My first hamam experience rocked my world.
Personal cleanliness is very important in Islam. There is a spiritual cleanliness in which one keeps the heart and mind free from impure thoughts and deeds. Physical cleanliness standards include everything from the body, the clothes, the home, and the whole community. Before prayer, a Muslim cleans their face and head, hands, arms to the elbows, and feet to the ankles. They perform this ritual at fountains just outside most mosques, even if the temperature is below freezing. Certain times during the year, every household is cleaned from top to bottom. All the carpets and rugs are taken outside to be scrubbed, rinsed, and dried thoroughly. The community is cared for on a daily basis. Every morning, shopkeepers can be seen washing their windows, inside and out. They also mop the floors and wash the sidewalk and curbs in front. On one particular stretch of stores on my way to work every day, I had to be careful not to slip and fall because the ground would be so wet.
Hamam literally means "bath". Before running water was invented, everybody went to the hamam to get clean. It was a highly social event in one's day or week, but those days are numbered. Many hamams are struggling to stay open since most people bathe at home these days.
For my last day in Trabzon, I decided to pamper myself. I treated myself to the best spinach omelet in town and then headed for the hamam. I must have been the first person of the day because the only person in there was a woman in her early forties watching TV and smoking a cigarette. This was the cold room.
I took off my shoes and left them by the door. She showed me over a chaise-lounge next to a cabinet, of which she gave me the key. Then she instructed me to take off all my clothes.
Everything. I'm not normally shy about my body, so I did as told. As I stood there stark naked, she asked if I wanted tea.
After the tea, she brought me through a luke-warm room and into a hot, steamy room. The room was rather large and naturally bright with smaller rooms off to eight sides. In the middle was an enormous white marble slab that came up to about knee level. Natural light came from above through holes made in a dome. Everything was white marble and the air was hot with steam.
She brought me into one of the smaller rooms. There were two smaller marble slabs here, one in each corner that came up to my ankles. I went to sit down on one, and nearly burned myself because it was so so hot! She brought me to a different room, laid out a thin towel on the slab and motioned for me to sit. In between each slab was a spout and a small marble sink with no drain. She then gave me a small plastic bowl and indicated that I should take some hot water from the sink and pour it over myself for five minutes. Then she left, promising to return in five minutes.
The combination of the warm marble slab, the hot steamy air, and clear warm water to pour over myself put me in such a relaxed state. The soft echoes of the place were the only music.
After about fifteen minutes of this, I began to wonder if she had forgotten about me so I laid down on the warm slab and almost feel asleep. The woman eventually came in and motioned for me to move into the larger room and lay face-down on the huge marble slab. She put a thin, glove-like washcloth on her hand and proceeded to give me the most thorough scrub since I was a baby. The washcloth wasn't the roughest thing in the world, but after going over one spot about 25 times, it began to hurt. She was giving me a full-body exfoliation. The more she scrubbed, the more dirt came off. Do you remember making clay snakes when you were a child? You took some clay from the big brown block, rolled it into a ball and then rolled it out long and narrow. Well, all over my body tiny clay snake-like things were forming from all the dirt that had been collecting in my pores for the last 27 years. The more she scrubbed, the more snakes appeared from my feet, legs, stomach, back, armpits, neck, and arms. When she was satisfied al the dirt had been rubbed out, she poured hot water over me several times and lathered me up in soap and washed my hair. Twice. And she gave me a massage. Aaaaaaahhhh.....
Walking out of the place, I felt the cleanest I had ever felt in my life. My skin was smooth as a baby, and I was so relaxed. All for about 12 dollars.
While I felt super with my body, my hair was something else entirely. I had a few more hours to kill before leaving for the airport, so I headed directly to the hairdressers. They washed my hair again and styled it to my specifications.
I never felt so good getting on the plane before!
