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Urfa: Hamam - Aternoon is women's time
From book project Cay, Tavla, MyslenkyCleanliness is essential to Moslems, but since people didn't always have baths in their houses, the Ottomans began the tradition of Turkish bath houses. Massages and seductions are often also available in the hamam. Mindy and I went to the hamam in Urfa. Afternoon is women's time. I had been dressing in drag to avoid being pawed and propositioned on the street. Urfa is in the east near Syria and doesn't see many westerners, so cross-dressing involved wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and no jewellery. No one at the door of the hamam questioned my gender, and we entered the undressing room. The dark room held a playpen full of babies, women in underpants, and a bucket of green mud with a stick. Once inside, an old woman came asking questions and making penis gestures. I opened my shirt and said "bayan" as an answer. The woman grabbed my breast and laughed, showing bare gums, called to her friends, gave me a squeeze, made comments in Turkish, and finally let go. After we undressed, the Hamam Lady snatched my hand, pressed it to her backside, and pulled us down a dark corridor. We passed through too quickly for me to know what to think of the stooped shadows coupling in the dark. We were deposited in a crowded room of turquoise concrete and brown skin. Children threw water, mothers conversed loudly, caught nude children, and scrubbed them. Women passed with henna on their hair or depilatory mud from ankle to navel. We took a seat by a faucet filling a basin. The floor of the basin had been lowered several inches by years of scooping bowls. Someone lent us a washcloth and soap, and as we washed our tans faded. The woman next to us had styled hair, gold earrings, and furrowed brows. Either out of hospitality or disgust, she assaulted us with bowl after bowl of hot water. The Hamam Lady returned, pulled a bar of soap out of her red-nylon-black-lace cleavage, and scrubbed us each ruthlessly. How do you act when being bathed by a woman like that and watching six weeks of travel come off in grey rolls? Everyone was curious about us and friendly but offended by our hairy bodies. They invited us to use their green mud, citing their smooth legs and underarms. They didn't say anything, but their wet underpants revealed no dark triangles. A pretty teenage girl in a lace bra smiled at us; she rolled her eyes as her hair was piled on her head and washed by her mother with a bar of laundry soap. Eventually we were clean. The splashing and shouting were pierced by streams of sunlight from holes in the domed roof. Our eyes focused. We were seeing something exposed. These women that we normally saw as faces amidst bolts of cloth stayed here for hours, maybe every day, scrubbing long after the dirt was gone. View images: from book project Cay, Tavla, Myslenky © 2004 Beth Zonderman |
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