Turkish Baths

I have avoided the Turkish baths. I just don't really feel the need to get all naked and chill with people. I can be naked at home (now that I live alone) for free.

But a recent visitor wanted to experience it, so off we went to al-Bakri in the old city. It was 200 to use the baths and 50 for a massage. Another 50 buys a lady to scrub you, but I thought I could manage scrubbing on my own.

I wasn't sure how naked to get. At the Medinat ash-Shabab swimming pool, the locker room attendent asks naked ladies to kindly not be so naked and step into the small changing rooms during periods of nudity. This during ladies' hours. I wondered if I should use this as a guide or not. I asked the bath attendant and she said as you like. In the bath itself, most ladies were wearing panties but a few were without so I figured either way worked.

We steamed for a while, and chatted with some other women who wondered why I spoke Arabic, why my friend didn't, why she was in such good shape. Two of the women there told me of their plan to lose their bellies by steaming every day and I told them they might want to throw in some exercise as well. That's how she's in shape, I said.
"You're fatter than her," the older woman said.
"Yeah, I don't exercise as much." But thanks for the news.

Then we washed and had a massage in a seperate little room. I'm glad I didn't opt for the scrub, which entailed lying on the floor and just seemed to require a lower bar for intimacy than mine.

I went out to escape the heat and ran into a group of American college girls trying to understand the pricing system. I translated, dressed, and felt like not moving again for the rest of the day. I was super clean but from the steam and the massage all I felt like doing was taking a nap.

There's a hamman in Jeramana that I think I might be using in the future when I don't have water for 6 days or so. It seems more respectable than begging friends to let me use their showers.