Cathedrals of the Flesh Read online

  She handed us a little white plastic cup, filled with brown sludge and topped off with a blue chip. Marina, who had been here before, explained, 'You wash with the brown stuff before the gommage. Then you give the token to the massage lady to prove you've paid.'

  To get to the cramped dressing room, we had to walk through this buzzing central room, which mushroomed up into a domed cupola on the second floor. It was a colonnaded room with a fountain in the middle, which the massage ladies used to clean their hands between customers. Behind the elaborately adorned columns, the bathers reclined on worn blue cushions. The busy, overladen room seemed to incorporate every element of Arabic design — every geometric pattern, every color sequence - in order not to offend anyone's culture by omission. The women on the massage tables in the center of the room glistened with oil. I thought with a smile of the United States, where in a private room the masseuse delicately makes sure you are not showing any skin. Here everything was on display. A few women wore underwear, but most people were nude, just sitting on towels. From the looks of things, the massages included upper thigh, breasts, and abdomen as much as they did shoulders and back. Walking by the massage tables fully dressed in a parka and clutching a backpack was an odd sensation. It felt as if we should enter the dressing room via tunnel so as not to disturb the pure naked abandon these women were enjoying. So we hurried by, Marina feeling just as ill at ease as I did.

  We quickly shed our belongings and headed into the hamam, holding our little white cups filled with briny sledge. Unlike yesterday's hamam, this one was huge, labyrinthine, and lined with gray, white-veined marble.

  'This is the real deal,' said Marina. 'This is halfway to Istanbul.'

  Only halfway? After showering (rule one applies everywhere), we entered a steamroom much bigger than yesterday's little Les Bains du Marais. Never had I felt so skinny. I loved the whole cast of characters, but I remained fixated on one woman. She had hips that took over the room, and she moved with the grace of a belly dancer. She wore lacy lilac underwear, and her stomach could have been sculpted by Rodin. Taking turns, she and her friend scrubbed each other. The other women, women I could tell were regulars, also gommaged each other. We neophytes, without mitts and washcloths of our own, had to seek out our gommage from the one gommage lady. It was not the luxurious experience of yesterday. She scrubbed with distracted ennui, using a ratty mitt. She wore a tattered cotton flower dress and smelled strongly of perspiration. I tried to be French about it and remind myself how natural pheromones are. It was about seven in the evening, and I wondered how many hours she'd been scrubbing women today.

  After the gommage, Marina and I found an empty patch of the bellystone to recline on. We compared the redness of our pallor. My Scandinavian coloring meant I bore the marks of a fierce scrubbing, whereas Marina's Asiatic complexion masked the hamam chafing. Les Bains du Marais was what the French would call raffmé, refined, polished; the Arab Mosque was coarse and visceral, soulful and mysterious. The difference between the two experiences was as marked as the chasm between a fancy, nouveau French feast and a rustic, peasant repast where you scrape up the contents of your plate with a piece of crusty bread. Both experiences are deliciously satisfying, but they transport you to different places.

  Watching the groups of women in the halvets (small private bathing areas surrounding the central bellystone), chatting good-naturedly, happy and serene, Marina and I began to hatch a plan. We would open our own hamam, which we would call simply the Hamam. We would create an oasis as exotic as an Eastern spice bazaar, where people could shed their make-it-happen mentality for a couple of hours and just chill out, so to speak, in the heat.

  How much money would we need? How big would it be? What kinds of treatments would we offer? And how could I open a hamam having seen only two re-creations in France? If this was only 'halfway to Istanbul,' I still had a lot to learn.

  'Marina, this would require research. Visiting hamams in Turkey, taking measurements, seeing what kind of marble they use, how the rooms are laid out. We need some actual facts.'

  'You have unused vacation time,' Marina said. 'Why not go to Istanbul for a couple of weeks? In two weeks, you'll get the flavor of the hamams. You can map out all the different floor plans, talk to some of the owners, get a sense of what's involved. If I can get away, I'll meet you for a long weekend.'

  'Istanbul, Constantinople, Byzantium.'

  'I'd forgotten you were a classics major.'

  'Me too.' I laughed. 'So I go to Istanbul for a couple of weeks. You come and visit, and then we write a business plan for world hamam domination. Is that the plan?'

  'Exactly.'

  I lay back on the warm marble, breathing in the steam. I thought of Emperor Justinian's vast, underground cistern in Old Stamboul. Did the fifth-century cistern still feed the hamams? How many hamams would Istanbul have? Hundreds? Thousands? So it was resolved. I would take a working vacation to Istanbul. For the first time in my life I felt driven by a personal project; for the first time I wasn't doing someone else's bidding. The Hamam. Maybe nothing would come of it, but I needed to take this leap of faith. I'd come home with sketched-out blueprints and travel notes on how the hamams operate, and Marina and I would set about creating a business plan. Who knows, with the stars aligned we might even be able to open our hamam within two years.

  turkey:

  taking the measurements

  As you set out for Ithaka

  hope the voyage is a long one,

  full of adventure, full of discovery.

  — Constantine Cavafy, 'Ithaka'

  When I first arrived in Istanbul, my plan seemed simple. Over the course of two weeks, I would have a kese scrub at every bath in Istanbul; I would meet the regulars, who would show me how to henna my hair and share their personal baklava recipes; I would smoke narghile and drink mint tea with hamam owners who would divulge their business secrets - 'It's all about the size of your bellystone'; I would discover local beauty products - pistachio face masks, Black Sea loofahs, and Cappadocia salt scrubs - and I would import these elixirs to New York. I would, as Marina and I termed it, 'take the measurements.' And with my measurements carefully documented, I would go home.

  Once back in New York, Marina and I would set about writing the most tantalizing business plan ever to cross Ian Schrager's desk. As a life-altering plan, it was both practical and inspired. Never mind that I didn't speak Turkish and didn't have a place to stay. That I knew little about Turkey and hadn't even seen Midnight Express. I was heading to Istanbul prepared to be lucky and efficient, eager for a crash course in hamams. I showed up with one contact name Baksim Kocer. Baksim, an Istanbul native, had attended college in the States with a good friend of mine, and to me he was a familiar name without a corresponding face. As I planned the trip from New York, Baksim and I exchanged introductory e-mails in which he offered his help and hospitality. His advice on where to stay boiled down to an uninspiring 'Don't worry, I'll take care of everything.'

  Though I certainly never expected it, Baksim took me under his wing from the first night. He had reserved a room for me in a hotel owned by his uncle. In Turkey everyone has an uncle who can help you out. At 8:00 P.M. I met Baksim in the hotel's bar for a night out with his childhood friend, Mehmet. Turkish hospitality not only dictated that Baksim take me out for that introductory dinner that friends of friends are internationally obliged to cater, but also stretched to helping me find an apartment (two weeks in a hotel felt too cold and would have cost too much). To Baksim's Middle Eastern sensibility, it would have been rude and potentially dangerous to leave me, especially as a woman traveling alone, to find my own lodgings in the male-dominated streets of Istanbul. As a strictly practical matter, I was only too happy to submit to Baksim's paternalism and to end my previous two weeks of e-mail brokering with a Turkish real estate agent who insisted that Istanbul rents were on par with Manhattan's.

  I woke up the first morning following my arrival in Baksim's guest room, my head throb
bing after a dramatic collision of jet lag and too much raki, the national drink of anise-flavored liquor. We had eaten dinner - an endless stream of meze, small plates of succulent eggplant concoctions, dolma and sarma (stuffed peppers and grape leaves), and calamari — at an apparently famous restaurant that served food from the Black Sea coast. The raki left more of an impression than the food, and my head ached as the clanking of dishes echoed from the kitchen. Mehmet had also spent the night in the other guest room, as he often did when his wife was out of town. I made myself presentable and joined them for a breakfast of Nescafe and cigarettes.

  'Today we go to Tuzla. You'll love it,' Baksim announced when he saw me.

  'Where's Tuzla? It sounds far away,' I said, rubbing my head and pulling my mess of hair back into a ponytail.

  'It's where Mehmet and I practically grew up. It's a little seaside town on the Asian side, about an hour from here, where our parents have places. There's tennis and swimming and sailing. Oh, Mehmet, maybe Kemal will be sailing today.'

  'Are there any hamams there?' I asked, eager to start visiting the first of the city's hundred or so remaining hamams.

  'No, but you'll meet people who can tell you all about hamams. My uncle will be there. He knows everyone and everything about Istanbul. Now let's get dressed.' He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray as if to bolster the finality of the decision. At a mere twenty-seven, a slight five feet six, and with an eyebrow as dark and thick as Humphrey Bogart's, Baksim possessed the authority of a Turkish godfather figure. He didn't make plans or propose outings, he simply announced them.

  We drove an hour east in Baksim's red Fiat, traversing a two-mile-long suspension bridge that connects Europe to Asia. The geconkondu (random groupings of houses built out of scrap parts rugs, wheels, corrugated cardboard - where recent rural immigrants to Istanbul would first make their homes) and planned housing developments flew by. Soon we outdistanced the long-fingered sprawl of Istanbul and veered onto a road that led to a small settlement of houses. Tiny, tranquil Tuzla, hidden scarcely an hour outside of Istanbul, had impressive houses on quiet, shaded streets where children could learn to ride bikes. Front yards were adorned with carefully planned gardens, a telltale sign of affluence, which in Turkey stood out like a Fabergé egg in a mudslide.

  The moment I saw the waterfront I was glad I'd been bullied into coming. Tulza is one of those unobtrusively beautiful places, where the longer you let it work on you, the more mesmerizing it becomes, like a plain face with perfect bone structure. Set in a little nook on the Sea of Marmara, Tuzla gazes placidly toward Istanbul to the northwest. Despite the cranes of a nearby shipyard, I could make out the clustered domes of the külliyes across Istanbul's skyline. külliyes are groupings of domed structures that contain all the buildings essential to Ottoman life — a mosque, a library, a school, a hospital, and, invariably, a hamam.

  Walking around Tulza is similar, I imagine, to stumbling into an uncataloged museum spanning the fourth century onward. Remnants of antiquity are scattered like a Caesar's garage sale. At the clubhouse, marble bases of Corinthian columns served as coffee tables. A coffin-size tablet decorated with Greek script was used to hold glasses of cold raki and that morning's issue of Hürriyet (translation Freedom, though the Turkish government still throws the odd journalist in jail). The pool, which was badly damaged last year by the Islamic fundamentalist Fazilet political party (they oppose all kinds of immodesty, including swimming in Victorian swimming costumes), was surrounded by a crumbling colonnade of withering Doric columns. Baksim and Mehmet had a proud, offhanded attitude about the antiquities, as if to say 'Look what our ancestors built! Their tablets are our coffee tables.'

  After lunch Baksim announced, 'Now we will visit Kemal.' His name had come up several times with no supporting biographical data and only enigmatic asides. We traipsed through a gate and down a dusty road, only to end up at another gate, this one with a mangy dog and her pup barking to greet us. Baksim shouted, 'Allo, allo, Kemal?' and after a minute of silence we let ourselves in. Once past the yapping Cerberuses, I could see a huge, lush, and elegantly unkempt garden stretched out before us. The garden was framed by a vine-covered trellis and a semicircle of little cottages. Had we just walked into an artists' colony, or did all these dwellings belong to one person? Could I live here? I wondered. My commute to the hamams of downtown Istanbul would be rather difficult, but who could complain about commuting from paradise?

  The garden was patterned with a dried-up marble fountain, scattered stumps of byzantine columns, a pagoda, and, dominating the landscape, six antique wooden sailboat hulls sitting on the lawn like carcasses waiting to be skinned. It took a minute to process the pandemonium of the scene. My eye traveled to the edge of the thickly reeded Marmara shores. Only then did I realize that a garden party was in progress. From our relative distance, it felt as if we were spying on a Renoir painting of a languid late-afternoon gathering. I counted six people reclining on wooden furniture, sipping tea, and chatting with the air of old friends while sun danced across the water and their faces.

  I glanced at Baksim, expecting us to retreat from their intimate gathering before anyone saw us, but instead we barged right in. One of the men folded the newspaper on his lap, stood up, and put on a smile the way you might unroll a dirty sock. 'Baksim,' he said with what little enthusiasm he could muster. The arrival of guests meant the making of more tea, the fetching of cups and saucers and sugar cubes, the offering of food, all the tiring elements of Turkish hospitality.

  Baksim introduced me to Kemal as a 'guest from New York,' and Mehmet apparently needed no introduction, since the dogs were nuzzling him with excessive familiarity. Kemal was so tall that he stooped apologetically from his six-foot-three-inch height. He appeared deliberately disheveled in a wrinkled striped dress shirt and paint-splattered khakis. His angular jaw was covered in grayish stubble; his thick salt-and-pepper hair was brushed back off his ruddy face. If I could have pushed back his shoulders and made him stand up straight, he would have cut a dashing figure. As it was, he still cut a dashing figure, though he appeared slightly raffish and discombobulated, like a paper doll put together at off-kilter angles.

  A round of introductions followed. All my social awkwardness, which at home is so often paralyzing, was gone. I felt calm, relaxed, supremely confident. I wasn't expected to know the etiquette of Turkish society, whether or not it was rude to arrive unannounced. That was Baksim and Mehmet's problem.

  Kemal left to fetch tea, and I wondered if he needed help. He seemed like the kind of person who might get overwhelmed by life's little details. Baksim and Mehmet discussed the wood-hulled boats on the lawn. A new one had been added, and Kemal was in the middle of restoring five already.

  'Why did he buy another one?' Mehmet wondered.

  'He wants a fleet of nineteenth-century dinghies,' replied Baksim.

  Kemal arrived with the tea and offered me a cup. As I took the saucer, I felt all thumbs. I looked around for a place to settle my glass teacup, and the only options were the base of an Ionic capital or a large tablet with Greek writing. 'Where did you find these?' I asked.

  'Over there,' he said distractedly, and he pointed about fifty feet away. Soon everyone had their tea and the appropriate number of sugar cubes, and the group got deep into a discussion about the latest Galatasaray-Leeds soccer game, which had ended in the deaths of two English fans who had been burning a Turkish flag. The verdict: 'The Brits deserved it.'

  Kemal, apparently not a soccer fan, scanned the garden. He looked like someone who liked to putter around, and I could tell he was sizing up summer improvement projects. Then, as if remembering that he was the host of this little tea party, he turned to me and said: 'So tell me, what brings you to Istanbul?'

  'I'm here to study Turkish baths.'

  'Whatever for?' he asked in thickly accented but perfect English.

  'Well, it's a long story, really, but I'll give you the short version. My friend Marina and I want to open a ham
am in Manhattan. I'm in Istanbul to learn how its properly done.'

  He nodded. 'It's a fascinating area of study, but Turks don't go anymore, you know. Very unhygienic business. You must be careful.' He said the last part softly, as if divulging a secret that he wanted me to take to heart.

  Kemal didn't know it, but he couldn't have said anything crueler to me. I'd come halfway around the world to indulge in what I imagined was a distinctly Turkish pastime, and now I was being told that most Turks wouldn't set foot in a hamam.

  'What do you mean, Turks don't go anymore?'

  'Oh, you look sad. Let me explain. Modern Turks, like me or Baksim, consider hamams an old-fashioned habit, the kind of thing our grandparents' generation did. Turkey has modernized because of Atatürk's marvelous leadership.' This was my first induction into the cult of Atatürk's, the first prime minister of modern Turkey and a beloved secular hero, a combination of Superman and Winston Churchill. 'Indoor plumbing became common, and people stopped needing to go to the public baths. Though some people still enjoy the ritual and the camaraderie. I think Mehmet and Baksim go to the hamam at the Hilton hotel from time to time. But it's more of a lark. Of course, I could be completely wrong,' he said in an attempt to comfort me. I shouldn't have been so surprised by what Kemal was saying. I had been in Istanbul just over twenty-four hours and every single Turkish person I had canvased about hamams always used the word unhygienic in their response, along with 'Be careful.'

  Kemal continued, 'Maybe there still is bathing culture in Istanbul. I just don't know about it.' He paused and scratched his scruffy chin. 'You seem genuinely interested in baths. I think I have something that might interest you very much.' He grinned, displaying sharp incisors but twinkling eyes that seemed to offset the malevolence of his teeth. I wondered if he was married, though he seemed more the confirmed bachelor type. He was probably in his late thirties, and no one here seemed to be his wife or girlfriend.