EVET!

Wedding traditions in Turkey, much like anywhere else, vary from region to region and family to family. Traditionally, the wedding celebration involves a series of phases incorporating religious or superstitious practices. While in Turkey we witnessed a number of these traditions as guests not only at a beautiful wedding but also wedding-related events. One interesting tradition, for example, involves a friend or relative in an exemplary marriage gifting the bride and groom with their wedding-day undergarments. (In this particular case the relative chosen was the mother of the groom. Awkward.)

In the days leading up to the wedding, ceremonies take place at which the bride’s hands are decorated with henna. I witnessed two such ceremonies, an intimate, family celebration taking place on New Years Eve (as the wedding occurred on January 2nd) and another, more elaborate celebration the next day within a Turkish bath. New Years Even became a combined countdown to the new year and a henna ceremony. After a delicious dinner hosted by the parents of the bride, the women disappeared to the  kitchen, emerging with candles and singing a folk song. I immediately thought it was someone’s birthday until I noticed how unappetizing the candle-adorned cake appeared. Luckily it was no cake, but a mound of henna. Camera flashes lit the room as the women adorned the bride with a red-capped veil with gold jewels. At midnight, freshly henna-ed, we rang in the new year by smashing pomegranates on the back deck. Prosperity in the new year comes to the one who’s pomegranate splits open and spills its contents. I can only assume this is as pomegranates are an expensive waste of a delicious fruit.

The next morning the men and women split up to enjoy separate Turkish bath experiences. Visiting a Turkish bath the day before a wedding is considered an older fashion and not always practiced today. I personally love Turkish baths and find them full of character and history, not to mention the confusing purification of it all. We were welcomed by the crazy ramblings of a cantankerous old man, angry that the bath was closed to men on this morning due to our presence. Within the bath itself I gained a new respect for my extreme-situation small talk abilities after becoming far too familiar with many naked women, while I too was also naked and being handled roughly by large (also naked) women who scrubbed away a week’s worth of travel from my skin. Even Emily Post would be proud.

During our soak and scrub, family members emerged from a side room with another tray of henna, this one more elaborately decorated. As they sang folk songs they draped the bride’s head once more with a red veil and decorated her hands with henna, placing gold coins in her palms and securing the entire decoration with a small red pillow tied to a ribbon which was thus tied around her wrist. The women’s strong voices and tambourine playing echoed joyfully within the steamy and relaxing stone enclave.

Here’s one you might not hear everyday. After the celebration at the bath, we met up with the men at the engaged couple’s new apartment into which they will move after returning from their honeymoon. While touring around I was called away to the master bedroom, into which all the women had gathered, singing songs while grandmothers and mothers made the marital bed. Afterward, the nephew of the groom, who was about one a half years old, was captured and gently tossed in the middle of the bed. Surrounded by a gaggle of singing and laughing women, each reaching towards him and giving a slight nudge in order to roll him around the bed, I could not image what this kid was thinking. Probably, what did I do wrong. This “baby rolling,” as we dubbed it, is a traditional good luck charm for the future fertility of the happy couple. Similar superstitious traditions involving snatching up a child to smear around the bed, preferably a male child, take place in Greece.

The actual wedding ceremony, which took place the next day, is a secular event and generally held within the reception hall. The 500+ guests gathered at a cocktail reception at the large and lovely Conrad Hotel while the bride and groom ate dinner separately. This for them is the calm before the storm, and really their only chance to eat as after the ceremony they must circulate the room individually greeting their hundreds of guests. Because they enter the reception hall together, there is no need to keep the two separate before the ceremony.

After each had taken their seats, dramatic music played and someone on a microphone said a lot of stuff in Turkish. Although we were close to the stage we sat at a funny angle, but luckily there were big stadium-like screens on either side along with a camera on a boom which swept the room as if to hunt you down.

The giant doors swept open, revealing the bride and groom, who took to the stage amongst cheering and the aforementioned most-dramatic-music-ever. At this point much more Turkish was spoken. In basic terms the official asked everyone to state their names, asked the bride if she wanted to marry the groom, to which she overjoyously responded “EVET!” The groom ecstatically retorted the same. The bride, groom, and witnesses then signed the legal document (which we all could see thanks to the super zooming capabilities of the camera.) That was that, they were married.

As the courses were served, the bride and groom greeted guests (trailed closely by their own personal paparazzi) and celebrated their first dance. Typically guests adorn the bride with gold necklaces and bracelets during this time, which she wears for the remainder of the evening. With formalities out of the way, guests, old and young alike, took to the dance floor where they stayed for many, many, many hours. Shots of sugary alcohol were abundantly served and at one point the bride and groom  danced upon American dollar bills which had been thrown about like confetti. Later a wedding cake emerged, wheeled out of the kitchen, which was taller than the bride and groom combined, (and actually made mostly of cardboard covered in icing except for one small section of real cake for the bride and groom to cut.) We left the hotel, sleepily dragging ourselves to the taxi queue, well into the early morning hours, with Turkish dance beats still ringing in our ears and a hell of a good time to remember.

A Visit to a Hamam to Open the New Decade

While 2010 might or might not technically be a ‘new’ decade depending on how one decides to count, Ashley and I both had the luxury of starting the year Twenty Ten off right – with day trips to hamams, or Turkish baths. Ebru’s wedding didn’t comply with all of the Turkish traditions, but the family did stick with tradition with the bath. Ashley will regal with you the doubtlessly better-researched background about the female delegation, but here’s a little insight in the world of a male hamam adventure through the eyes of a certain simple ol’ boy from Georgia.

Much too early on New Year’s Day, Ashley and I made our way through the very loud and very bright Istanbul metro system to arrive at the the bride’s home. Like most times during the weekend, it was a fascinating vignette to watch a busy and cluttered household go about the business of planning an opulent Turkish wedding. Eventually, the male hamam away-team was assembled. This included the groom, Hur, his father, his uncle, the bride’s brother Atalay, his American friend Anthony, and myself. The six of us piled into a small (well, for Europe, quite nice-sized actually) car and began driving north, away from Istanbul. In time, we hit the Bosporus and continued north towards the Black Sea. Eventually, we came to a tiny fishing village, the Turkish name of which I cannot recall. It stands for the yellow spot, roughly, however. Here, we tracked down the traditional and quiet hamam, currently closed for prayer times, and waited.

We worked our way over to a cafe on the docks and ordered Turkish tea and watched the village go by. The call to prayer was marked by the funeral of what appeared to be two young children, caskets draped with football jerseys. I pondered the geomorphology of the landslide on the Asian side (see above photo) for a time. To my surprise, men from Hur’s extended family continued to show up in ones and twos for the next few hours. Once we worked out who spoke English, I made friends with one of Hur’s uncles and chatted about politics, archaeology and international business for a time.

Finally, we headed towards the hamam. The first thing that I noticed was the presence of drying fish hanging from the tree that grows through the bathhouse:

Très cool.

In the past, Turkish baths were many things, and likely conformed to various notions and ideas one from the States might have of them. Today, they’re simply a wonderfully relaxing and cleansing afternoon. And the day before a wedding, a little ritual cleansing is always good. The tellak (or staff) was very friendly and joking. I suspect they were enjoying the sight of pale skinny white men from America in their place, but whatever. Upon entering, you notice the three floors of leaning and claustrophobic balconies above you, ringed with small changing rooms with glazed windows. The simple stove on the floor in the middle of the room radiates with warmth and a fragrant smell that permeates the heavy and suana-like air. The pipe from the stove winds its way up towards the sky, bisecting the sharp winter light from the first (technically second) floor window. Following everyone’s lead, we take our shoes off and place them under a bench while the tellak hands us slippers and a key to a changing room. Headed upstairs, we swing into stalls and don our picnic-table-cloth-bathtowels.

This hamam was older and functionalistic, without some of the embellishments of fancier baths of old. That said, to duck into the oppressively moist air and suddenly begin sweating in the solid marble cave that was the central room was very fulfilling. The only light came from two small holes in the vaulted marble ceiling, with basins and sitting areas arranged in four rooms around a central open marble slab that was occupied at the time by a particularly hairy and rotund Turkish bear with something towel-like attached to it. We settled near basins, Anthony and I sticking close and representing the non-Turkish contingent. We were each given a plastic bowl used to wash ourselves from the hot water we drew from the basin and waited. We chatted; we laughed; we exchanged pleasantries by way of facial expressions with Turks. Two gruff and stout Turkish men worked their way around, giving everyone a thorough scrubbing.

Eventually, it was my turn to have the stout Turk over me, bending my limbs various ways as he proceeded to remove what I’m convinced was a full 23 years of dirt and grim from pores of my skin that I did not know existed. Back and limbs clean, he proceeded to give my back three solid and reverberating thwacks. Thus I was declared done.

An hour or so later, we were all out in the lobby again, watching Hur have his neck cracked by another of the tellak. After this was completed, Hur continued to get the groom’s treatment while the rest of us laughed and jokingly forced each other to get our necks cracked as well. It was sudden, swift, and decidedly refreshing. Just as I never knew how dirty I really was, I also had a new appreciation for my neck feeling limber and loose.

Driving back towards Istanbul through national forestland, I revealed in the trip to the hamam as a truly unique experience that I was lucky to have had. I felt more refreshed than I could remember being in a long time – I definitely think that living too near to a hamam would simply result in my weekly attendance!