"Is Tikkie here?" I asked the ticket seller on my last visit. "Ja, he's inside. Turkish as usual, sir?" I handed over my R60, and entered an almost silent world. The noise of traffic and the kids in the swimming pool was muted; the slow hiss of steam the only sound.

We all have a centre, whether it is ourselves at the heart of our own universe or an armchair, a tree in a garden or a favourite coffee bar. And that centre is portable. It can be a museum in Paris, a pub in Dublin or the Turkish Baths in Cape Town, a place where one can feel at rest, switched off. Centred.

The Turkish Baths at the top of Long Street is my centre in Cape Town. For many, the street is the most alive and alternative artery in the city, its surfeit of restaurants, coffee bars, book shops, backpackers' hostels, bars and sex emporia links the top end to the source of the City's wealth and origins, the harbour and the sea.

Stand on the granite steps at the entrance to the Baths. You will see a Christian church opposite and down a little, a mosque. Look up Buitensingel to where the Bo-Kaap begins, that exotic enclave of the Spice Islands and the East. On one's left the Labia Theatre offers great movies in old seats that remind us of groping in the flickering light of Casablanca or Lolita. Just beyond is that aristocrat of international hotels, the Mount Nelson. Behind is the Natural History Museum wherein lies the story of our species and the Planetarium, perhaps pointing the way to our future. And presiding over it all is The Mountain, that icon of an idolatrous population.

On these steps, resting place of Bergies and myself too when waiting for a lift from a daughter or a son, one is conscious of being at a centre of converging cultures, commerce and hedonistic pursuits.

"Hello, hello, hello," said Tikkie, guardian, historian and man-in-charge of the "Turkish Quarter". We caught up on family doings, life, Cape politics and what the City Council was doing to maintain his Baths.

Tikkie has worked here for over 20 years. He tells of the "Slipper Baths". When built in 1908, many of the surrounding flats did not have bathrooms. So people walked to the baths in their slippers to use the showers. They're still open for use by the public. The Turkish baths were added in 1927.

Tikkie handed me a bar of soap and two white towels, freshly laundered and soft to the touch. He allocated one of the curtained-off cubicles in which to change and to sleep the deep sleep that the steam rooms will induce.

I began my routine in the warm room where an electric brazier makes it no hotter than a summer's day. I found a wooden head rest, cast my towel aside and stretched out, naked, on hot white marble and closed my eyes. For thousands of years, men, and women also, have used steam baths to relax, do deals, recover from excess behaviour and decide the fate of nations.

"Ave, Julius, that was a great orgy you threw last night."

"Indeed Brutus, I think I'll invade Britain this month..."

The Roman thermae are still in use in Bath, in Somerset. When the Turks arrived they built hammams all over the Ottoman Empire. The Gellért Hotel in Budapest houses one of their finest.

Conversation was desultory until a Joburg guy remarked that The Mountain created dreadful weather. Two locals awoke from their stupor and glared. Self-preservation kicked in and the up-country know-all left.

Forty minutes later, drops of condensed steam fell on my face in the second, hotter room. Fifteen minutes of that and I was ready for the third or hot box of 35°C. I counted the seconds. Thirty and I tottered out to the ice-cold plunge pool, submerging myself slowly in craven fashion, unlike those hearty chaps who leap into the icy depths only to surface spluttering like spastic whales saying how lekker it is. After repeating the entire process twice more I went for the deep sleep.

Visitors from the northern countries will discover that these are the only public steam baths and sauna in South Africa. We, as regulars, hope that the requests for repairs and a lick of paint will be heeded. For there is a tradition of welcome to maintain also. The Jewish community built a mikvah here years ago. The baths are open for women on alternate days. Tikkie welcomes his loyal regulars by name. Many who have moved away from Cape Town still visit when they can.

"You'll be late, B," said Tikkie.

My waiting wife looked at her watch. "Where have you been?"

"At the centre," I said, "at the centre."