Thank God That’s Over…
It was an experience like any other, and what made it even more so was that my Turkish roommate had never done it either. I spent hours milling through websites, looking for the perfect one…When I came across something that looked good, I asked for her Turkish approval (since most of the website was in Turkish), and we caught a ‘taksi’ to Beşiktaş. While the taksi driver sped through traffic, lunging around blind corners, and cutting people off, I felt beneath the seat for my seat belt hoping to find it and strange feeling things not so much. The only one I found must have been for the middle seat because it wouldn’t connect with my belt. I guess I will be making my father a millionaire, dying in the back of a Turkish cab.
Frustrated by the traffic and I gather the comments of my fellow passengers, the taksi driver made a sharp right and accelerated down a small side street…right into the path of an oncoming bus, stopping within a foot of it. With nowhere to go but backward, he reversed long enough to let the bus pass, and before he could get over, no less than thirty cars passed him in the opposite direction, following the bus. By this time, he rolled down the window shouting curses in the native tongue. None of them seemed to impact the other driver much, despite the fact that they were going to head to head, cars within inches of each other, windows rolled down, and at least one temper flaring…
Off we went on a green light as I quickly rolled down my window to let some fresh air in. Grabbing the ‘oh shit’ bar above the window and inhaling cold outside air was the only thing I could do to prevent being sick. Since I haven’t been behind the wheel of a car for over five months, I am easily carsick when someone else is driving. I wasn’t ever this bad, but so far I am two for two. Odds not favorable for a third performance. After the taksi driver asked a third person for directions to the street we were heading, I realized that only in America do the cabbies know where they are going. In Thailand and India (and now Turkey), the cabs stopped other people on the street to ask for directions, half the time not getting the right information. It just makes me want to take a cab in New York when I arrive in June, just to spout off a location and get there with no questions asked for the sheer novelty of it all.
…when we arrived, there was no real signage and I felt that perhaps we were in the wrong place. When I did see a small paper sign, no wait, two small paper signs, I asked Gokçe what was the name of the place I had sent her since there were apparently two. Still wheezing from the taksi ride, she places her hand on my shoulder. ‘Cristi, that sign says ‘Men’s Hamam’ and this sign says ‘Women’s Hamam.’
We wandered along a white concrete-walled corridor with white marble floors streaked with gray. As I turned a corner in the locker room where I was to keep my belongings and clothes, four Turkish women were sitting down on benches, one unclothed. Gokce explained that we were here to have a bath, a scrub, and massage. A hamam is an ancient Turkish tradition, one that in today’s era is dying out and the few fancy ones that remain are frequented mostly by foreigners and the one were at this evening, only locals. A hamam is a Turkish bathhouse where men would sit in a wet marble steam room and interact socially while ritually cleansing themselves. In lieu of heading over to the fancy hamams in the Sultanhamet area of Istanbul, I specifically wanted to find one that was used by the locals, insteading of lying there naked thinking I was stranded on a desert island (with a marble slab) with a bunch of tourists to keep me company.
Gokçe translated everything, glancing over when prompted and listened to the instructions in Turkish before telling me what I needed to do in English. For the most part, we disrobed, put on towels, and wandered off into the marble steam room to soften up. We were conveniently the only ones in the room…After completing my first task, which was easily done staring at the strange hole-shaped skylights of the hamam clouding over in the steamy mist, I was instructed by my ..uh.. masseuse to lay down on my back. She proceeded to pour lukewarm water over me…then sanded me down using a loofah mitt with at least 10-grit. At that point, ‘think of a happy place’ was recited over and over in my head as I typically become so ticklish I may smile at the wrong moment. I closed my eyes and felt the layers of skin on both sides of me peel away with every exfoliation, but that didn’t matter much to me. I have always been fond of a good scrub to remove the “layers,” the years, the experiences right off of me.
After another rinse, my final instruction was to lay back down again as she soaped me up…and down. This is the part where ‘think of a happy place’ really comes into play as I was innocently minding my own business naked on the marble slab in Istanbul when I felt the need to crank an eyebrow skyward and put my hand over my mouth as in ‘oh my!’ I have had many massages in many places and many countries, but never have I gotten as close to receiving a happy ending as here. She apparently has done this thousands of times and it’s all business to her, but her soapy hands were sloshing all over the place and in places they didn’t need to be, places that have never been touched during massage. I just lay there hoping that in my happy place, there is another kind of happy ending…the one where I realize we’re done. She finished with a scalp massage, which was heavenly and, enough to make me momentarily forget what just happened. Well, not really. It will be forever immortalized in print now so everyone can point and laugh when they see me…
Tags: Istanbul, Turkey, Tag Index
cristi.farrell