Within thirty seconds a big, fat, topless woman, wearing just bikini bottoms, appeared or seemed to in the thick fog and indicated for me to lie down on the towel on the slab. I did, and she then threw a giant bucket of hot water on top of me and left. What? I just stayed there all wet and miserable on my soaking-wet towel. Other women on the round, raised marble slab didn’t act like anything was amiss so I just stayed there pretending I wasn’t weirded out.
Fatty Topless came back about ten minutes later, and proceeded to beat the hell out of me. Okay, it was with wet leaves, and buckets of hot soapy water, but still. Then she began scrubbing me down—hard. My God. Yes, it hurt like hell, but it was just what I needed, or so I was thinking, when the phone blasted me back to reality.
The massage lady was not pleased and quickly indicated that phones were izin verilmez, which sounds like “definitely not allowed” in any language. Trying to excuse myself while attempting, at the same time, to wrap back up in the towel, I ran for the exit, hoping it wasn’t the exit to the street.
It wasn’t, but it was worse—it was the men’s changing room. But I didn’t care. It’s not like I haven’t seen one before.
But in reality it wasn’t anything like anything I had ever seen before. Not exactly,
The two startled men in there were in unusual states of undress, and they were galabia-wearers, so it looked like they were in the middle of removing long lady-dresses. In America I would have thought I’d wandered into a gay bathhouse. Their protests about my sudden appearance fell on deaf ears, while I tried to get them to shut up by making gestures with my free hand about the importance of my phone call.
“American insolence,” I heard one clearly mutter.
The caller was male—no particular accent I could discern other than, say, international mash-up.
“Miss Roussel? It is my understanding that you are requesting a meeting with Father Jacobi.”
I couldn’t believe my luck. I would have been thrilled with a phone call, but I was getting a full-on meeting! My luck must be changing!
“Yes, yes, that’s correct,” I answered, trying to hide my excitement.
“As it turns out, the good father is in Istanbul, and he will see you in one hour.” He told me to jot down an address and phone number. I wasn’t exactly prepared with a pen, so I told him to hold on while I tried to key the info into Sadowski’s contact list under the “P. J.”
“I want to read this back to you, ah, sir. I’m sorry I didn’t get your name.…”
“It’s Mr. Cesur,” he replied.
“Thank you, Mr. Cesur.” I read it back to him.
“Yes. Any cab can take you.”
Making my apologies to the half-naked men, and tipping the masseuse generously for the half massage, I got dressed and was out of the hamami as quickly as I could. My terrible red hair was stuck to my head, making me look like I’d been scalped while getting steamed. Worse, the fat lady had washed it with god knows what in that bucket.
I handed the woman at the front desk the cell phone with the address, and in perfect English she told me it wasn’t far. In fact it was very close, but I wasn’t about to try to navigate the streets and possibly miss the appointment. So she offered to have one of the workers there walk with me. We walked for no more than ten minutes along the lively streets. I was glad to have an escort, because we were assaulted by salesmen selling everything—but mostly carpets—literally every two feet.
That world quickly slipped away when he led me into the Grand Bazaar, however. “The address has to be just a few doors in,” he said. I tipped him and he walked away. “It’s right inside. No problem.” Right.
If you’ve been to New York and you’ve seen how the world literally changes from block to block, it’s nothing compared to the way the world changes inside a souk in Turkey. And it’s no wonder that it does. After all, this is a country bordered by both Europe and Asia.
The bazaar smelled of spices and leather and animals and humanity. I didn’t see any spices, but I did see hundreds and hundreds of store stalls selling more beautiful jewelry than I ever saw on Forty-seventh Street in the jewelry district.
The smells alone immediately slammed me back in time to that day in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza when I was heading innocently enough to the tribunal of ben Yusef. Had it really only just been, what—four days earlier?
The Grand Bazaar is so massive it’s hard to comprehend. It takes up sixty-one covered streets with over 3,000 shops. I was lucky to be somewhat near the entrance in the twisting and turning cavernous place. There were hawkers, thieves, and people hawking me to buy everything I could ever imagine for any price I could afford to pay.