NAKED IN ISTANBUL

NAKED IN ISTANBUL

                                                       by

                                              Marda Burton       

                  

          What I hate most about going naked in Istanbul is my age.  I want to be younger.  Much younger.  Pre-baby younger.  As young as those two perfectly lovely and perfectly naked French girls who sit by ancient spigots against the walls, pouring dippers of hot water over each other.  French girls who obviously never had twins or three C-sections.

          On this trip I have already toured a sultan’s palace, practiced belly dancing, and wandered for hours in ancient bazaars where I scooped up brocade slippers with toes curled up into bells and Russian caviar for $5 a tin.  I have photographed perfumers offering musky fragrances from folding trays, an old lady hanging her laundry from the window of a tall wooden house behind the famous Blue Mosque, and a sidewalk knife sharpener dressed in balloon pants whose foot-pedaled iron wheel spit sparks from a wicked-looking dagger.  

Now I am naked in the oldest hamam in the city -- maybe in the world.  I ducked into it to get away from a carpet salesman following me through the streets like a persistent mosquito bent on drinking my blood.  Like the armies of his ilk in this worldly old half-Asian, half-European city, he was not in the least discouraged when I kept saying, “No, no, no, I don’t want to buy a carpet.  Buzz off!”

My guidebook mentions the hamam, one frequented by Turks for centuries when bathhouse visits were not only customary but necessary.  This Turkish version of a day spa should provide a sybaritic respite, and the pest will go away and follow some other tourist for days.

Later I learn that the only way to keep a carpet salesman out of your personal space is to ignore him as if he doesn’t exist.  Never make eye contact, answer back or speak.  It’s rude, and it will take time, but it works.  He will eventually realize you are a lost cause and walk away.  Understand, of course, that during your entire stay you will be ignoring most of the male population of Istanbul.  (Note: This method also works for camel drivers in Egypt.)

Leaving my own personal pest outside, I claim sanctuary behind an antiquated doorway guarded by an antiquated doorman wearing an antiquated caftan and fez.  I cautiously descend a grubby, dilapidated stone staircase into the depths.  Past centuries are still present in this shabby and mysterious building, but it is blessedly free of carpet salesmen. 

Downstairs, beyond the reception area and a dank warren of hallways and dressing rooms, I’m stunned by the contrast when the main corridor opens up like a giant flower into an Arabian Nights fantasy -- my refuge is an enormous and lofty marble grotto, a cathedral to hedonism.  In the middle of the palatial domed expanse, a fountain spouts hot water, encircled by stone platforms on which naked females of all body types recline.  They are being pummeled by hefty ladies of a certain age – truth be told, near to my own certain age.  Around the walls, also built with seating ledges, hot water pours from the stone lips of carved faces.  Naked women sit there, too, dousing themselves.

The place is very warm, and the humid air is heavy with the pungent smells of oils and incense and bodies.  Heat and steam rise up from the very stones beneath my bare feet.  My only experience with spas has been private cubicles, soothing music, and sheet-sized towels manipulated strategically.  This scene is vastly different and very public – of course, a public bathhouse. 

I left the changing room with trepidation, dangling a very small towel in front of me – a towelette, really.  I tried to tie it, but it wouldn’t meet around my waist.  Going naked in public is new to me, a modest, well-brought-up Southern lady.  I notice the masseuses all keep a modicum of modesty.  They still wear their step-ins, as my grandmother used to call panties, and the flimsy garments look old-fashioned enough to be my grandmother’s step-ins.  But everyone else in the vast room is buck nekkid, a term used by my tippling Uncle Elmer, who was the primary joke-teller at Eubanks family reunions.  He told us that “nude” simply meant unclothed, but “nekkid” meant you were up to something.  Uncle Elmer would really love this, I think – he would have a real story to tell.

But Uncle Elmer would never have been allowed inside.  Men are all naked in a hamam next door; this hamam is only for naked women.         

Uncertain of the proper protocol, I approach the fountain and one of the ladies grabs the towelette from my hands, spreads it on a ledge, and indicates I should lie down on it.  “Helena,” she says, pointing to her enormous bosom.  “Marda,” I answer back, pointing to my considerably smaller one.  I lie down on my stomach and close my eyes.  Somehow closing my eyes helps; if I can’t see anyone, they can’t see me.

Then Helena proceeds with a heavenly massage accompanied by bursts of enthusiastic song joined by other masseuses working on customers around the ledge.  The women’s harmonies echo and magnify as melody rises to the heights – infinitely better than the canned music back in the States.  The sounds are so pleasant and the kneading so blissful that I almost forget I am naked in public.   

Too soon Helena pats my derriere and motions me to repair to the wall spigots for the pouring of hot water.  Unfortunately, that necessitates trying to manage an unobtrusive naked slink across a room gigantic enough to suit that giant Arabian Nights genie with the magic lantern.  Much too long a naked walk for me, and this time the towelette is sopping wet and of no use at all.  Should I let it drape casually in front of anything?  Or just say the hell with it?  I wish for that genie’s magic lantern, or at least three wishes.  My first would be to become invisible.

Yesterday, to photograph Istanbul’s panorama over the Sea of Marmara, I had braved my chronic vertigo and ventured onto the soaring roof of the Topkapi Palace seraglio.  Even that was not as unnerving as this long naked trek.

Finally the endless walk does end, and I end up sitting alongside a spigot very near the two youthful French girls, who are so wasp-waisted I have no doubt they can easily garb themselves in their towelettes if they desire.  Evidently, they do not.  The two beauties go on chattering in their own language and paying no attention to naked me.  If I were their age, I think with angst, maybe then I wouldn’t mind parading around in public buck nekkid.

But here I am, still naked and still flabby, so I pick up my dipper and pour and pour and pour hot water, until I feel like a basted, wrinkled prune.  Then I just sit.  I keep hoping to be the last to leave the naked premises.  The masseuses sing intermittently, and while sitting down, I enjoy the steamy scene.  I simply don’t care to stand up.  But eventually I know I must rise and exit toward the dressing rooms – oh dear, the doorway is way across on the other side.  But by now I find I am resigned to it all.  Just one more naked walk to get through, I tell myself.  I wrap my wet towelette around my steamed up, straggly hair, and walk back past the fountain to say goodbye to Helena.  She follows me to my dressing room to get her tip.  I wish for the magic lantern again.  “Step-ins,” I would demand. 

Back in the reception room, relieved to be no longer naked, I am served a restorative cup of hot, excessively sweet Turkish tea by the pretty – and nicely clothed – receptionist.  I compliment the tea, commenting that it is the same as that served in the carpet shop I visited two days ago with friends who were actually buying carpets.

Speaking accented but excellent English, she tells me about her cousin, a well-respected carpet dealer.  She hands me his card.  “He will be waiting for you outside,” she says.  He is, and he is the same carpet salesman I left behind.  I realize then that he has more or less herded me into the hamam, where his cousin works.  And she is returning the favor. 

But now I have walked around in public naked; surely I can deal with a mere carpet salesman.  Again he hovers beside me as I stroll off feeling totally in control of the situation.  But no, it is not to be.  Before the day is over, I drink lots more of that oh-so-sweet Turkish tea – and I buy a carpet. 
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