rinse one more time under a cool shower, and dry a bit with our towels. The first room this time feels positively chilly, in the most refreshing way possible. We tread a snail’s pace back upstairs, drying as we go. Soon we are dressed, brushed, packed, and paying the first woman we met. We go outside and stop for a smoke break (for which my careful tolerance is slowing turning to enjoyment. I participate by demurely sipping water). We float up and down the hills back to the port, enjoying the cool air in our damp hair and raw skin, feeling how soft and smooth forearms, neck, elbows have become.

     So pleased, I push off the realization that once I’m back in the States I will never have access to the sort of experience. Utterly relaxed it seems unproblematic, and Anna and I simply promise to try out other hamams weekly until I leave Turkey.