The Turkish Bath

After an early morning in Eilat, surviving the border crossing though to Jordan and a whole day wandering though Petra, our family - or Team Turtle, as we like to call them- was feeling a little dusty and dirty two weekends ago.

Being in Jordan, we decided to follow the phrase "when in Rome..." and all partook in an ancient Arab tradition: the Turkish Bath. There was one at our hotel, and of our party James, Colin and I were the first victims *achem* volunteers. We had absolutely no idea what happens in a Turkish bath besides something about a steam room and a massage.

When we arrived there was an older British gentleman wrapped up in about six blue fuzzy towels so that all we could see of him was his flushed face and knobby knees and feet. "There is a fine line between pleasure and pain" he said with a cryptic smile when we asked what would happen to us.

In bathing suits and thin striped cloths to wrap around us, we were directed with broken English and a waving arm to the steam room. We sat down on the marble benches and as soon as the guy turned on the steam, Colin and James' heads began to disappear into a cloud. Although they were close enough to touch, I soon found my self chatting and giggling with disembodied voices over their hairy shins and wooden clogged feet.

Many minutes after I thought my lungs couldn't take it one second more, a lady came in and said "Yes, excuse me" (her only English line) and lead me into a room with a massage table and smooth stone walls and floors. I started getting really worried when she started rolling up her pant legs. But it wasn't so bad. it was very pleasant actually.

While laying on a massage table, I had bowls of warm water thrown over me. Then with something akin to a sand paper mitt, a layer of my skin was taken off any piece of skin not covered my my bikini bottoms. You may think I'm kidding but she actually showed me the skin she took off. Every part of me was scraped. Let me tell you, I have had breast examinations that were gentler. Then I got soaped and massaged all over right down to each of my fingers individually and more bowls of warm water thrown on top of me. Then, feeling cleaner than I have ever felt before, she wrapped up in those towels like a big blue burrito and sent me out to a rug covered reception room to drink chamomile tea and await Colin and James.

All the ladies in my family had very lovely experiences. We all oohed and awed and sighed pleasantly as we were pampered. James told me that from the waiting room he could hear my mother who sounded like someone was making love to her.

But my father sounded like he was being tortured on the rack. The men, it turns out, had a different masseur and their "massage" was a little more vigorous with their limbs and joints yanked and bent in all sorts of directions. There might have been tools of torture involved. They probably should have known it was coming; the masseur was wearing latex gloves. If the guy found a knotted muscle, he would push till you couldn't take it any more and then push a little farther. Although all the men said they felt like Gumby afterwards, some weren't sure that they liked it or not. James said he'd go again. Colin flatly said once was enough for him. I thought they were just wimps. My massage was great.

Two days later, we were swimming at a beach in Tel Aviv. Dominic had a pair of weird markings on his back, and when my brother turned around to head out into the waves, I noticed he had them too. Their red welts matched those that could be seen James- even though his were masked a bit by freckles. Dad also had similar pair of lighter marks. I have a feeling that his screaming must have made the masseur go easy on him compared to the others. Those marks must be the masseur's trademark or something.

Maybe their massage was a bit rough. Six days later, I could still see the welts on James' back. Here is a pic to prove it.