Elif Şahin

📍 Istanbul, Turkey

🗣 Turkish, English

My mother was a natır — a female hammam attendant — at Çemberlitaş for 22 years. I grew up sitting in the steam room after closing watching her work. The Turkish hammam ritual is one of the oldest wellness practices in the world and almost none of what is sold to visitors as a hammam experience has anything to do with the real thing. The tourist hammams give you 15 minutes on a marble slab and call it done. The ritual my mother taught me takes 90 minutes, begins with resting in the heat until your pores open, involves proper kese exfoliation with a mitt that removes a week of dead skin, and ends with a marble floor sleep that is genuinely different from anything you can buy in a spa. I also take women through Sultanahmet before the crowds arrive at dawn — a meditative walk through 1,500 years of history while the city is still quiet.