A Weekend in Istanbul

Over the last several years I have been getting back in touch with my friend Tasha Alexander with whom I was inseparable in high school.  Tasha and I stopped being friends soon after high school for a reason I can't remember. I think it has something to do with boyfriends or I don't know what. When she published her first book I was still at Amazon so we really started to connect again there. We've been talking a lot through Facebook.  She mentioned to me that she was going to be in Istanbul for a while and I booked a flight to meet her on the spot. We had not seen each other in 18 years which was horrifying enough paired with the realization that we parted ways around the age of 18 or so. I brought with me some of the notes we had written to each other in class. I saved them all these years. She had spent a good deal of time in Amsterdam and I brought those letters. We spent a little bit of time going through them. Just about all of them, no...all of them, were about boyfriends and where we were going to go for lunch. 

When I saw Tasha she looked and sounded exactly the same.  She was a precocious teenager with a fully formed personality. Much of that personality and wit is still with her. She is still a beauty. I guess I don't know what to think about the fact that all this time can just go by.

Istanbul is less than a four hour flight from Amsterdam and flying in it looks like Seattle.  Rolling hills plastered with buildings sloping into the water. It was cold that weekend and I met Tasha at our hotel. I was excited to touch the stones of the walls and buildings and walk on the cobblestones. An ancient city bursting in history. Each dominant civilization building on top of the next.  Just before I left, there was a show on the History Channel about the hippodrome. An enormous chariot racing colluseum that is now mostly underground.

The Empress Zoe where we stayed was a cavernous little place. You couldn't actually see the structure as it was built into the bottom of a hill. It was a tiny collective of very old buildings all facing a small and lush courtard surrounded in a mature trellis.  My room was in the basement and I had a small patio that was about 8 feed below ground.  I had a hammam bath which translates into a very large shower stall made of marble that includes a bench with a hamman sink. And my bed frame was also made of solid marble. The mattress was especially firm, too firm for my tastes. I was so preoccupied with that that I didn't even notice my bedrame was made entirely of marble until Tasha pointed it out.

I don't know whether or not I should be ashamed to admit that I never seem to get around to hitting cultural spots when I travel. I've never been to one museum in Paris and I've been there four times. But Istanbul was different. We only had a weekend and it was cold, so we made the rounds of the mosques and palaces.    

We were something of an entourage. By  coincidence, Tasha had a friend named Robert, a larger than life character, who celebrates his birthday in an exotic location every year. This year he happened to pick istanbul and Tasha being there at the same time worked out so that we had many people coming and going in the afternoon exchanging stories of the previous day, deciding if we'd dine together or not. Everyone I met in this group was very interesting and kind and sociable. What a great way to visit a city.  I hope to see them again.

When we were at the famous blue mosque, I noticed a woman sitting on the floor who had on a rather cool and unusual head garment (you have to wear a scarf on your head when entering a mosque).  Later, we were in the courtyard and Robert whispered, "Everyone, look over there. That's Uma Thurman."  Indeed it was Uma Thurman, just over there, one and the same woman with the cool hat. You always wish that these movie stars look haggard in real life or at least freakishly altered by surgery....well maybe not wish, but expect?  Regardless, Uma is reed thin and tall and pretty much the most flawless woman I have ever seen. She seemed to have the skin of a baby. No one was paying her much mind. She was accompanied by a guide and a very distinguished man who must have been her romantic partner. 

We went on a tour of the last great palace of the sultans built in Istanbul. It is largely influenced by the West in many ways. Each room had a mind blowingly ornate and beautiful ceiling. Each room was decorated exactly the same: a love seat situated facing the entrance on the opposite wall surrounded in a square by fancy chairs draped in the most sumptuous fabrics.  Room after room after room of stunning stunningness. You almost got used to it after a while. In these palaces you are required to go through them on a tour. Tasha and I were lagging behind the group. At last the tour guide said, " And now I will take you to the most spectacular room in the palace."   We thought, yeah, yeah, whatever. More plaster and gold leaf and masterpieces and silk fabrics...been there done that. We were chatting in a rapid fire manner about relatively nothing just like we would have walking through the halls of our high school on the way to trig class. Then suddenly, the chatter stopped, I may have uttered something in appropriate like " Jesus H. Christ...."  and our jaws dropped before the staggering sight in front of us. We were at the entrance of the Sultan's grand receiving room. It was so truly awesome and so huge and so beautiful it was almost traumatizing to behold.  

We went to the grand bazaar and the spice bazaar. The grand bazaar is also very old, covered, and you get get a lot of things there. What can I say? It is a bazaar. Robert knows the best carpet merchant there and we met the group inside the store. It was nice to get away from the haranguing " Lady lady you take a look at my rugs. You dropped something, here. I lost my heart...did you steal it?"   We were offered tea and soft drinks and a viewing and explanation of any carpet we wanted to see.

I had no intention of buying a carpet but have always had an emotional connection to furniture.  There was a bit of vibrant deep sea blue poking out from under a stack and it sort of called out to me. I asked if I could see it and the owner of the shop pulled it out and unfurled it before the audience.  Everyone ooh'd and aa'd.  It is a prayer rug and has many symbols woven in it of peace, love, light, community, and family.  I knelt down before it and the closer I examined it the more I saw. I bought the rug. It was not an impulse buy. I simply could not imagine leaving the store without it. I have no idea where I will put it in my house but I will find it a home.

We also went to the spice bazaar where I loaded up on spices and tea. I have sumac and turkish oregano (buying turkish oregano in turkey...Tony Hill would be so proud). I bought a bazillion different types of tea. I bought a huge bag of whole-leaf sage and every type of peppercorn they had available.  I bought a bunch of spice blends that are unique to the area and I am really looking forward to trying those out. I also bought an aphrodesiac because it was funny. It comes in a little tiny jar. I am not sure if you are supposed to eat it or rub it on yourself or what. I think it will just stay in the jar.

In Istanbul there are stray dogs and cats everywhere. Actually, "stray" doesn't really seem to be the right word because these cats and dogs do have a home and their home is Istanbul. Many of the dogs have tracking tags in their ears. People leave out food for the cats. I didn't see one animal that looked malnourished or diseased. In fact, the cats all seem to have something of a Garfield like physique.  They are all short haired cats with thick stubby tails. The dogs all seem to be some sort of Lab derivative.  I saw one little white lab looking guy quite peacefully asleep during the night under a conifer.  

Tasha and I took a ferry across the Bosphorus to get to a palace which placed us in Asia for exactly 11 minutes.

Hammam. A hammam is a Turkish sauna and a very important part of Turkish legacy and culture. The one we went to was 300 years old. Tasha and I went with one of the entourage, a wonderful woman named Mary-Springs who is married to a French man, Stephan. They live in Normandy.  The guys had a separate entrance which looked grander than ours but also smelled of steam and cigarrette smoke (we peaked in much to the displeasure of the attendants). 

You walk into this large room that has small little dressing rooms around the perimeter. Each dressing room sort of looks like a passenger compartment on an old train. The doors are wood with a high window and each room has a small bed/bench and a place to hang your clothes. You undress in there and are given an rather pointless towel and wooden slippers.

Each woman in the hamman is appointed a masseuse/attendant who will be with her through the course of her treatment. Naturally we went for the full monty.

You walk into the main hammam room. It is very very spacious and has a high domed ceiling like a mosque. the entire thing is marble and plaster. It is very warm but not hot. Coming in from the cold you are warmed from the bottom of your feet up. The marble on the floor has been heated for hundreds of years.  You cast your towel on a hook and are instructed to sit on the low slab/bench of marble on the perimeter of this room which is shaped like an octagon.  You are instructed, " Lady!  Wash wash wash."  You are given a hammam pewter bowl where you linger and sit and lounge by your hammam basin (also marble) languidly pouring water over yourself. The temperature of the water is adjusted by you to your liking.

The attendance are all of the exact same stock: Turkish grandmother types, all fat. All with apple shaped bodies on top and skinny legs on the bottom. None of them had cellulite. They were squishy and slippery and delightful like plump soft little dolphin ladies. Each turkish grandma works on two girls at a time, rotating one with treatment as the other is wash wash washing.   Tasha and Mary-Springs and I spent about 20 minutes dousing ourselvs and then it was time for our treatments. In the middle of the room is another enormous octagon. Each woman (we're all naked by the way) is instructed to lie down on one of the panes of the octagon so that we are all head to toe with ample room not to run into or kich each other. You are first scrubbed with a mitt made of mohair. It is fine but very course fabric. My skin started rolling off of me in a rather horrifying way. In fact, I had to ask, " Is that my skin??"  I thought maybe the mitt was disintegrating or something. After my entire epidermous was sloughed off, I was told to take my pink and shiny self back to the hammam basin " Wash wash wash., lady."  As I did it was the next girl's turn. Back and fourh you go, massage then rinse then body wash, then rinse, then massage again, the finally you are washed a final time with something that looks like the top fourth of a horse's tail.  I enjoyed watching the other women received their treatments as well.  No body part is left unattended and everyone just relaxed into it so much.  Even the older british ladies who were reticent to take off their towels did so after a while...although one of them left on her underwear.

After your final rinsing you are asked to follow your turkish grandma over to the basin. She sits on the bench and you sit between her legs while she washes and conditions and combs your hair...it was like being a child again.  At the end of the experience you can sit in the hammam for as long as you want. There is also a dry hot room to hang out in as well. 

So yes, for the fellas reading this, the interior of a women's hammam is a fantasy. All women are beautiful in the hammam. All women are naked and attended to by our plump grandmothers in their one-piece swimsuits. It was a transcendent and ancient experience and I am so jealous that Tasha go to go three times when I only got to go once.

When we met the guys the next day who received their treatments around the corner, some of them were kind of limping. Should be no surprise that the interior of the men's hammam is a bit different. They were being tossed and thrown and kneaded like insolent loaves of bread receiving punishment. Some of the guys had bruises.  

When I returned to Amsterdam I turned on the history channel for background noise as I was unpacking. Now on TV were commercials from the Turkish tourism board showing shots of Istanbul in the summer.  In the winter ithe exteriors were rather bleak which made the interiors even that much more impactful.  I am inspired to go back when it is lush and colorful and sunny.