Day 15: Hamam. My dignity is gone (but I don't really miss it.)

Note: This is not for the easily scandalized. Or, Mom. : )

Today: Hamam. Turkish Bath. Does not include modesty...but really, you sort of have to do it if you come to Turkey. Finding this place in the rain was an adventure; I arrived chilled through, and actually wet from the knees down. My hands were raw. I first stopped at the main entrance- women, as it turns out, are sent around the corner, down a little alley to an inauspicious little door that looks like a service entrance, with a battered sign. I followed a cold little stairway up to a wooden room, with cubicles like phone booths all along the perimeter.

I had, from this point on, some idea of what was to happen. I have friends who have visited hamams. I am aware of the age-old tradition of public baths. I sat next to Virginia all semester as she designed a lovely hamam combining new and old traditions. But if you are not familior with the hamam, here is how it goes down:

A matronly, plump lady with her grey hair in a bun gives you a key and shows you to your cubicle.

"Everting oft."

"Everything?" you say.

"Everyting."


Inexplicably, the little changing booth has textured glass for privacy on three sides. The side facing the main entrance: totally transparent.

You are given a small wrap, lock the door, and put on a pair of clompy wooden sandals. You are led to a marble room, maybe 20' X 20', lined with basins and faucets. Overhead is a dome inset with pieces of colored glass, which is beautiful. In the center, taking up about 80 % of the space, is a marble slab. A hot, hot marble slab.

Lady with the bun: "Oft."

She whips off your wrap, which she spreads out on the hot marble. "Down," she says. You are not alone on the slab, which is big enough to hold about 5 people. If, like me, you are 6" longer than your wrap, the marble is hot enough that your toes, wrap-free, feel like they're on fire. You are left to melt, in a really pleasant way, on the slab. There is soft ancient music playing in the background, and all around you is the sound of dripping, from the sauna heat. The warmth seeps in.

A different hammam attendant, the scrubber, wearing a scrap of fabric twisted into a bandeau as a top, comes in and starts very kindly bossing you around. Up. Over. Rinse. Head here. You start at one of the basins, dumping hot water head to toe from a copper bowl. Back to the slab- where you are scrubbed with something scratchy, until you can see down two or three layers of skin. More rinsing and bowls of hot water. The most fun: The scrubber uses some sort of pillowcase to fluff out hot bubbles, head to toe. you are massaged and scrubbed and flipped and bubbled several more times- still lying on the hot slab. After the bubbles- more rinsing, and then your hair is washed. It's not a gentle sort of Robert Redford/Meryl Streep in Out of Africa waching- but a good scrub with many buckets of water dumped unceremoniously over your head. It's actually awesome. After that, you go lie on the slab as long as you like, before you go back to the transparent changing room to dress. This is not the Umstead Spa, for sure- it's pretty gritty, no fluff, no cushy robe, no careful rearranging of the spa sheet to preserve your comfort and privacy. No hairdryer, so you are walking back out onto Istaklal Street with wet hair.

The whole process is terrifying enough that I knew I had to do it. I don't even like changing at the Y, so being in the altogether in a room full of strangers, one of them manhandling me with a loofah, was a bit out of my comfort zone. Deliberately so. People of all ages, shapes, and sizes- nothin' to see here, folks, just going about our shampooing. Really, a very nice tradition.