Peculiar touristic attractions

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.