The Charlie I remembered was a college boy, a partier. Later he became quite successful in the financial district of New York. The Charlie I knew was an adventurer, an avid rock climber who’d conquered many precarious peaks.

When my wife Ozge and I passed through New York in 2015 following our wedding, it was good old Charlie who left us a spare key for his rent-controlled apartment in Midtown (he attending a hot tub party in Puerto Rico, but he did manage to arrive in time for us to enjoy an evening of panatas at a nearby Argentinian restaurant). A few years later, he visited Turkiye, he texted that he wished adamantly to avoid city life as much as possible. Climbing in the Turquoise Mountains was his chief priority, but to his credit, he did manage to join us in Istanbul for an evening of drinks at the Zurich pub in Kadıköy.

And now Charlie – “that” Charlie – was in town. I was both excited and anxious. A lot had happened since the last time we’d seen each other. Along with the pandemic and other global events, Charlie had found time to get married (we’d meet her at last), given up his job and (alas!) the prized rent-controlled Midtown apartment. At present they were in the midst of a year-long trip around the world. Prior to their arrival in Ankara, they’d been in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbeijan, Cyprus and the south Turkish coast.

We had a lot to catch up on. We’d changed jobs, we’d changed cities, we’d changed circumstances. But had we changed? This is always the worry when reuniting with old friends, so I looked forward to his visit with excitement and some trepidation.

###

Roaring Friday. I jumped aboard the crowded metro, full of heavy tired scents and breaths of an expired workweek, and began to anxiously anticipate seeing Charlie. They were staying at a hotel near the Kizilay metro station in the city center. With my phone on the last of its battery, I found the hotel, just a five- minute walk from the broad, busy plaza.

At reception, I called up and was gratified to hear the sound of my old friend’s voice. “Be right down!” he said. I sat in the lobby, savoring the dark interior, the soft chair, as well as the feeling of Friday and the weekend of nostalgia and excitement that lay ahead. Charlie came down the stairs, and we embraced heartily. “Man, you look exactly the same!” he said. “So do you!” I could feel the years of rock climbing in his hug, dense solid muscle. “Thanks!” he said, grinning his old youthful USC grin. “Yeah, still at it when I have time. Got this too though.” He pointed down to his stomach, which had the beginnings of a paunch. “All the food and drink from our travels. Anyway, Deanna will be down later. Still resting from the trip. So should we grab a beer?”

“Sure. Where?”

“Dude, I’m following you!”

We stepped out into the street, walking side by side. One of Charlie’s most endearing traits is it always feels like you just saw him, even if it’s been years as it tends to be in our case. Indeed, as we walked along in search of a pub, it might have been Müstek in Prague in 2004, if not Ankara in the present day. That reunion anxiety that always weighs, the fear of disappointment, even disillusionment, evaporated in that cool autumn air.

With some embarrassment, I confessed that I wasn’t sure where a pub could be found in the vicinity. Even after a year in Ankara, I still scarcely knew my way around. We live on the Bilkent University campus, on the city’s outskirts, and my wife and I are so busy with work and with raising our son that we hardly ever venture into the city proper. Most of my drinking nowadays is confined to the balcony at our lojman on Friday nights.

“Gotcha,” Charlie said. “Well, let’s just see what’s nearby,” he tapped mobile screen. “It says there’s one this way. Bira Park.” Bira means “beer” in Turkish.

“Beer Park – sounds good!” “Yep, that’ll do!”

Bira Park was on a quiet, narrow street. The bar itself sat beneath a pleasant canopy of leaves, some still green even in the heavy autumn. The interior was calm, with only a handful of serious-looking, mustashioed Turkish men contemplating pints of Efes. Charlie and I sat at a table of four in a corner that looked out at the quiet, leafy street. “Let me get these,” Charlie insisted, rising and heading to the cash register. “Efes?” he asked, turning. “Bomonti,” I suggested, preferring its smooth, ice-cold flavor. “Two Bomontis,” my friend said. The barman brought the bottles over, and we raised a toast. “Şerefe,” Charlie said, testing his recently acquired Turkish. “Şerefe!” I said. It felt good to clink bottles, as if the order of the universe were restored.

An hour passed swiftly, joyfully. The evening air was like late summer rather than autumn, and it felt as if we were sitting in a locale on the coast rather than the plains of central Anatolia. The talk traversed time, distance. As Charlie talked, I recalled the fresh-faced youth he was when he (and his mother, something we still tease him about) arrived at the flat in Prague all those years ago. Now, he was older than I was then, when I was considered the elder statesman at 33. The cheeks were ruddier, the once-gold, handsomely parted hair was now even thinner than my own, yet the same bright smile and keen blue eyes, the same boyish energy that I recalled him displaying at all those red light district night spots we used to haunt in the Golden City … Nebe, Le Clan, Studio … the names and faces flickering in long ago wan blue light.

“You know, thinking now about the book you wrote,” Charlie said. “It really was a magical time.” So it was. That autumn I’d left my newspaper job in Eureka, just as Charlie had decided to take a break from his studies, and in the town of Rathmullan in Ireland, a then-21 year-old Martin had opted to cape the pub he was working in to try his luck in Bohemia. And somehow the three of us found ourselves in Prague, for different reasons perhaps, but united in trying to survive that first, long cold winter — mostly with the aid of the city’s famous beer and nightlife. The three of us in the mornings were a sight – spun-out vampires ghoulishly boarding the metro homebound, while Praguers set about their normal routines.

We talked about Martin, whom we’d both gone to see in Dublin, where he and his wife and son reside. We laughed, recalling how back then Martin was our ringleader, the king of Prague nightlife. How ironic it was that of all of us, he appeared now to be the most settled, with a high-paying job in the tech sector, a fine house in the suburbs and a healthy routine that even included waking up early and lifting weights.

In our Prague days, Martin had been the hub, the star, Charlie and I his brilliant satellites, I the elder one and Charlie the college boy rookie. When Martin left Prague, Charlie and I had been at a loss. On our own we didn’t know what to do, and it was in that state that Charlie sadly (but sensibly) decided it was time for he too to go home and complete his studies at USC, which he did, and moving to New York after graduation. That left me on my own in Prague, where I stayed a few more years before moving on to Istanbul, where I met my wife.

###

“Who’da thought?” we enjoined, shaking our heads in mutual disbelief. Most of these things were just subtext as we sat there in the bar, lifting our bottles, our faces glowing with the memories. Who’da thought that 20 years later we’d still be in touch? That we’d all be so “responsible?” That Charlie and I would have established our own fine friendship? That we’d be sitting here, right now in Ankara having drinks and reminiscing? Even Martin, third member of the original triumvirate, seemed to be there in spirit (in fact, we later texted him and he responded warmly).

We kept in touch on social media, so we already had some idea of what the everyone had been up to. Charlie wanted to meet my little boy, and I was curious to meet Mrs. Charlie. Now, as the second bottles gave way eagerly to their reinforcements, we filled each other in on the details. Charlie was interested in hearing about my job teaching at the university, the benefits such as discounts for our son at the school, the mundane but “fun” aspects of raising a kid. “So is Leo bilingual?” Yes, I was proud to report. “Lucky boy!”

I already knew that Charlie and his new bride had quit their Manhattan jobs, as well as the city itself. From what I gathered, Deanna was a bit of a hippy at heart, like her husband. The two had bought a van and lived in it for a year, traveling around the country and happily (“Well, it can be a lot of work!”) roughing it. Charlie, who’d had a thing for Puerto Rico ever since his hot tub party days, introduced Deanna to the charms of that Caribbean island. Eventually the two of them invested in property, buying, renovating and renting apartments on AirBNB.

“It has been rough here and there,” Charlie explained. “I mean, the first place … we were living in the place while we were renovating it. So during rain storms we’d have all these buckets all over the place, and during the night we’d have to get up from our sleeping bags and empty the buckets, move them around to catch fresh leaks!”

A manager is looking after their properties while they are away on their magical mystery tour.

“By the way, where are you headed after here?” I asked.

“Istanbul for a few days. By the way, you’ll have to give us some recs!”

“And then?”

“Then? India. For six months.”

“Six months!” I exclaimed, my wonder mixed with a trace of envy. “Really?”

“You know Goa?” I’d heard of it, a resort popular with Brits. “Yeah, we’re going for the yoga, meditation, techno dance parties …” I confessed my travel envy. With a contract-bound teaching job, a kid in school and other responsibilities, I felt wistful of the days when one could zip off to another continent at a whim’s notice.

“Well, yeah,” Charlie said, nodding. “But truth be told, we’ve basically been homeless for a while now, all this traveling around. We do miss it sometimes, having a place to call home.”

“So I guess we both feel a like something is missing …”

“Hey, the grass is always greener, eh? Şerefe!”

“Always.”

About the time we were arriving at this existential truth, a bright voice shouting “Hey!” came all but sailing into the bar. Deanna arrived, bringing the arrival of dark with her. She looked a bit like Charlie, with her gold complexion, bright smile and outdoor energy. We greeted each other as old friends (“I’ve heard so much about you!” “Yeah, I feel like I know you already!”). By then, Charlie and I had already covered most of the years, people and places, but as the garson, obviously charmed by the lady’s arrival, brought more beer and as Deanna took off her coat and sat down, we filled her in. Clearly, she had already heard many of these tales, but didn’t mind hearing them again.

We arrived at the present, and Ankara. We talked of my wife, who I wished were there. She was at the family house with Leo, tired from a long day at work. We talked of how Charlie and Deanna had met. We talked about life in Puerto Rico and life in Turkiye, of the ups and downs of being a foreigner in general. You felt as though you could sit forever in that cozy bar, with the quiet night street outside and the autumn leaves drifting along the pavement, with the past and present flowing with the Bomonti.

We talked about why they had left New York.

“I was working 60-hour-plus weeks,” Charlie recalled, his wife listening and looking to me in agreement. “And I mean, I was earning a ton of money and yet I didn’t have anything to show for it! I couldn’t afford to buy an apartment, for example.” Deanna worked as a physical therapist, and also earned good money.

We talked about why we’d left Istanbul: the February 2023 earthquake in Turkiye, which had devastated the interior of the country, leaving 50,000 people dead. While we in Istanbul were not directly affected, it was the last straw for my wife. We’d settled in Ankara because it is reported to be the safest area of the country, seismically speaking. But it was more than that, in hindsight.

After more than a decade working at the national palace, commuting each day on the over-packed metro or squeezed onto a minibus, my wife decided she’d had enough of the Great City.

“Hey, I was done with New York, to be honest,” Charlie concluded, listening.

“So you don’t think you’ll move back?”

“No,” they both said.

We had that hazy glow that comes with the alcohol and nostalgia and soft light coming from the street lights and dim lamps in the bar. Absorbing all the stories, the years, our diverging paths, I felt I were sitting at the table in “My Dinner With Andre,” only replacing the name with Charlie.

I told my friends about how we sold our first apartment in Istanbul, how wife had used that money to leverage the purchase of a bigger apartment in the city not far from the Ataturk Memorial, and boasted somewhat about my wife’s keen real estate acumen. My wife. She was like an invisible fourth guest at the moment, probably at the moment giving Leo his supper. Talking with her mother about what they could prepare for the special vegetarian dinner we were planning to serve my guests when they visited the following evening.

“Speaking of food,” said Deanna. “Should we go and get something?”

“Absolutely!” said Charlie. They were both starved after the long train ride from the south coast. Now as we rose, they insisted on paying the bar tab, not just as old friends but also a sympathetic nod to inflation and the dollar-lira exchange rate.

Out in the streets, Friday night was starting to pick up along the broad plaza that is Kizilay. Department stores and shops were all brightly lit, and cars zoomed past tiredly and gayly. People crossed the busy streets in search of restaurants and cafes and bars. As we crossed, with me leading the way to a back street I had seen once or twice and that was thronged with a multitude of eateries (there had to be at least one place that served vegetarian, I reasoned aloud), I reflected how little time I’d taken to really get to know Ankara. I confessed as much to my visiting friends, who laughed.

“No worries!” Deanna said, with that bright, easygoing way she shared with her husband. “After all, sometimes it’s nice to see things together, with a new set of eyes, right?”

Right the lady was. As a matter of fact, we did manage to find a restaurant that served a veritable feast, Turkish style, with the staff showing all the classic hospitality, bringing one plate after another, to the amazement of my guests. (“It’s a feast!” “The way they keep bringing you more and more food – oh!”) We left an hour later, stuffed and with a surprisingly reasonable bill. “I’ll definitely have to bring Ozge and Leo here,” I said, making a mental note of the place.

###

The following day got off to a much slower start. I slept at the lojman in order to check on the cat. When I awoke, tired and slightly hungover, I figured I’d give my guests a few hours to themselves. Around lunchtime, Charlie messaged. They’d had a nice meal at the same restaurant we’d been the night before. We agreed to meet in the late afternoon near the Ataturk Memorial.

My friends were impressed by the memorial, with its stately design atop a hill surrounded by groves of trees, the leaves all turning red, brown and gold. The golden hour arrived just in time for us to pose for pictures. A taxi later took us to the old city, where we hiked up a winding, cobbled road past rows of medieval shops (battle axes and crescent-shaped cleavers were on sale alongside the rugs and coffee pots) to the site of Ankara castle. At sunset, we had a panoramic view of the city, the skyscrapers and monuments and stadiums; its 6 million residents all out there in the fading light, and the vast distances and hills beyond the city.

It was time for the dinner. We arrived at the townhouse, just a few blocks from the Ataturk memorial. In the kitchen my wife’s mother and sister, both looking a little tired, said everything was ready: a homemade Turkish dinner – vegetarian. My friends were already well aware of Turkiye’s famous meat culture, so they could appreciate the effort that had been made on their behalf. They showed this appreciation with warm handshakes and smiles, which my family welcomed and returned in the typical Turkish style. They were off to spend the evening with relatives in the city, leaving my wife and I to handle the rest of the evening.

So we had the place to ourselves. As Charlie and Deanna made themselves comfortable in the living room, my son Leo, surprised and delighted to hear English being spoken, played hide and seek and engaged in a run-and-slide game of his own invention, while my friends smiled and introduced themselves.

As you might expect, the dinner was something of a masterpiece, with smoked eggplant, bulgar, beans, a special traditional soup, the flat bread called gözleme, as well as homemade yogurt that is ever present, an assortment of salads and fresh fruits, and a dessert of chilled pumpkin and walnuts served with tahin, the peanut-tasting syrup. Again, my friends were in rapture, both at the savoriness of the dishes, but also by their sheer number of variety.

We went through several bottles of wine, and I was happy to see everyone at the table, my wife catching up with Charlie and getting acquainted with Deanna, while Leo sat on the sofa watching episodes of “Sesame Street.” In our bright, warm little townhouse, with the dark autumn night outside, it felt good to be in Ankara, in the company of family and friends.

“James hates Ankara,” my wife had said earlier, reminding me of things I’d said over the past year. “He never wanted to leave Istanbul!”

Yes, I had said those things, and many more. But now things felt different, both new and familiar – like being among old friends who you haven’t seen in a long time.

“Maybe I’m getting used to it,” I said.

A little later, the wine gone and sleepiness creeping in on our reminiscing, my friends rose to leave. They had to pack for an early train to Istanbul in the morning. With hearty hugs all around, they bid us farewell and set off into the night and walk back to their hotel.

My wife and I sat out on the balcony, having cigarettes, both of us a little quiet.

“India,” we said. “Six months. Must be nice.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Not really.”

I wasn’t – not the way I would have been at one time. It was nice sitting on the balcony of our little townhouse in the city, looking out at the quiet, pleasant street. It wasn’t India, but it was home. Our home in the new city. Maybe I had my old friends to thank for helping me see things that way.

###

James Tressler, a former reporter and Lost Coast resident, is a long-time LoCo contributor. He now resides in Ankara.