Every travel guide promises that an Istanbul hamam will melt your worries away. Mine nearly froze them solid. This is the true-ish story of the afternoon my friend Benny and I went looking for steam and found tea instead.
First, What Exactly Is a Hamam?
Imagine a giant marble cupcake with a dome on top and tiny star-shaped windows that let in sunbeams like a planetarium for sleepy people. Inside, a hamam is basically a sauna that went to finishing school. You lie on a hot marble slab called the belly stone, you sweat out every kebab you have eaten, and then a strong, cheerful attendant scrubs you with a rough mitt until you lose roughly two layers of skin and all of your dignity. Afterwards you are wrapped in towels like a very relaxed burrito and served tea. It has worked this way for about five hundred years, and nobody has complained, mostly because nobody can move afterwards.
The Marble Was Ready. The Steam Was Not.
Benny, who had practised his Turkish for exactly one evening, marched up to the counter and proudly asked for “one Haman, please, extra hot.” The lady at the desk smiled the kind of smile you give a toddler who has just called a dog a horse, handed us two checkered towels and a pair of wooden slippers, and waved us in.
The dome was gorgeous. The basins gleamed. The belly stone was waiting. And it was as cold as a fish market fridge. Our breath made little clouds. Benny touched the marble, yelped, and announced that he could now feel his own soul shivering.
Waiting for Mehmet
It turned out that the bath attendant, a legendary scrubber named Mehmet, had not come to work. Nobody knew why. Theories spread quickly among the other guests in their towels: Mehmet was stuck in traffic on the Galata Bridge; Mehmet had won the lottery; Mehmet had finally gone to a spa himself. And since Mehmet was also the only one who knew how to fire up the ancient boiler, the steam was not coming either.
So we waited. A retired teacher from Izmir, two honeymooners from Lyon, a very serious Dutch cyclist and the two of us sat on the marble benches, wrapped up to our ears, staring at the door like puppies waiting for the mailman. The clock ticked. The door did not open.
When in Doubt, Make Tea
Then the lady from the front desk appeared with a silver tray, a tall double teapot and a tower of tulip-shaped glasses. Behind her came her nephew carrying simit, a box of Turkish delight in every colour of the rainbow, and a string of lanterns he had borrowed from his uncle’s shop. Within ten minutes, the cold hamam looked exactly like a corner of the Grand Bazaar, the famous Covered Market, only with more towels and fewer carpet salesmen. Well, one fewer: the nephew did try to sell Benny a rug.
The teacher from Izmir began to tell jokes. The honeymooners taught everyone a French drinking song, using tea. The Dutch cyclist turned out to be a surprisingly good dancer in wooden slippers. Somebody bargained loudly over the last pistachio lokum as if it were a golden lamp, and the price went up with every glass of tea.
The Cleanest Laugh in Istanbul
We never got scrubbed. We never even got warm, technically. But we left two hours later glowing anyway, full of sugar, gossip and new friends. Mehmet, we heard the next day, had simply overslept. I would like to thank him personally. Because the best adventure in Istanbul was not the steam I came for, but the tea party nobody planned.
My advice: go to a hamam. And if the marble is cold, stay for the tea.
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