In Istanbul a monk named Salim befriended me and showed me around the city. He was from Meteora in Greece, a region of monasteries that were built on the tops of mountainous cliffs that drop abruptly on all sides. He’d been traveling to Cappadoccia on the eastern side, which is even more fascinating than the monasteries from which he came. The region is a volcanic landscape of jagged rocks sculpted by erosion, and they cover some of the largest subterranean cities ever known. For thousands of years, people have made their homes inside the network of soft-rock “fairy chimneys” that adorn the countryside. Salim had been on his way to visit some of the Byzantine sanctuaries that had been preserved in Cappadocia’s caves for centuries, as if the geological and ethnological wonders of Meteora weren’t enough for him! Nonetheless I envied his journey, and even considered going with him, but didn’t find it fit to invite myself.
He wanted show me the best that Turkey had to offer, so he took me to a harem inside the Seraglio, where I was introduced to the pleasure of a Turkish bath. My masseuse, a lithe woman draped in white, brought me apple tea, which allowed me to immerse more fully with the experience of the bath. Honey and grapes were used to sweeten the tea, which had been brewed from a kettle that seemed to have as many voices as it had snouts. I was soap-washed and shampooed beforehand, which was also when Arabian music started to drift down from the cupola above. The foam of my temples pulsed with every knead that the masseuse gave my skull, and soon it felt like my brain was melting onto the polished marble of the Seraglio floor. Then I followed her into a humid room, where from its center rose a platform that was surrounded by quartz tiles. Light that diffused through a glass ceiling swirled around my soul, enticing me to lay down and cleanse it of the impurities I’d left America with.
As I lay down on the marble slab, the pecking of an oud rang over the hammam carpet, softening my ears. Cosmic geometrical patterns danced on the Doric columns, reaching for the stars inside the palaces of the Earth. The masseuse sprayed rose water in the air around my body, and all my senses became concentrated on the moment. She started wringing a coarse towel through the water, which made me anxious for her touch. My arm was lifted, and bliss was brought to me in the form of her aqueous lathering. Muscles were sedated, thoughts were subdued. Time slowed down and the Earth became a cloud. Gently she scrubbed my arms, whispering some Turkish incantation, or so I imagined it to be. Next, she dampened my chest, moving her hand left and right, scrubbing me below the waist and feeling the muscles of my legs, at which point I might have moaned had I the energy to do so. I felt her hands, hands that to me were more refined than a seasoned lover’s, purifying my skin like a newborn. The simile could not have been more appropriate, as I not only felt physically infantile but emotionally untarnished and spiritually complacent.
Next, she had me lay on my stomach. Slowly she stretched my spine and put the heel of her wrists on my lats. Moving in circular motions, she melted my shoulders into a buttery liquid that removed any remaining tension I might have felt. All the disquietude of my journey to Europe had been removed by her hands. The crossroads of the world had reconciled my western inhibitions with the liberation of the east.
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