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Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
The Turkish spa smells like chlorine and relaxation. Everything’s highly managed, shrink-wrapped in comfort, temperature-controlled. No (hot) stone is left unturned in this resort spa on the northern coast of Cyprus.
How better to extoll a middle-aged birthday than to have old skin scraped off your body? My husband’s gift is perfect. I’m keen to get an authentic hammam treatment but I’m going into the experience blind.
At the appointed hour, I’m greeted warmly and brought into the back rooms. Then the special hammam attendant – known as the natır – asks if I already have my bikini on or if I need to change into it.
Uh-oh. No one said I needed one.
I take a deep breath and look into her face. I shrug, gently toggle my head. For a moment, the face looking back at me appears dismayed, eyes narrowing, top lip twitching. “Is she supposed to give her clients that look?” I wonder.
I’m handed a mid-size towel and told to undress and wrap it “securely” around myself.
The natır indicates I’m to join her inside the hammam room once I’ve undressed and entoweled myself. I’m to walk what she calls “the hallway” and what I’ll later remember as “the gauntlet.” Barely covered in my towel I walk past the gym, the lounge full of spa clients and the busy pool area that opens directly onto the one-room hammam.
Arriving without incident, the attendant takes away my towel and has me lie on my back on a marble dais – the elevated circular platform called the gobek tasi – that sits in the centre of the room. Then she leaves me, waiting for my treatment to begin. For the next 10 minutes, I’m splayed out, “enjoying” my birthday in my birthday suit, no sheet or towel in sight. Time moves like a faucet with an almost imperceptible drip. I take deep breaths and try to relax into my vulnerability. Instead, I find myself wondering how wide my attendant will open the door when she returns.
She sweeps in sporting a modest swimsuit. Using a clay bowl, she scoops water from a marble sink, launching it over my body. Next she’s scrubbing at my skin.
“Too much! TOO MUCH!” she calls out. I follow her gaze to see large grey skeins of skin rolling off me like sigara boregi – the ubiquitous cigarette-shaped Turkish cheese rolls I’ve been enjoying. I nod, smile-wincing in embarrassment.
More “Too much! Too much!” and then the natır bids me to turn over. More scraping and exfoliation. The buckets of water she launches at me sweep the muddle of skin off the marble slab and out of sight. I picture the dead skin rolling across the floor of the hammam and down the drain. Goodbye me.
I am lathered up and buried under a foamy mousse. Gentler now, she begins to massage. Her breathing slows. By this point we’re both exhausted. Her battle with my carapace is won.
In the changeroom, I’m bathed in feelings of discomposure, shame and self-consciousness. I consider making a complaint about what I felt were snide looks and rude remarks. But I don’t. In a flash, I’m struck by the real gift of this day; beyond the sloughing of my skin, beyond the kindness of my husband: I realize I’ve experienced a moment of authenticity in a sea of mostly managed tourist experiences that so many travellers experience today.
In the late 1800s, Baptist teetotaller and innkeeper Thomas Cook heralded himself as an excursionist who would, with a firm hand on the tiller, organize railway tours of continental Europe for middle-class Britons. Cook was keen that people should have access to wholesome entertainments such as (booze-free) tourism. He set in motion a mass-tourism machine that has grown, over the past two centuries, ever standardized, ever codified.
Now, so many travellers are looking at the same sights from the same viewpoints, taking photos of the same statues, getting sweet-talked in the same managed way, having the same “authentic” traditional experiences, including, yes, the Turkish bath.
But just as my (impressively prodigious) layers of skin proved to be a barrier between me and the world, managed tourism experiences are cushioning us from authentic interaction. Take every spontaneous or offbeat moment out of travel, and we may as well be turning our trips over to AI tour guides – the natural next step in the proliferation of mass-tourism.
The value of travel is making contact with strangers, having quirky habits laid bare, hearing off-putting remarks, seeing a flash of temper or sarcasm, discovering an odd sense of humour and, sometimes, having things go horribly wrong. Real travel experiences transcend any discomfort they may give us in the moment. So I relished my brusque hammam attendant. Authentic tourism moments are no skin off my back – they’re a gift.
Emilie K. Adin lives in Vancouver.