Turkey
‘What is a Turkish bath exactly?’ Mid-September, and American Cathy and I were in a taxi on the last afternoon of a four-day holiday to Turkey. She’d asked me along in an effort to cheer herself up on what would have been her 31st wedding anniversary. I accepted gladly. We’d spent a night in Istanbul and this was our third and final day in Goreme, Cappadocia. Cathy organised the programme; Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the underground Cisterns, a rooftop dinner, a balloon ride over the local fairy chimneys, valleys and cave dwellings, visits to museums and ancient sites, and now we were on our way to a Turkish bath.
‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘I only know it involves heat, maybe steam. Not wanting to get semi-naked with strangers, I booked us a private one.’ As we approached, we noticed that the building housing the baths had, like most of the trendy bars in the village, fallen victim to ‘toddlercore’; a phenomenon influenced by an east Asian aesthetic, which involves the proliferation of huge stuffed toys and cartoon-embellished clothing. Gen Z is in its thrall. Several giant toy pandas and tigers were pinned to the walls of the entranceway.
A man greeted us at reception and told us to go downstairs. Three young women were waiting. One sat on a step braiding her short black hair while the other two handed Cathy and me a small thin towel each. ‘Take everything off and put these on.’ ‘Underwear too?’ ‘Everything!’ said Masiko, the girl who was attending to me.
After we’d put our stuff in lockers, we stood giggling side by side, barely covered by our not-quite-big-enough tea towels, waiting for the girls to come back. When they did, I asked again: ‘What exactly is a Turkish bath?’ ‘You never have before? We gonna scrub you like a baby!’
First a sauna. I’ve never much liked them; the suffocating heat, the sickly smell of hot pine and sitting around in a puddle of sweat. They were all the rage when I was young in the 1980s and 1990s. Plush health clubs sprung up in the most improbable of places only to burn down a few years later. ‘How long will they leave us in here?’ I said before lying out on the bench furthest from the coals and giving myself up to being uncomfortably over-heated – home from home after the three month canicule in the South of France. ‘It’s good for you, I love it. Twenty minutes is optimal,’ said Cathy, lying as near to the stove as possible.
After about 15 minutes the door opened and we were released, red faced and sweating, into the hallway. ‘You want we wash your hair?’ ‘No thanks.’ ‘Bend forward.’ Masiko wrapped a towel round my head, tugging and pulling at it until she achieved the shape and effect she wanted. Her colleague did the same for Cathy and told us to look in the mirror. The effect was pleasingly sculptural. ‘You look like princesses. I take photo.’ We didn’t, but it felt good.
As we were led into the massage room Masiko asked us where we came from and I asked her the same question. ‘We come from a village in Uganda for work,’ she said. They liked it here in Goreme, they told us, and asked us to lie face down on the couches. ‘Medium hard or medium soft pressure?’ I opted for the latter. ‘You have pain?’ ‘No thanks,’ I said before another fit of giggles, when I realised she was asking if I suffered from pain, not if I’d like some.
We lay flat out like a pair of autopsy-ready corpses while bowls of hot and tepid water were thrown over us
Both women were short and round in build and I was surprised when Masiko climbed up on to the couch with me and moved my legs to the sides. She then knelt between my knees and began massaging my lower back. I’d had back massages before for sciatic pain but never like this, and for a moment I was hoping for limited nuclear war or some other emergency so I could escape. Next, she moved my legs back together (a blessed relief) and straddled my waist all the better to pummel my upper back. The rest of the massage – limbs, neck and shoulders – was enjoyable.
I thought that was it, but no, next we were shown into a room with a great marble table in the centre, like something you’d see in a fishmonger. ‘Lie down there.’ The table was heated and almost too hot to touch. We lay flat out together like a pair of autopsy-ready corpses while alternate bowls of hot and tepid water were thrown over us, after which we were covered in a mad layer of foam a foot thick. Donning abrasive gloves, the girls scrubbed us hard from head to toe. Apart from the foam it put me in mind of ancient Roman baths but for this old nurse the act of being washed, while being capable of washing myself, felt unnecessary, awkwardly servile and more intimate than sex even. Another 20 basins of water brought the experience to an end. We were a bit shocked but elated and glowing as we staggered out. Later, on our way to the newly opened Aura Rooftop bar – terrific views, decent live music and no teddies, Cathy said in all seriousness: ‘So, where next? How about Poland in January? Ever been to Auschwitz?’
Comments