A trip to the baths

I don't really have an issue with the touching.

Like most Americans,  I think, I am fine being touched: hugged, embraced, massaged ... listen, I've been known to enjoy the occasional grope.  But I'm not so sure how we feel about being scrubbed.  I'm particularly not so sure how we feel about being scrubbed with woolly mitts by large men wearing loincloths.

So let me tell you about the hamam.  The hamam, or "Turkish bath" as you might know it, is a tradition that apparently goes way, way back.  Like Roman Empire back.  After the empire fell and most of Europe chose to wallow around in the mud for a few centuries, the Ottomans decided they actually preferred being clean, and for that reason the hamam was something worth keeping around.  The hamams are still around, all over Istanbul and (I'm told) the rest of Turkey as well.

But being neither a Turk, Ottoman, nor ancient Roman, I knew nothing of this.  In America, we don't have communal baths.  We're not too crazy about the showers at the Y, to be honest.  Our basic national attitude seems to be, if you insist on being naked and wet, for God's sake please do it in the privacy of your own home.

Not really a good attitude if you are headed into the hamam. 

There are dozens of hamams of all kinds in Istanbul, from the swankiest at places like the Ritz and the Four Seasons, to little back-alley hamams where they hang the towels outside the entrance on collapsible laundry racks.   I decide to choose a hamam in the same discriminating way I choose a barber or a grocery store: whatever I walk by on the way home is probably fine. (Granted, this has led to several bad haircuts and a lot of suspect produce, but we'll leave that for another entry).   The hamam on the way home to my flat in Istanbul, it turns out, is no fly-by-night bath house.  It has been there since before Columbus aimed for India, and mistakenly stumbled across the Bahamas.

You heard me.  The "Historical Galatasaray Hamam" (Tarihi Galatasaray Hamamı) was opened in -- are you ready? --  1481.  In other words, people have been soaped, lathered, and rinsed at this very spot, continuously, for 531 years. 

I can only imagine the hair clog in the drain.

The first thing you need to know about the Turkish bath is that it's not really a bath, in the sense that Americans know a bath.  There is no tub, and you are not immersed in water.  Here, let me have the fine folks at the Tarihi Galatasaray Hamamı explain.  This is taken word for word from the English language version of the hamam's promotional pamphlet:

Hamam User's Guide:

The visitor of Hamam is welcomed in Hamam Square.

The visitor [is] welcomed by the Yanasma (room keeper) and shown his room.

[The] yanasma gives the visitor takunya (wooden sabots-pattens) and pestemal (loincloth).

The visitor, after tying up his loincloths [sic], and wearing his pattens in his room, comes to the hamam square.

Here, the massager (keseci) meets him.

The visitor entering the hamam, lies on the heated marble platform (gobektasi), covered with a thin cloth (serme). Before taking the bath, he lies on the marble platform for minimum [of] 20 minutes, to sweat and prepare his body for kese (rubbing with a bath glove).

Later, [the] visitor is taken to the kurna (marble basin under the tap), and rubbed and given a bubble bath and later lies on the marble platform again for massage.

After the massage, a shocking shower may be taken as wished.

Our guests, with their services completed, is [sic] free from now on, he may take a shower again or lay on the marble platform to rest.

Our guest wishing to leave, takes his bathing and hair towel in the warm section and leads to hamam square.

The visitor reaches to his normal body temperature again, during his time spend [sic] in hamam square for 15-20 minutes. At this time, he relaxes [and] eith[er] the hot or cold beverages serviced [sic].

The visitor, after dressing in his room,  makes payment when leaving.

According to the level of satisfaction, a 10% tip is ethical for the staff.

In other words, you are disrobed, steamed, baked, broiled, seared, seasoned with lemon pepper (OK, I made that up), soaped, scrubbed, contorted, rinsed, soaped and scrubbed some more, thrust into a cold shower (and it is "shocking"; they aren't lying about that), wrapped in towels, and handed a glass of tea. But no bath, in the conventional sense.  Despite the "bubble bath" reference, I assure you Mr. Bubble plays absolutely no part in the ritual.

The interior decor of the Galatasaray Hamam itself is a bit of time-machine whiplash. The inner rooms of the hamam may have changed little since it opened in the late 15th Century. The main outer room, however, was for some unknown reason "remodeled" in the mid 1960s, when they apparently installed laminated faux-wood dressing rooms, a white-railing spiral staircase, and snack bar. The contrast between the two areas is something like entering the Aya Sofia after stepping directly off the set of "My Three Sons" or "The Lucy Show."

But, as promised in the brochure, upon arrival I am given slippers and led up the spiral staircase to my little laminated wood dressing room, that includes a narrow cot-like bed for any post-scrubbing nap I might want to take.  And yet when I see this, the words that come to my mind are not "mmm, nap," but rather "yikes, hospital psych ward."  To sleep here, I'd have to be really tired.  Or heavily sedated.

My clothes are off, and I've done my best at "tying up my loincloths."  But emerging from my dressing room I see that tucking it in on the side like a bath towel clearly is not going to work, as it is impossible to walk five steps before the tuck comes loose.  Sadly I have to be shown by the yanasma how to tie a loincloth.  I'd be more embarrassed by this, but I am honestly not ashamed to admit that to date I have limited loincloth-tying experience.

Downstairs in the main room, slippers are now traded for wooden clogs.  I have to say, the loincloth/wooden clog combo is quite an international fashion statement.  I suspect I look like a half-naked Little Dutch Boy, off to put his finger in the dyke somewhere in French Polynesia.

Walking through the Douglas' family living room past Ernie and Chip and Uncle Charley (oh, I'm kidding; it was just a couple of guys at the snack bar),  I am greeted by the keseci, also wearing clogs and a loincloth, but with an enormous belly to hold it up.  He leads me into the inner part of the hamam known as "the hot room."  The name is self-explanatory.  Everything is marble, and everything is really, really hot (hence the need for wooden clogs to walk on the hot marble floor).  The keseci puts a thin sheet and a little pillow on a big marble slab, and leaves the room.  Like an obedient and reasonably intelligent Labrador retriever, I figure out this probably is the command to "lie down." I do as I'm told.

I admit, lying on my back on the hot marble slab is kind of nice, at first.  The room has a high-ceilinged dome, with 531-year-old star-shaped skylights.  Water is dripping somewhere, and there is an echo in the room.  I can begin to see why people would find this relaxing, even meditative.

But after a few minutes, I realize that I am repeatedly lifting my back and shoulder blades off the slab, because holy crap this marble is hot! The sweat glands have been called into action, and within minutes I'm completely drenched.  Thanks to the hamam, I finally understand what it must feel like to try to take a midday nap on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in the middle of August.

I don't have a watch on, obviously, but it seems like I've been lying here more than 20 minutes.  What happened to the fat man in the loincloth?  Have they forgotten about me?  Am I supposed to signal somehow that I am sufficiently broiled? Should I flip myself over so that I will be evenly cooked?  How many times in the past 531 years has someone accidentally roasted to death in the hot room?

Finally, the large loin-clothed man does return.  He appears to be carrying a bucket and a sponge mitt, like he's headed from the garage out to the driveway on a Sunday afternoon to wash the Nissan Sentra.

This can't be good.

Before I tell you about the actual scrubbing, let me just pause here for a moment to comment on the veracity of  Turkish bath promotional pamphlets.  The Tarihi Galatasaray Hamamı pamphlet has numerous photos of beautiful, half-naked men and women together in the hamam, pouring water on each other, drinking wine and feeding each other grapes, as if an orgy is just about to break out, or has just recently concluded. 

Based on my admittedly limited experience, I suspect these photos might be a little misleading.  To begin with, men and woman do not bathe together in the hamam, and they haven't for, oh I don't know, a good 531 years? (A separate hamam for women, with a completely separate entrance, is located on the other side of the building).   Second, in one photo the models appear to be drinking hot coffee in the 4,000-degree hot room, meaning that they are either: a) insane; b) suicidal, or c) greased up and posing in front of a fake hamam background, in an air-conditioned photographer's studio somewhere in South America.

I can assure you, there are no models in the hot room.  Nor do they offer wine, grapes, coffee, or erotic sexual encounters.  Instead, the experience is more realistically depicted like this:

I really don't know the last time I was actually scrubbed.  Perhaps at the age of 5, but if so, up to now I have been able to successfully repress the memory.  Whenever it was, I'm pretty sure it was not done by a 300-pound man wearing a checkered tablecloth.  That I would have remembered.

The brochure tells you that the purpose of being soaped up and rubbed down with a woolen "bath glove" is to remove the dead skin.  I have no doubt this is correct.  Of course it also removes the live skin as well, but let's not quibble about collateral damage.  If this is a war against dirt, then this is the bathing version of shock and awe.  Stuff happens.

Once I am fully soaped and scrubbed, the keseci then begins to lean on me, pressing and pushing and pulling and contorting my limbs.  I am assuming this is the "message" portion of the program.  My shoulder may have been separated during the process, but I decide to ignore it.  Honestly I am just happy to be keeping my loincloth on.

Eventually as promised I am "taken to the kurna (marble basin under the tap)," and rinsed off like the loyal Labrador I have become.  Fortunately this is done with bowls of warm water, and not the garden hose.  More soaping is done, more scrubbing, then more rinsing.  You just can't get clean enough at the hamam, apparently.

Soaped and scrubbed and rinsed and soaped and rinsed again, I put my clogs back on and move from the hot room to the "warm room."  Which would be great, except that the "warm room" also contains the "shocking" cold shower mentioned in the brochure.  So on balance, it's not really a "warm room" at all, is it?   I guess "potential heart attack room," while certainly more accurate, probably was rejected by the guys down in marketing.

After being sufficiently shocked in the shower, I am wrapped in towels, including one that goes over my head and behind the ears, Egyptian pharaoh style.  I am then led back into the remodeled exterior room ("Hamam Square"), where I'm half-expecting Eva Gabor to show up in a white pantsuit to serve drinks.  Sadly, it's only the yanasma.  No hots cakes, but he does have my slippers and the keys to my nap room. 

I understand the appeal of the hamam, and really, I'm in no position to knock a practice that has outlasted a couple of empires.  As individual concepts, I have nothing against sweat, saunas, slippers, clogs, ancient Egyptian after-bath head wear, or large Turkish men with bath mitts and buckets of soap. 

But I think I'll stick with Do-It-Yourself bathing, thanks.  True, I may not be quite as clean as I could be.  But so far the self-scrub has limited the complaints of others, and for the most part, kept me out of trouble.

As an added bonus, it's also mostly kept me out of loincloths.