What really happens inside a Turkish bath

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Istanbul
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Cocooned within the heat embrace of the hamam, sounds are muffled. Gentle mild from oculi, “eyes” in a giant dome overhead, etches patterns throughout the marble surfaces under. Running water and softly dripping faucets lap on the edges of consciousness like a lullaby.

In the steamy, nearly mystical environment of a Turkish bath, the world stands nonetheless.

Going to a hamam may be very totally different from being in your toilet at residence, and even in a non-public room at a day spa when it’s simply you and your therapist.

“In a bath or shower you are alone but a hamam is a public space,” says Ahmet İğdirligil, architect and skilled on the tradition and historical past of Turkish baths. “It is a social place and a unique place in history for women to be social outside of their houses without needing permission.”

In the previous, ladies from rich households attended the hamam commonly. Some even had a hamam in their very own residence. Each lady used customized gadgets similar to a hamam tası — a bowl with embossed motifs, typically even set with jewels — to pour water over her physique. They additionally used satin material embroidered with silk or linen edged with lace, and peştemal, or towels. Traditionally produced from pure cotton, one of the best ones have a hand-finished edge, a selvedge quite than a hem to cease them unravelling.

Numerous subtle guidelines pertaining to cleanliness for each event — “after sex, menstruation, or having a baby,” Iğdirligil continues — from prayer by to marriage and childbirth, have been established and refined over the centuries. Even now, ladies in small cities nonetheless go to the hamam to flee their housewifely roles or search for brides for his or her sons.

Steam and ‘stars’

İğdirligil explains that every hamam has a minimum of three sections, fastidiously designed to boost the expertise. First is the doorway space, historically heated by a soba, a Turkish wooden burner, or a fireplace. This area comprises altering rooms and a lounge part for resting after your bath. A small door opens into a semi-warm room with bathrooms, depilatory companies and kurna, marble basins. The most important and largest part has a göbek taşı, a raised marble platform at its middle, with extra kurna alongside the partitions. Some hamams have smaller rooms referred to as halvet, scorching rooms, off to the aspect of the göbek taşı and even a halvet in every nook.

“The structure is very important because it is a journey into the hamam and back,” Iğdirligil says. “The second two rooms always have a dome and the height of the room is always more than the width. The openings in the dome add to the atmosphere and increase the sense of space. They seem like stars in the sky and it is like looking at the cosmos.”

This is especially true of Cağaloğlu Hamam. Built in 1741 to boost income to fund Sultan Mahmut’s library, it has a vivid white marble inside. The general impact is one among floating on a cloud. With the “heat, humidity, and the sound, murmurs like a heartbeat, you feel like you are in the womb,” says Iğdirligil.

Elif Kartal, visitor relations and operations supervisor of Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, has labored in Turkish baths for nearly 20 years. She says that whereas most hamams supply a comparable set of companies similar to kese, a physique scrub that makes use of a particular glove, and Turkish köpük masaj, a Turkish foam therapeutic massage, “there are differences in the functioning of these baths between each other, sometimes according to preference and sometimes according to their structural condition.”

Of the 237 hamams in Istanbul, solely 60 stay in operation. In common, most smaller hamams have just one set of amenities which means women and men bathe individually at totally different occasions, and typically on totally different days. Larger, historic hamams like Zeyrek Çinili Hamam and the lavish Ayasofya Hürrem Sultan Hamam have separate bathing areas for women and men. The latter, designed for Roxelana, the spouse of Süleyman the Magnificent, in 1556 by Mimar Sinan, chief architect of the Ottoman court docket, was the primary hamam to have a ladies’s part that precisely mirrored the lads’s aspect.

Many Istanbul hamams are open till as late as 11 p.m. however you need to plan and e-book upfront.

Elif Tamtartar, a natır — a feminine bathing attendant — at Zeyrek Çinili Hamam with 25 years’ expertise, says clients must keep away from a few issues previous to their session. “Do not wax immediately before the bath and avoid using body lotions and oil-based products the day before because it reduces the effectiveness and efficiency of the kese because it causes the glove to slide on the skin,” she says. She additionally suggests consuming calmly earlier than your go to and avoiding alcohol, as you might really feel uncomfortable within the warmth.

All hamams have altering areas the place you’ll be able to go away garments and lock away valuables. Some will ask you to reveal primary well being particulars. They normally present disposable underwear, however you’ll be able to put on your individual or swimwear. The kese reaches all components of your physique so sporting a one-piece isn’t advisable — and be ready to have your underwear hauled up excessive and rolled down low.

Feeling model new

Being washed by another person is the final word in luxurious. It takes you again to childhood bathtime reminiscences, of being heat and drowsy and cared for.

Once you’re modified and wrapped in a peştemal, your natır awaits — or for males, your tellak. At Zeyrek Çinili Hamam they take your hand and punctiliously lead you thru the center room to the center of the bath home. There, you’re gently rinsed with heat water then invited to lie down on a towel atop the göbek taşı. The warmth from the marble mixed with the steamily nice air is extraordinarily stress-free and, when the allotted quarter-hour of sweating is over, they could even need to wake you.

Using a small bowl, your attendant cascades water over your hair, face and physique, washing away the sweat. Despite the identify, there aren’t any precise baths in Turkish hamam. “Before Islam,” İğdirligil explains, “Turks had Shamanic beliefs and believed water was holy. To wash yourself in water means to make the water dirty. In Turkish Islam, if the water touches your body, the water and therefore your body are no longer clean.”

After the rinse comes the kese. Although the phrases natır and tellak are used to explain bathing attendants, “among ourselves,” Tamtartar says, “we call those who do this job keseci, regardless of gender”. Tamtartar realized kesecilik, the artwork of physique scrubbing, from her household. “My mother and grandmother always worked in this profession,” she says. “I didn’t learn in any school or course but rather from them. I actually learned kesecilik before I was 15 years old”.

A kese seems and feels much like coarse sandpaper in material kind and is used to clean useless pores and skin from the physique. In the previous a topuk taşı, a pumice stone, was used as a substitute. High-ranking ladies had theirs encased in handcrafted silver cups and embossed with customized designs.

The sensation of getting your pores and skin scrubbed with a kese glove may be distinctly odd — at occasions tough, typically ticklish even surprisingly scorching. Almost no inch of pores and skin is left untouched. An excellent kese covers the torso, legs and arms in addition to face, internal thighs and all the best way right down to the sacral dimples. If you discover the stress an excessive amount of or have delicate areas, let your keseci know. Although, “most of us do not know foreign languages ​​in general”, Tamtartar says, “we have been doing this job for years, we can easily communicate with foreign guests through body language.”

As your keseci scrubs, layers of skinny black grit — hidden metropolis grime — roll off the pores and skin. Lif, or loofah, are then used to take away the useless cells. It varies from hamam to hamam, however the lif may be produced from cotton, linen or goat hair.

Once you’re squeaky clear it’s time for a Turkish köpük masaj. The keseci creates foam by soaping up a piece of soppy moist muslin and ballooning it out earlier than passing it gently throughout your physique in preparation for the therapeutic massage. Most Turkish cleaning soap is produced from olive oil as a result of it cleans with out stripping away the pores and skin’s pure oils. This, mixed with the consequences of the kese, makes your pores and skin really feel model new, with a cashmere-like softness. Tamtartar says kese prevents getting old. “Pores open in the bath and cell renewal accelerates since the scrub also serves as a peeling,” she says.

Once the ultimate hair-washing stage is over, you permit the best way you got here, first stopping within the center part to be patted dry and swaddled in towels earlier than re-entering the cool room, the area you first entered. It’s not advisable to go away a hamam abruptly, so lie again, take pleasure in your tea and, once you’re prepared, glide again to the altering space to dress.

Taking outing and being soothed by the balm of steamy waters are timeless pleasures that by no means develop outdated. Yet going to the hamam has by no means solely been about getting clear.

“Guests who come to the bath forget their troubles and sorrows,” says Tamtartar. “We approach them with a mother’s love. To us, they are our children. The energy of water, the bath and the person unites. And when your energy is one with the guest you wash, even if we provide a very long service, time flows like water — the main source of healing.”