Catching a Moment - The hammam

ziggy — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:39:11 GMT

The hustle of the street grew weaker as she handed me a velvety bag and smiled politely. Stumbling like a newborn calf, I entered the first room. It was dark, quiet and woody. Three women talking their odd language – the fat, meaty words almost felt spurious to me. I squeezed my little bag tighter, a little childhood trick to calm the apprehension. A finger raised here, a wriggle of hips there, and I am assigned to the plump Turkish woman with hands of a strong mother. Inglish? I nodded and smiled, startlingly blushing at the thought of exposing myself in front of her adept eyes.
Inside the sicaklik we were all naked together – Westerners who flew here for the pashmina scarves and romantic Bosphorus sunsets. We wear Uggs in winter and RayBans in summer; on the corners of the Grand Bazaar we laugh loudly and take pictures, giggling at the carpet sellers. But in that steamy room, laying on the hot marble göbektasi, we were only females, lost in our black underpants and our nakedness.
My woman starts scrubbing someone else. Get up! Sit down. Turn around. She is obeyed with no sign of resistance.
Lying in anticipation below the beams of sunlight glistening down from the dome above, I breathed in the buttery, lemony moisture. Ages ago another woman would have laid here. She would have worn her burka for hours in the heat of the summer, scurried quietly between red peppers and blue glass in the markets. At the end of the day she would have been naked right here, back merging with the marble. Her husband in the next steam room – the men only section – would have sat with other men, fists lowered, negotiations halted, forgetting their businesses and tea glasses. She would have laid here, eyes closed, sweating Istanbul from every pore.
When my turn came, she barely nodded and I went to lay by her side. She rubbed my whole body with a kind, benefic sandpaper-like glove. Outside, the streets were claustrophobic and noisy. The skin bits looked like wet paper – outside it was almost prayer time. Get up. No resistance. My body was her dough. She led me by the hand in a small room with sinks. I laughed as she poured the water from a blue bucket. Wait! Shampoo. Just when I though this can’t get any better.
Back in the waiting room, my guide was drinking pomegranate juice. So how was your first hammam? My mind turned at once to infancy, mothers leaning their babies’ heads on their arms as they soak them. But the words were not yet ready to take form, so I smiled instead.

My Scholarship entry - Seeing the world through other eyes

ziggy — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:19:10 GMT

Inside the hospital, the narrow, dimly lit hallway is packed with the young, the old, the tired. I sniff my way in by the scent of starch and antiseptic. There are no official rules in a public Romanian hospital – you just need to look tough. A fleeting trail of trepidation crosses my British friend’s face. A life of courtesy and virtue hasn’t prepared him for this.
We sit down. Across the room, a crack on the wall. 20 years ago I focused my mind on it, crafting my escape from the coming needles, the aloofness of the doctor, the sour nurse smell. Was my friend anxious?
Earlier, driving through the stacks of parked cars while dodging potholes, I felt knots in my stomach grow as we approached the socialist hospital. Sitting quietly on his seat, my friend awaited the injection. Just a scratch, he thought, but it’s best to be safe. That dog came out of nowhere. We arrived and he made a joke about uncanny tourist destinations.
How could he have faced the system without a native’s help? My dance is effortless, yet so strange to him: I lock eyes with the guard, softly smiling as my hand holds out the 5 Ron bill; the guard deftly takes it, barely letting it touch his palm before pocketing it: Spaga. A move exercised hundreds of times before. Spaga has kept the medical system going in and out of communism. My friend turns his head.
Back in the hallway. The rabies shot expired a month ago, he says, awkwardly discounting the synchrony of eyes staring. How come there are so many stray dogs in Bucharest? Another reason to return to the UK. I have no answer – it’s just what it is.
Years later, strolling through Churchill’s birthplace, he seems as English as the countryside. My sense of suffocation in such quaint scenery is as far removed from him as the memory of the old nurse from that gray Bucharest day. I make a passing remark about it and he smiles – that same baffled childish look he gave the nurse as she raised the needle and mumbled comfort words in an alien language.

Peculiar touristic attractions

Catching a Moment - The hammam

My Scholarship entry - Seeing the world through other eyes