The Istanbul Hammam | حمّام إسطنبول
"An American convert visits a historic hammam in Istanbul. The attendant shows her how Turkish women have bathed for centuries—and pleasures that predate the empire."
The Istanbul Hammam
حمّام إسطنبول
The Cemberlitas Hammam has been here since 1584.
I learned that from the guidebook. What the guidebook didn't mention was the way steam can make you feel reborn, or how a stranger's hands can feel like coming home.
I'm Jennifer. Forty-four. American convert to Islam, three years now. This is my first trip to Turkey.
My guide recommended the hammam.
"You must experience it," she said. "Very spiritual. Very cleansing."
Spiritual wasn't the word I'd use.
The women's section is separate, of course.
I pay for the full treatment—wash, scrub, massage. They give me a pestemal to wrap around myself, show me to the warm room.
The marble is hot beneath my feet.
The attendant arrives.
She's maybe fifty. Plump, strong-looking, with kind eyes. Her name, she tells me, is Elif.
"Merhaba. First time?"
"First time." I'm nervous. Naked except for this thin cloth, alone with a stranger. "I don't know what to expect."
"Expect nothing. Just feel."
She starts with water.
Warm, poured over my head and shoulders. I close my eyes. The marble beneath me is heated, and I feel my muscles unclenching for the first time in months.
"Good?"
"Good."
"Then we begin."
The kese is rough.
A coarse mitt, scrubbing away dead skin I didn't know I had. Elif works methodically—arms, legs, back, belly. Rolls of gray appear on my skin.
"Dirty American," she teases.
"I showered this morning!"
"Shower is nothing. This is clean."
She unwraps my pestemal.
"Is okay?" she asks. "For proper wash?"
"Is okay."
I'm naked now, but I don't feel exposed. The steam makes everything soft, hazy. Elif has seen thousands of bodies. Mine is just another.
Except.
Except the way she pauses when she sees me.
"Beautiful," she murmurs.
"What?"
"Your body. American women always apologize for their bodies. But yours..." She runs her hand down my side. "Very beautiful. Like Ottoman painting."
"I'm fat."
"You're woman." She shrugs. "Fat is American word. Here, we say bereketli. Blessed. Abundant."
She continues washing.
But something has shifted. Her hands linger longer. Her touches are slower. When she washes my breasts, her thumbs brush my nipples—accident? Purpose?
"Is okay?" she asks again.
"Is okay."
The massage begins.
She has me lie on the heated marble, face down. Her hands are strong, working the knots from my shoulders, my back, my hips.
"You carry much tension," she observes.
"Divorce. Job stress. The usual."
"Divorce." She makes a sympathetic sound. "Men are difficult."
"You're married?"
"Widow. Twenty years."
She works down my body.
My thighs. My calves. Places no masseuse has touched before. I should stop her. I should say something.
I don't.
"Roll over."
I roll. She's kneeling beside me, her face close. Her pestemal has slipped, revealing heavy breasts, dark nipples.
"What we do now," she says quietly, "is old tradition. Very old. Ottoman concubines knew it. Hammam attendants passed it down. Only between women. Only here."
"What is it?"
"Pleasure." She cups my face. "If you want. If not, I continue normal massage. No shame either way."
I want.
God help me, I want.
"Please," I whisper.
Her mouth finds mine.
She tastes like steam and roses. Her body is soft against me—softer than any man I've been with, familiar in a way I didn't expect.
"You've never been with woman?"
"Never."
"Then I will be gentle."
She isn't gentle.
Not after the first few minutes. Her mouth moves down my neck, my collarbone, my breasts. She sucks my nipples until I cry out, the sound echoing in the marble chamber.
"Quiet," she laughs. "Other women will hear."
"I can't—"
"You will learn."
Her fingers find me.
Slipping through the wetness that isn't just from the bath. She knows exactly what to do—circles my clit, slides inside, finds the spot that makes me arch off the marble.
"Oh God—"
"No God here." She smiles. "Only us."
She makes me come on the heated marble.
Her fingers inside me, her thumb on my clit, her mouth swallowing my cries. The pleasure is different than with a man—deeper, more sustained, like waves that keep building.
"Again," she commands.
"I can't—"
"You can."
I come three more times.
Each one stronger. By the end I'm shaking, boneless, barely able to speak.
Then she guides my hand between her thighs.
"Your turn," she says.
I don't know what I'm doing.
But I know what feels good on my body, so I try that. She gasps when I touch her clit, moans when I slip two fingers inside.
"Good—yes—evet—"
"Like this?"
"Like that—don't stop—"
She comes against my hand.
Her whole body shuddering, her juices coating my fingers. I did that. I made her feel that.
The power is intoxicating.
We lie together on the marble.
The steam swirling around us, our bodies cooling, our hearts slowing.
"This happens often?" I ask.
"Sometimes. With the right women." She strokes my hair. "You are right woman."
"What does that mean?"
"Means you are ready. Ready to feel. Most people are not."
She finishes the hammam ritual.
Washing me again, this time tenderly. Wrapping me in warm towels. Leading me to the cool room for tea.
"Will you come back?" she asks.
"To Istanbul?"
"To hammam. To me."
I think about it.
My life in Chicago. My job. My loneliness.
"Yes," I say. "I'll come back."
She smiles. Writes a number on a napkin.
"Call before you come. I will prepare special treatment."
Three months later
I'm on a plane to Istanbul.
A week's vacation. A hotel near the hammam. And a number I've been calling every night for weeks.
Elif picks up on the first ring.
"You are coming?"
"I'm on the plane now."
"Good." I can hear her smile. "Hoş geldiniz. Welcome."
The hammam is the same.
The steam. The marble. The centuries of women's secrets sunk into the walls.
But this time, Elif isn't in her attendant's uniform.
She's naked. Waiting.
"I took the day off," she says. "For you."
We don't need the ritual.
We go straight to what we both need. Her mouth on me, my mouth on her. Learning each other's rhythms, discovering new pleasures.
"Stay," she whispers after. "Live here. With me."
"Elif—"
"I know. Is crazy. We barely know each other." She kisses me. "But I know your body. I know your sounds. I know you have not been happy in long time. And here... here you could be happy."
I don't stay.
Not then. But I come back every three months. Then every two. Then every month.
Eventually, I stop going back.
Two years later
I live above a carpet shop in Sultanahmet.
I teach English online. I go to the mosque on Fridays. I have friends, a community, a life.
And three times a week, I visit the Cemberlitas Hammam.
Where Elif waits for me with steam and roses.
Where I learned that cleansing comes in many forms.
And pleasure is its own kind of prayer.
Bismillah.
The End.