An Evening at the Seraglio

In Istanbul a monk named Salim befriended me and showed me around the city.  He was from Meteora in Greece, a region of monasteries that were built on the tops of mountainous cliffs that drop abruptly on all sides.  He’d been traveling to Cappadoccia on the eastern side, which is even more fascinating than the monasteries from which he came.  The region is a volcanic landscape of jagged rocks sculpted by erosion, and they cover some of the largest subterranean cities ever known.  For thousands of years, people have made their homes inside the network of soft-rock “fairy chimneys” that adorn the countryside.  Salim had been on his way to visit some of the Byzantine sanctuaries that had been preserved in Cappadocia’s caves for centuries, as if the geological and ethnological wonders of Meteora weren’t enough for him!  Nonetheless I envied his journey, and even considered going with him, but didn’t find it fit to invite myself. 

He wanted show me the best that Turkey had to offer, so he took me to a harem inside the Seraglio, where I was introduced to the pleasure of a Turkish bath.  My masseuse, a lithe woman draped in white, brought me apple tea, which allowed me to immerse more fully with the experience of the bath.  Honey and grapes were used to sweeten the tea, which had been brewed from a kettle that seemed to have as many voices as it had snouts.  I was soap-washed and shampooed beforehand, which was also when Arabian music started to drift down from the cupola above.  The foam of my temples pulsed with every knead that the masseuse gave my skull, and soon it felt like my brain was melting onto the polished marble of the Seraglio floor.  Then I followed her into a humid room, where from its center rose a platform that was surrounded by quartz tiles.  Light that diffused through a glass ceiling swirled around my soul, enticing me to lay down and cleanse it of the impurities I’d left America with. 

As I lay down on the marble slab, the pecking of an oud rang over the hammam carpet, softening my ears.  Cosmic geometrical patterns danced on the Doric columns, reaching for the stars inside the palaces of the Earth.  The masseuse sprayed rose water in the air around my body, and all my senses became concentrated on the moment.  She started wringing a coarse towel through the water, which made me anxious for her touch.  My arm was lifted, and bliss was brought to me in the form of her aqueous lathering.  Muscles were sedated, thoughts were subdued.  Time slowed down and the Earth became a cloud.  Gently she scrubbed my arms, whispering some Turkish incantation, or so I imagined it to be.  Next, she dampened my chest, moving her hand left and right, scrubbing me below the waist and feeling the muscles of my legs, at which point I might have moaned had I the energy to do so.  I felt her hands, hands that to me were more refined than a seasoned lover’s, purifying my skin like a newborn.  The simile could not have been more appropriate, as I not only felt physically infantile but emotionally untarnished and spiritually complacent. 

Next, she had me lay on my stomach.  Slowly she stretched my spine and put the heel of her wrists on my lats.  Moving in circular motions, she melted my shoulders into a buttery liquid that removed any remaining tension I might have felt.  All the disquietude of my journey to Europe had been removed by her hands.  The crossroads of the world had reconciled my western inhibitions with the liberation of the east. 

 

Santorini

    We’re sailing through the Mediterranean, south of Crete.  After setting sail from Barcelona, the shale cliffs of Corsica yielded to the shallow shoals of Sardinia, and from there we sped through the Tyrrhenian Sea, angled ourselves betwixt the Aeolian islands where Stromboli eternally salutes the mighty furnace of Etna, cruising our way through the strait of Messina, which wedges itself between the boot of Italy and the horn of Sicily.  The waves of the Ionian were sparkled by golden showers from the sun, and the magic of the watery causeway between Italy and Greece- the hearts of two of mankind’s greatest and most ancient civilizations- beckoned us forth to lands of promise and holy sanctity.  The first of the Grecian islands we reached was Cephalonia, which is the setting of Corelli’s Mandolin, one of my all-time favorite novels.  Then we sailed down the Peloponnese coast and into the imperium of Odysseus’ maritime world, at the heart of which rises from out the sea the thousands of islands of the Cyclades, foremost among them one of the greatest destinations in all the world: Santorini.  This pearl of the Mediterranean has blue-domed churches sitting high on the edges of cliffs that complement the clear skies and waters so well that you could swear they were polished orbs of jewelry worn by the ancient Gods.  In fact, the domes are topped with white crosses from Byzantium that so perfectly match the spotless white buildings that it almost looks as if the divinity of their color had promoted the pagan shades of blue to the monotheistic, chromatic oneness of white.  Sometimes, when the sun is setting down on those streets and the water is calmer than the shores of Innisfree, you can watch young lovers dining on the terraces and determine that they’ll never be more satisfied than they are now, that the grace of God has blessed them with an experience so paramount that the daughters of Poseidon longed to return from their constellation in the sky to that island where they’d lived as sea nymphs.  I only wish that I’d had her with me, that special someone, that person with whom moments like these could have been etched into our memories and preserved through the ages.