On entering the Cemberlitas bath, you undress and store your belongings in a locker, then carry soap and your massage ticket into an austere and beautiful marble chamber. Light streams through a honeycomb of small glass polka dots in the dome above. The reward of a bath may be physical rather than spiritual, but when entering Cemberlitas I find my senses tingling with an almost religious mix of mystery, anticipation and aesthetic pleasure. On my first visit, I laid awkwardly on the heated platform and waited nervously. I tried to avoid eye contact with the various odalisques reclining nearby and felt neglected by the bath attendant sauntering by in her flip-flops.
Nothing is left to chance.
As I later realized, the masseuse gave me 15 minutes to mellow down and warm up in contact with the hot marble. On subsequent visits, I got the recipe down. First the masseuse comes with a bucket full of luminous foam. She motions me to lie on my stomach and covers me from head to toe in a billowing cloud of suds squeezed out of a pillow case. She scrubs my back with an abrasive mitt and then, after flipping me like an omelet, works on the front.