What really happens inside a Turkish bath

By Lisa Morrow, CNN

Istanbul (CNN) — Cocooned in the warm embrace of the hamam, sounds are muffled. Gentle light from oculi, “eyes” in a large dome overhead, etches patterns across the marble surfaces below. Running water and softly dripping taps lap at the edges of consciousness like a lullaby.

In the steamy, almost mystical atmosphere of a Turkish bath, the world stands still.

Going to a hamam is very different from being in your bathroom at home, or even in a private room at a day spa when it’s just you and your therapist.

“In a bath or shower you are alone but a hamam is a public space,” says Ahmet İğdirligil, architect and expert on the culture and history 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 past, women from wealthy families attended the hamam regularly. Some even had a hamam in their own home. Each woman used personalized items such as a hamam tası — a bowl with embossed motifs, sometimes even set with jewels — to pour water over her body. They also used satin cloth embroidered with silk or linen edged with lace, and peştemal, or towels. Traditionally made from pure cotton, the best ones have a hand-finished edge, a selvedge rather than a hem to stop them unravelling.

Numerous sophisticated rules pertaining to cleanliness for every occasion — “after sex, menstruation, or having a baby,” Iğdirligil continues — from prayer through to marriage and childbirth, have been established and refined over the centuries. Even now, women in small towns still go to the hamam to escape their housewifely roles or look for brides for their sons.

Steam and ‘stars’

İğdirligil explains that each hamam has at least three sections, carefully designed to enhance the experience. First is the entrance area, traditionally heated by a soba, a Turkish wood burner, or a fire. This space contains changing rooms and a lounge section for resting after your bath. A small door opens into a semi-warm room with toilets, depilatory services and kurna, marble basins. The main and largest section has a göbek taşı, a raised marble platform at its center, with more kurna along the walls. Some hamams have smaller rooms called halvet, hot rooms, off to the side of the göbek taşı or even a halvet in each corner.

“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 particularly true of Cağaloğlu Hamam. Built in 1741 to raise revenue to fund Sultan Mahmut’s library, it has a bright white marble interior. The overall effect is one of 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.

How it works

Elif Kartal, guest relations and operations manager of Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, has worked in Turkish baths for almost 20 years. She says that while most hamams offer a similar set of services such as kese, a body scrub that uses a special glove, and Turkish köpük masaj, a Turkish foam 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, only 60 remain in operation. In general, most smaller hamams have only one set of facilities meaning men and women bathe separately at different times, and sometimes on different days. Larger, historic hamams like Zeyrek Çinili Hamam and the lavish Ayasofya Hürrem Sultan Hamam have separate bathing areas for men and women. The latter, designed for Roxelana, the wife of Süleyman the Magnificent, in 1556 by Mimar Sinan, chief architect of the Ottoman court, was the first hamam to have a women’s section that exactly mirrored the men’s side.

Many Istanbul hamams are open until as late as 11 p.m. but you should plan and book in advance.

Elif Tamtartar, a natır — a female bathing attendant — at Zeyrek Çinili Hamam with 25 years’ experience, says customers need to avoid a few things prior 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 also suggests eating lightly before your visit and avoiding alcohol, as you may feel uncomfortable in the heat.

All hamams have changing areas where you can leave clothes and lock away valuables. Some will ask you to disclose basic health details. They usually provide disposable underwear, but you can wear your own or swimwear. The kese reaches all parts of your body so wearing a one-piece isn’t recommended — and be prepared to have your underwear hauled up high and rolled down low.

Feeling brand new

Being washed by someone else is the ultimate in luxury. It takes you back to childhood bathtime memories, of being warm and drowsy and cared for.

Once you’re changed and wrapped in a peştemal, your natır awaits — or for men, your tellak. At Zeyrek Çinili Hamam they take your hand and carefully lead you through the middle room to the heart of the bath house. There, you’re gently rinsed with warm water then invited to lie down on a towel atop the göbek taşı. The heat from the marble combined with the steamily pleasant air is extremely relaxing and, when the allotted 15 minutes of sweating is over, they may even have to wake you.

Using a small bowl, your attendant cascades water over your hair, face and body, washing away the sweat. Despite the name, there are no actual 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 words natır and tellak are used to describe bathing attendants, “among ourselves,” Tamtartar says, “we call those who do this job keseci, regardless of gender”. Tamtartar learned kesecilik, the art of body scrubbing, from her family. “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 looks and feels similar to coarse sandpaper in fabric form and is used to scrub dead skin from the body. In the past a topuk taşı, a pumice stone, was used instead. High-ranking women had theirs encased in handcrafted silver cups and embossed with personalized designs.

Timeless pleasure

The sensation of having your skin scrubbed with a kese glove can be distinctly odd — at times rough, sometimes ticklish even strangely hot. Almost no inch of skin is left untouched. A good kese covers the torso, arms and legs as well as face, inner thighs and all the way down to the sacral dimples. If you find the pressure too much or have sensitive 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 thin black grit — hidden city grime — roll off the skin. Lif, or loofah, are then used to remove the dead cells. It varies from hamam to hamam, but the lif can be made from cotton, linen or goat hair.

Once you’re squeaky clean it’s time for a Turkish köpük masaj. The keseci creates foam by soaping up a piece of soft wet muslin and ballooning it out before passing it gently across your body in preparation for the massage. Most Turkish soap is made from olive oil because it cleans without stripping away the skin’s natural oils. This, combined with the effects of the kese, makes your skin feel brand new, with a cashmere-like softness. Tamtartar says kese prevents aging. “Pores open in the bath and cell renewal accelerates since the scrub also serves as a peeling,” she says.

Once the final hair-washing stage is over, you leave the way you came, first stopping in the middle section to be patted dry and swaddled in towels before re-entering the cool room, the space you first entered. It’s not recommended to leave a hamam abruptly, so lie back, enjoy your tea and, when you’re ready, glide back to the changing area to get dressed.

Taking time out and being soothed by the balm of steamy waters are timeless pleasures that never grow old. Yet going to the hamam has never solely been about getting clean.

“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.”

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