Beers at Dawn, Kalkan, Turkey--May-June 2004

There was already hunger in the group as we piled out of the airport transfer car and onto the driveway outside Adam's parents' villa. Fortunately, Claire and I weren't the ones feeling it – it was Azeem, a former college comrade, and Adam, whose capacity for inopportune hunger dwarfs even mine. Unfortunately, it was 2 in the morning, and we hadn't seen a single open food outlet on the two-hour drive from Dalaman airport, up the Turkish coast from Kalkan. We lugged our luggage inside and went on a quick tour of the spacious interior of the villa. It was very impressive to our bleary eyes, all the more so because there were bottles of water and beer freely available in the fridge.
But the hunger of our companions knew no bounds, and Adam remembered a café down by the taxi rank in the centre of Kalkan. He was sure it would be open, and it wasn't too far to walk. We didn't take any time to confer, but set off immediately. A crazy-paving path led down from the villa to the drive, but after that the word "road" suddenly became inaccurate.
It had been bumpy coming up in the minibus, but that was no guide to the stony chaos that disappeared between thorn bushes into the deep gloom surrounding the neighbouring villas. We spent a lot of the time sliding down a few feet, then stumbling, then sliding again, until we looked (or would have looked, had there been any light) like penguins racing for the sea across ice floes. Adam regaled us with tales of driving up this slope in a low-bottomed hire car until suddenly what sounded like several packs of feral dogs began to yelp and howl.
Claire, Azeem and I stopped in our tracks, our minds summoning up images of wild packs of vicious hounds from various countries around the world. Then we saw a shape slipping through the shadows in front of us, and we froze, expecting to have to scatter like deer. Meanwhile Adam strolled nonchalantly on, claiming that as a country boy he could calm the wild beasts sufficiently to allow us suburban children to get through. As it turned out, the Baskerville-muncher we thought we had seen was a fluffy Labrador, and all the dogs nearby were as soft as the Andrex puppy. Nonetheless, it had been a tense and alarming trek, and we had only gone about 100 metres.
But now we were on the road into the centre of Kalkan, which had streetlights and wide flat concrete. Each side was lined with pale orange scrub vegetation that was filled with strange shadows. Every so often a hotel, house or shop loomed white from the gloom. There was absolutely no one around. This was all very strange, as we had no means of telling what Kalkan was really like – it was as though we were walking through the setting for a dream before the dream actually started.
After about a quarter of an hour, we had reached the centre of Kalkan. There were a lot more buildings (including a barber's, whereupon Azeem decided he was going to be formally shaved later in the week – he was, and proclaimed it a fine experience), and a few more people around. A few more metres, and we could see the bright lights of Ali Baba's Turkish Home Cooking, the café Adam had remembered.
All the clientele were taxi drivers from across the road, but we got a table and the waiters shook hands with us and made us welcome, and asked our names. Azeem, a relentless conversationalist, took this as an invitation, and asked their names. One was called Hamza (and therefore he bonded with Azeem because they both had Arabic names) and the other was called Adem (which meant that he bonded with Adam). Claire and I were happy to occupy the role of "the English guests".
We weren't expecting much in the way of flavour or quality, but we had reckoned without the fact that Kalkan is in the middle of a fertile agricultural area. We had beef stew, chicken stew, salad, aubergine and (because we were really hungry) chips. All of it was fresh and well cooked, and washed down (in mine and Adam's case) with tasty Turkish beer.
Ali Baba's set the template for all of our meals in Kalkan. Waiters were always friendly and willing to make conversation for its own sake – part of the tradition of hospitality, which is alive and well. The food was always excellent (in the posher restaurants the choice was greater, but the quality never changed). It was always jaw-droppingly cheap. Azeem always asked provocative questions (eg "America's role in the world: good or bad?").
In this instance, Hamza and Adem sat down with us for a chat, and we established that Ali Baba's was the only place in town that was open all year round, in addition to being open 24 hours a day. In our slightly delirious state, we saw this as a profound philosophical truth: wherever we were in the world, whenever it was, Ali Baba's would be open.
Hamza apparently worked there more than 12 hours a day, but he said he enjoyed it, he didn't need any more sleep, and he didn't want to leave Kalkan. Azeem then asserted that we were eating "dekfast", which is to dinner and breakfast what brunch is to breakfast and lunch. Hamza and Adem didn't seem too sure about this, but the northern side of the table (Adam and I) launched into a discussion of whether meals went: "breakfast, lunch, dinner" or "breakfast, dinner, tea", a discrepancy with the southern half of the table that has led to much confusion in the Leech-Abrahams household before and since.
At last it was time to go, and the waiters bid us farewell with more handshakes and toothy smiles. Adam and Azeem were adamant that Claire's suggestion we walk back was impracticable ("cos it's miiiiiles"). They went in search of a taxi at the largely deserted taxi rank, and eventually found one with a driver in. Unfortunately, he was asleep. "Leave him be," counselled the pro-walking party.
"He must be there for a reason," countered the strangers to exercise, and proceeded to knock on the window, causing the poor man all sorts of palpitations. He was soon ready to drive us, but didn't speak any English, so Adam navigated him with expansive directional gestures. He bravely tackled the lurching anarchy of the road up to the villa, but still looked somewhat shell-shocked by the time we got out. I gave him a tip, which would have gone a small way to covering a new suspension. The taxi went back down the hill like a puppy chasing a cat in a tree.
All of us were springing about independently of the road at this stage, even though it was 4 am. A beer was proposed, which Adam and I took out onto the patio, where the very first green and pink of dawn was indicating the edges of the headlands. It was quite warm, and we settled on the near-invisible sun loungers to regard the slight glow that indicated the shape of the sea. In a foretaste of the vast amounts of swimming to come, Claire put her feet in the cool water of the swimming pool at the edge of the patio.
The air was contentedly still, and here and there we began to see details of the landscape below. The view would become very familiar to us before long, but that morning it was revealed to us a line at a time, as though painstakingly chiselled by a master sculptor. Even before we could see it all, we could tell it would be astonishing in the hot sunlight.
We retired to our beds as dawn broke more fully, and slept until 1 pm.