Public Baths

Luarsab and I went to meet his father at the public baths in Tbilisi. We drove up a side street, skidding up over ice on the cobblestones. This is the old section of Tbilisi where immigrants have always lived. The baths district in particular is called the Arab district, because Persians built the baths here when Tbilisi was under their control (1300 and 1800). But baths have existed here much longer: in fact ‘tbili’ means ‘warm’. This place was discovered by King Gorgasali in the 5th century, who had his capital in Mtskheta, an ancient city twenty kilometers upstream at the junction of two major rivers.

The story goes like this:
King Gorgasali was hunting with his falcon. He saw his falcon take down a duck and the two fell to the ground. When the King arrived at the scene, he found both his falcon and the duck dead in a pool of steaming water. He found the water to be so hot to the touch he could hardly touch it, and realized the treasure of his discovery. He decided to found a city and named it, ‘Place where it is Warm’ -Tbilisi.

The sign outside the ticket window said in Georgian, One Lari Entry, Three Lari Sauna. We entered the next room. Naked men stood everywhere, and as usual, they were staring. Georgians have no cultural boundaries to staring you down, checking you out. It’s normal, everyone does it. No animosity, just curiousity.

We saw Luarsab’s Dad, we strolled over. I shook hands with three older men, bellies hanging over loosely draped towels, friends with Dad who, as owner of several Tbilisi restaurants, is known and respected city-wide. We sat on the bench and stripped, carefully placing each item in lockers behind us. It was so cold out today, my feet were numb in my standard Georgian dress shoes. As a mysterious solution to this dilemma, undersized plastic sandals appeared at my feet and, now in the buff, we progressed to the next level.

Through a door into a steaming room, sight decreased to near invisibility. A thick haze washed out the faint outlines of arches overhead, voices of a dozen men against the wall on our right taking showers muffled into unseen corners. There seemed to be pools to the left, but we steered to the right to join the cadre of showering men. The water gushes out of spickets overhead in strong hot streams, and though two temperature gaskets present themselves for your convenience, few of them actually work. If you want a hotter shower, you walk down the wall a few feet until you find the next jetstream that is pummeling the floor instead of someone’s back. Men are shaving, shampooing, chatting away...

We moved on towards a back corner, where at a wooden door, our plastic shoes were left behind and we entered a sauna. This was a wooden room with three tiers of benches, ten feet long. In a big box, big rocks cooked. Taking our seat among the other men, someone splashed a small bucket of water on the rocks, and a rush of stream instantly converted all the water on my body to sweat. Soon, I was adding more water to the atmosphere than already existed, and breathing heavy as I bent over my knees. My feet thawed. It grew warmer. Sweat oozed out of every pore. It grew warmer. Dad came in and politics were discussed. I listened half heartedly, not understanding. A drunk man came in as unwanted entertainment, talking loudly and obnoxiously. Luarsab’s Dad tamed him with a few experienced words, the man left.

Next Luarsab dared me to jump in the cold tub. It was deep so we could actually jump in and submerge. I was in and out before I realized how cold it was. REALLY cold. My skin just tingled, my head steamed. We headed for the hot tub. Ten men were lounging half in half out of the water around the marble edges. Everything is made of marble. We hopped in and moved to the far side of the pool, our bodies feeling nothing.

Gradually temperature returned, and I realized this pool was really hot. The water poured right out of a wall spicket into the tub. A smell like sulphur, that particular smell that is not quite rotten eggs not quite burning rubber, but something milder and not unpleasant, came out of the water. Luarsab explained that this water comes straight out of the ground, untampered, at this precise temperture. The springs have never been known to run dry. It is God’s gift.

Our eyes adjusted. The drunk man was being ushered out by a man who was clothed. He looked so out of place, I actually had to think twice about why he looked so different. I noticed there were four bare lightbulbs that lighted the whole place. It was a big room, ceilings twenty feet high, perhaps three or four arches square, if you can imagine... still I could not see across the room and could only hear muffled voices of the twenty or thirty men who might have been in there at any one time. We left and drank a beer in the dressing room.

A group of naked men were standing around jawing about the latest: NGO organizations and marginalized priests had publicly insulted the Patriarch and the Orthodox church again, declaring that a recent Holy Synod meeting of the bishops was akin to a Kruschev era Soviet meeting. Everyone is upset about it. Who are these foreign sponsored NGOs anyway, what have they ever done for us?

I was summoned to the marble massage block back in the baths....

First I lay on my stomach, and a wiry man slapped my back to loosen the muscles. Then he pulled my arms back and jerk-stretched them the way a chiropractor might. Then he cracked all my vertebrae, and quickly and deeply massaged my back. The next thing I felt was a piece of sandpaper being rubbed strongly over my back to the degree that I was sure my muscles were being peeled away like orange skins. He thoroughly scrubbed me down, then I turned over and it was the same thing.

Sitting up, he scrubbed my neck and arms and I was horrified to see rolls of black skin peeling off my body. Was I so unclean? I have a hot shower in my apartment that I’m not afraid of... but this was new exposed skin. I’m convinced I only have three of my normal seven layers of skin tonight. Feels divine.

Later I lay back down and the masseuse squeezed a bag full of suds all over my back and scrubbed me down again. Turn over, sit up, I was scrubbed to perfection until my arms were limp, my body newborn, my head rubberized. With a dreamy step, I took sixty seconds to walk thirty feet across the room to the showers where I stood under a thick stream for a minute before heading back to the conversation in the dressing room. It was over, and I found Luarsab and Dad continuing the conversation in the sauna. We sat for a minute but then we all left together.

Back in the dressing room the masseuse-man was smoking a cigarette. Cool guy. I feel like I just stepped out of time. I could have been among Romans in Britain, Greeks in Ephassus, among Persian caravan drivers arriving in Tbilisi.... the baths are a meeting grounds, a conversation grounds. A time to take off the garbs of the world, the weapons, the defenses, the clothing of identity, the passage of time. We are all human bodies, old/young, fat, hairy, muscled, scrawny, bearded/shaven... no one cares. What do you have to say?

Me, I didn’t have much to say, but Luarsab’s uncle showed up. He is a famous chef at one of the restaurants and has been to the States three times on cooking competition trips where he always wins medals. We chatted until my vocabulary was exhausted.

The owner of the baths, a Muslim man named Rasim, was very excited at my presence. Luarsab, Dad, and I sang a simple folk song from western Georgia. Glasses and vodka were produced, and soon I was drinking toasts in honor of myself, though I returned the favor by toasting their excellent hospitality and the quality of the establishment.

Imagine carrying spices and clothing from India across the Afghanistani and Persian deserts; selling and picking up new goods, then heading north across the wilderness deserts along the lower Caspian Sea. Next would have been the open steppe and canyon country of Kartli, what is now south-eastern Georgia. The vineyards of the sun-worshipping Karts would have welcomed a weary eye, and soon, the Mtgvari river would have pointed the way to a welcome destination called ‘Warm-city’. Sounds really good right about now.

After seven days traveling through the fertile fields and small villages of the Karts, the wide streets and street-markets of Tbilisi would have come into view. In those days, business must have centered around the travelers, and caravanseries were large and bustling. Next door, warm baths, hostelries, bars, and a host of hospitable men and women awaited whatever desire your foreign money could afford.

In the public baths of Tbilisi, where time stands still, an ancient identity lives on.