Pilgrim in the Palace of Words. Glenn Dixon

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      I did, however, want to sample one thing while I was in Istanbul — a Turkish bath. It is, or at least was, something central to the culture. So, just up from Sultanahmet, I found Cağaloğlu Hamami, a three-hundred-year-old bathhouse. From the very beginning I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing. Apparently, some pretty famous people had been there in the past — Kaiser Wilhelm II, Franz Liszt, and even Edward VII, king of England. So what were these guys up to exactly?

      I confess I had visions of a harem. I’d seen the one true Harem just that morning over at Topkapi Palace. It was the name of a certain part of the palace where the sultan’s girls actually lived. So at the bathhouse my suspicions were confirmed when I was shown into a little room and told to take off all my clothes. This was going to be good, I thought. I had visions of the dance of the seven veils, ill-begotten dreams of nubile young Turkish maidens feeding me grapes.

      The door opened, and a large hairy man stood there. He looked like Joseph Stalin in a tight white T-shirt. “Çabuk,” he growled. Later I learned that this meant “Quickly.”

      I stood up, radiant in my nakedness. With hairy arms, the man wrapped a towel around my midsection. “Çabuk Çabuk,” he said. That meant “C’mon, you lard-assed white man, get a move on.” In Turkish there isn’t really a word for “very much.” To emphasize something you say it twice. You might call a pretty girl (of which there are a surprising number in Turkey) güzel or beautiful. Whereas a real humdinger of a supermodel would be “Güzel güzel.”

      My bath attendant, the ever-faithful Stalin look-alike, nodded his swarthy head down the hallway. Suddenly, I felt as if I were in prison. What had I gotten myself into?

      He led me to another door and all but pushed me in. I was alone in an ancient domed room. Water plopped from somewhere. I started sweating profusely, but then realized this huge area was a steam room. High above in the domed ceiling were little holes covered inexplicably with coloured glass so that the place reminded me of a cathedral. The coloured beams of light angled through the steam, and I found a piece of rock to sit on. It wasn’t overly hot, and after ten minutes or so, sitting alone in the dreadful echoing silence, I figured I would at least wash my hair. It needed it, and though I hadn’t brought shampoo, I had smuggled in a bar of soap. There were rock sinks built into the walls and taps above them, so I lathered up my hair. That was a mistake. The sinks had no drains. They were just big bowls really, and surely, I could see now, only meant for splashing cold water onto your face. I left a floating scum of soap bubbles and stray hair, committing a diplomatic gaffe and an insult to all of Turkey.

      What about Stalin? What would he do to me when he saw what I’d done? Carefully, I snuck out through the massive wooden door on the large clackety wooden clogs I had to wear on my feet. So I didn’t even make it halfway down the hallway before Stalin appeared again, tipped off by the footwear. I’d thought about kicking the clogs off, but the floors had several centuries of green mildew on them, and I figured I’d take my chances.

      Stalin beckoned, a ham-hock palm waving me toward him. He grabbed me by the arm, and in a swift movement removed my modest towel. Then he led me into a proper shower room, sat me in a wooden chair by the wall, and watched as I went through the motions of washing.

      I smiled at him once or twice, but he only grunted. When I finished my absurd pantomime, he moved toward me again, and in as neat a move as I’ve ever seen, folded a towel over my head and another around my midsection. They were neat folds, the kind a waiter in a fancy restaurant achieves with napkins. I felt like a walking piece of origami.

      He took me back to the room where my clothes were, and I sat in silence for a while, then dressed and strolled out. There was no one to see me out, and I wondered if this was the same treatment kings once received. Or what about Kaiser Wilhelm — surely, that brusque Teutonic emperor had required something more?

      Later I learned that Stalin would have given me a massage if I’d paid him more money. I talked with other travellers who had gone for this treatment and been soundly thrashed like a slab of meat in a packing plant. Perhaps I’d missed the richness of the cultural experience, but I was happy Stalin had kept his oven mitts off me.