In a Turkish Hammam, Someone Else Washes You — Epoche A2
In a Turkish hammam the washing is not done by you. I went to one in Istanbul on a cold Tuesday, expecting a hot bath, and found instead a process with an order to it and a person to carry it out. The rooms come in a sequence. First a changing room, cool, where you leave your clothes and take a thin checked cloth. Then a warm room, where the air is already heavy. Then the hot room, domed, with small round windows in the ceiling and a great slab of marble in the middle, heated from underneath. You lie on the slab. Nothing happens for a long time, and that is the point: the heat and the steam are softening the top layer of the skin. Fifteen minutes, twenty. People talk quietly. Water runs somewhere. Then the attendant comes with a kese, a rough mitt worn on the hand, and scrubs. It is not gentle. What comes off is grey and visible, and it is dead skin, not dirt. Afterwards he rinses you with a metal bowl of warm water, twice, and the shock is wonderful. A shower at home cleans what is on you. This takes off a layer you could never reach yourself.