The Emotional Benefits of Communal Bathing in Istanbul
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“Clothes off,” an attendant gently tells me, touching the woven cotton towel I have gripped around my body. We are standing in the sıcaklık, or hot room, of Istanbul's Zeyrek Çinili Hamam. Around us, women are stretched out on marble hotbeds and curled up beside brass basins. The echoes of communal bathing ring around the room; chattering friends, gushing taps, the occasional clanging of steel water buckets.
I have been to over a dozen hammams now, but a familiar panic still sets in as the attendant pries the towel from my skin. Eager to lie low, I clamber onto the hot stone of the central hexagonal table. It takes a few minutes for me to adjust to my own exposed limbs.
As a brown girl who grew up in the east of England, I have always had a hard time accepting how I look; my legs were adorned with razor-sharp prickles from an early age, tufty baby hairs also sprinkled across my face, arms, toes, and fingers. Countless hours of my life have been spent waxing and threading. Even more have been wasted wondering why my body is slightly curvier than my peers. These childhood anxieties always seem to become more muted as the ancient hammam ritual plays out; the shared experience cleansing away my own insecurities.
Pressing myself against the stone, I stare up at the domed ceilings and towering archways above me. Slivers of sunlight are sneaking in through openings overhead, bouncing off the marble walls and occasionally dancing along my skin. “The original Ottoman architect, Mimar Sinan, borrowed aspects of religious architecture when constructing the bathhouse,” Anlam De Coster, the Artistic Director at Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, told me before I entered. “The use of water in a purification process has many similarities to religious initiation rituals. The building itself is meant to transport you into a similar state of spirituality where physicality no longer matters.”
A collective sense of calm begins to wash over me too. A dozen or so women are currently bathing, some of them clustered in groups and others alone like me. The gentle murmurs of time-worn friendships and newfound connections hum around the room.
Leyla Kayhan, a Turkish historian and fellow at Harvard University, touches on this comforting sense of community. “Hammams have always served a huge social function,” she explains to me. “Historically, people did not have private bathrooms, so everyone would go to the hammam to wash. Soon, they became places where people would socialise, celebrate milestone moments in their life, and even conduct business.”
The sense of acceptance I am experiencing from those around me is also typical of historical hammam culture. “These spaces were traditionally open to people from all walks of life,” Leyla tells me. “Upon entering, you were literally stripped of all identifying factors. Of course, the most affluent visitors would bring expensive towels and combs with them. But still, everybody was able to use the space without judgement. This culture of inclusivity lives on in the hammam ritual today.”
My attendant soon begins the cleansing process itself. Dousing me in water, she takes a rough woollen mitt known as a kese and begins to scrub my body. Just as my skin starts to prickle, piles of bubbles are poured on me. A delicate massage ensues, her hands darting in and out of the twinkling mounds of foam. Tipping my head backwards, she then washes my hair, delicately covering my eyes to shield them from the soapy suds. Once I am fully cleansed, a downy white dressing gown is draped around me and I head into the soğukluk - or cold room.
“The whole process involves surrendering yourself to somebody else,” Koza Gureli Yazgan, Founding Director of Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, later describes. “The only other person who washes you like this is your mother, or grandmother maybe.”
At another recently renovated bathhouse in Istanbul—the Kılıç Ali Paşa Hamam—owner Ergin Iren touches on the significance of the wellness ritual in today’s culture. “These spaces used to be incredibly functional. Now most of us have showers at home, so why would we choose to go to a bathhouse and be naked in front of other people?” Ergin asks himself, before smiling. “It is because the ritual itself is about uniting with others to cleanse the soul as well as the body. In that way, it shifts our focus away from how we look, and inwards towards how we feel.”
I bask in this feeling now as I lay in the humid soğukluk room of Zeyrek Çinili Hamam. Women are lounging in cushioned alcoves nearby, and my attendant soon returns to see how I am doing. We barely share a language, so I point to myself, signaling towards the skin on my arms and inwards at my heart. Smiling, my thumbs dart upwards. She sticks hers up too, laughing, she asks, “You feel loved?” I nod back at her.
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
