The hamam in Istanbul was reported to be the oldest in the city. Walking in, it felt more like a monument than a day spa and I was in equal parts moved by its history and incredible beauty—all that ancient marble! the otherworldly light streaming in from the central dome! —and overwhelmed; no one was giving me much in the way of instruction and by the time I found the entrance, I’d already spent two solid, lonely hours completely lost in the Grand Bazaar, so I was feeling a little vulnerable. Someone eventually told me to remove all my clothes and handed me a modesty washcloth and a pair of wooden bath shoes, but my feet, which had recently gone up and down two sizes during pregnancy and had somehow managed to, quite irresponsibly, completely misplace their arches, flat out refused to move in them. I looked around confused (and naked, an unfortunate combination). Everyone else was shuffling around with ease, but not me; to get the ten metres to the steam area I had to awkwardly lift each knee and plonk my foot down again, like some sort of x-rated marionette puppet. The noise of my plonking reverberated around the marble, ruining the serenity. I eventually made it but it wasn’t the most zen start.

Soon a matronly woman with deceptively smiling eyes and a surprisingly sporty black unitard came over and let me know in Turkish and much pantomiming that she was going to wash my hair. Either that or she wanted me to do a TikTok dance with her. Those kindly eyes and the memory of gentle western scalp massages at ergonomic basins contributed to my delusion at what was to come, which was—there can be no other word for it—a legitimate waterboarding. As she threw silver bucket after silver bucket of water directly at my face, I had two thoughts, a) that if this was real torture I would have confessed to anything she asked me, given up my family, turned in my friends, in an instant, to make it stop, and b) whether the buckets were available to buy as they’d be so chic for the laundry at home. Twelve bucketloads later, as I struggled to catch my breath, my hair well and truly wet enough at least eight bucketloads earlier, she took my face and shoved it in her ample bosom as a sort of cushion for my head so she could give me the shampooing of my life. This violence went for either two minutes or two hours, during which time my life passed before eyes as I tried my best not to suffocate. It felt strangely appropriate, as someone who has done nothing but curse my own ample bosom my whole life, that this might be the way I go. But eventually she had to rinse it off, and so out came that wretched silver bucket again—I no longer wanted one for home—this time with the addition of soap streaming into my burning eyes. When it ended, I was momentarily euphoric, like I’d been released from booby prison. And then, to my total and utter horror, she started the whole thing again. Wash, rinse, repeat, please god just kill me now and get it over with.