A Big Turkish Mama and Crimes Against Allah

This is the woman who feeds me breakfast from the bakery down the street each morning so far. I love her and I love her pastries - boreks - pastries filled with cheese or meat, or pastries that are eggy and sprinkled with powdered sugar. So yummy. She is not the Big Turkish Mama. You'll meet her later.

Proud of myself - negotiated a Bosphorus Strait ferry ride, a local bus and many side streets to find an Anatolian restaurant that has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and all other important food magazines. I have to say - The Lonely Planet gets it just right. They provide information on mainstream tourist attractions plus the ones that are out of the way and cool. It takes a lot of asking and figuring, but that is the fun part (if you are in the mood). Today was fun and so, so tasty. Here are some highlights:

These two men reign over Cifa Sofrasi and guide guests as to what is in their twenty or so dishes of the day. They write the ones you want on a little slip of paper, then a waiter brings out little tastes.

Here are some of my favorites:









Minced lamb wrapped in zucchini

Cherry meatballs

Lamb pieces with almonds, onions, raisins and apricots (my favorite)

Stuffed eggplant (not pretty, but so tasty and must include)

Flowers stuffed with rice:

The flavors are cinnamon and saffron and I'm not sure what else. But the lunch was worth the two hours of negotiating water and buses and busy streets to find. Such an interesting area - it's on the Asian side of Istanbul, very conservative and I definitely should have dressed more appropriately, like covered and in a long skirt. But oh well, don't own anything like that, and they will all get over it eventually, I suppose.

Then I took the ferry back to the European side of things, (here's the view of the Asian side from the boat):

and went to the archaeology museum for a few hours. Incredible sarcophagi and cuneiform and pottery. Then I did something that is kind of embarrassing to explain - I went to a Hamami, a Turkish bathhouse.

I was the only one there - I guess because it was in the middle of the day, and this is where I met the Big Turkish Mama. She wore what looked like a black, roaring twenties whole-body bathing suit and she roughly wrapped me in a light towel, held my hand and pulled me toward a beautiful, domed room with a huge, round slab of marble in the middle. "Lay down," she demanded. "Relax."

It's difficult to relax, though, when your head is on hard marble and the room is steamy hot. As many of you know, I can nap anywhere. But today was a problem. Also, the roof was filled with decorative holes and what seemed to be little pebbles kept dropping through the holes and hitting the chandelier, then nearly missing my head. I pictured little boys on the roof, throwing rocks through the holes, aiming to hit me.

So I lay there, "relaxing" for about 45 minutes until my Big Turkish Mama returned and ordered me to disrobe. Just like that. "Take off," she said, pointing to the towel.

There was no way to do anything but obey; she was fierce. So I disrobed.

"Lay down, head here," she said, mercifully pointing to a pillow that I wished had been there the previous 45 minutes when I was the target for rock throwing.

So I am naked, laid out on a slab, and this big mama begins to pour warm water over me from one of numerous "sinks" surrounding the marble, then soap, then she begins to soap me down - everywhere. I have never - not in all of mine and Katherine's massage investigations - had a massage like this. All I could do was just pretend it was normal and that I had been rubbed and soaped down naked by large women wearing black one piece swimming suits my whole life.

"Turn," she ordered after about five minutes. Then she spent another five on that side.

"Sit," she said, and I sat up to have her pour pans of warm water over me, and to shampoo my hair without mercy, getting soap in my eyes and mouth to the point that I choked and sputtered and pleaded with her to rinse my eyes.

When the trauma was over, she pulled me up roughly from under my arms and told me, "Get dressed."

Disoriented and humiliated, I dressed and slunk out of there without even combing my wet hair.

I'm still processing it.
Here is the waiting room - no pictures were allowed in the marble slab room:

The highlight of my day, though, is something that is becoming ritual already. I come home and nap and rest my poor feet, then I go and eat at the neighborhood restaurant, which is better than any other food I have tasted in this city. The two waiters used an app on their iPhones to talk to me about all kinds of things, including their view of America. "America is criminal to Allah," one of them told me. "But you are nice."

They sat with me as I ate Kofta - minced meat on a stick, with bread and rice and roasted tomatoes.