The Time Regulation Institute

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  Need I say that only a few weeks after I received my uncle’s gift, it had become nothing but a mass of twisted and jagged bits of shiny and rusty metal, and no longer served any purpose at all? The experience revealed two things to me: my overwhelming desire to take apart and understand every watch and clock I came across, and my total indifference to the rest of the world.

  I had to repeat a year at school because of that watch, and the same happened the following year, when I found another very old watch on the way to school. By the end of my third year, I was able to begin my second year of college, both because the administration took pity on my father and because the entire school and neighborhood supported my cause. But I had lost all desire to study. And so I began to spend most of my time at Nuri Efendi’s time-setting workshop. Strange how my truancy had a positive effect on my school life: As my teachers saw less of me, they saw fewer of my flaws. So I never again had to repeat a year at college. I became one of those dim students left to God. For the rest of my life, I was greeted with short, dismissive nods and pitying smiles or the sniggers and grins of the less polite.

  V

  In Nuri Efendi’s workshop, where I passed my days, there was no room for nods, insinuating smiles, or laughter. There were only watches and clocks: elaborate table clocks ticked on every windowsill; grandfather clocks lined up against the walls like the very guardians of time; a suspended clock dangled over the master’s divan, just to its right; and in every corner of the room—scattered along the windowsills, strewn over the divans, and on every little shelf—piles upon piles of watches and clocks waited to be repaired, some half-finished, some still in pieces, others entirely bare, and some with only their cases removed. Nuri Efendi busied himself with these throughout the day, and when his eyes grew tired, he would lean back on his divan and cry, “A coffee!” Resting for a spell in the little stone room, listening to the din of ticking clocks, he would dream of all the clocks in the world he had not yet seen and might never see—the clocks whose hands he would never touch and whose voices he would never hear.

  When I first became acquainted with Nuri Efendi, he was already in his late fifties, of average height, thin, shriveled, but robust. He told me he’d never once fallen ill, never once suffered so much as a toothache, and that he attributed this to his Thracian roots. “My father was a wrestler, and I too did my share of wrestling when I was young,” he explained as he flexed his powerful biceps, a true sight to behold in a man so frail. When he was angry, or simply in a sour mood, he would throw his arms around one of the gigantic stones in the courtyard of the mosque—left over from an old restoration project—and heave it around the grounds.

  With large chestnut-colored eyes, an elongated square face, and a straggly white beard, he had an unearthly look. His was the gentle gaze of a man who could do nothing but good. There was something to him of the old man in a fairy tale who appears out of nowhere to give you three hairs from his beard, so that later, when you find yourself in a tight spot, you can burn them and he will swoop in to rescue you. Though he’d been in the same workshop for thirty-five years, no one had ever seen him lose his temper or so much as raise his voice.

  Nuri Efendi had a charming way of speaking: he would choose his words carefully, intoning each and every syllable. And the topic he especially enjoyed was horology. Some friends and acquaintances took him for a great scholar, while others thought him a kind of quasi saint. In reality he had had little education, managing only a few years of religious study at a mosque, but he never tried to hide this from anyone and would often proclaim, “Watches and clocks made me the man I am!”

  I suppose he was the best clock repairman in the neighborhood. But he was no mere artisan: he had the joy of a man who was passionate about his work. He never haggled with those who brought him a watch or clock to repair, accepting whatever he was offered.

  Upon receiving a timepiece from a customer, he’d say, “Now, don’t come back to pick this up until I send word that it’s ready!” Or sometimes he’d cry out to a customer already halfway out of the workshop, “Now, don’t you rush me! For I won’t be rushed!” After opening up the watch or clock entrusted to him, he would place it in a glass jar and simply observe it, sometimes for weeks, without laying a hand on it, and if it began to tick, he would lean over the jar and listen. These deliberations gave me the impression that Nuri Efendi was more clock doctor than repairman.

  Nuri Efendi equated people with clocks. He’d often say, “The Great Almighty made man in his image, and men made watches in theirs.” Sometimes he’d expound on this idea, adding, “Man must never forsake his clocks, for consider his ruination if forsaken by God!” And there were those times when his musings on watches and clocks became far more profound: “The clock itself creates space, and man regulates the clock’s tempo and time, which means time coexists with space within man.”

  He came up with countless other adages that proposed similar comparisons: “Metals are not forged on their own. The same follows for man. Righteousness and goodness come to us through the grace of God. Such values are manifest in a watch or clock.” For Nuri Efendi, love of timepieces was rooted in morals: “Accustom yourself to observing a broken watch as if tending to the sick or needy.” And he practiced what he preached. Here I should mention that the watches and clocks that most fascinated him were the trammeled and broken ones destined for the dump; indeed they were the very ones that were already there! And whenever he came upon a watch in such a sorry state, his face would soften and, trembling with compassion, he would say, “His heart no longer beats—his cranium has been crushed,” or ask, “How will you ever turn again, my poor soul, when you are deprived of both your hands?”

  He’d buy broken watches and clocks from street peddlers whose paths he crossed, and after replacing most of the parts, he’d bequeath the watch or clock to a friend in need. “Here, have this,” he’d say. “At least now you’ll be the master of your time. The rest our God of Grace will oversee!” Such was his answer for those friends who bemoaned their misfortune, assuming they were poor. And so thanks to Nuri Efendi, a person would once again become master of his time and would be thrilled, as if he was about to make peace with his disgruntled wife or see his children regain good health or find relief that very day from all his debts. There is no doubt that in presenting these gifts he believed he was doing two good deeds at once: not only had he resuscitated a dying watch, but he had also given a fellow human both time and an awareness of his own existence.

  Nuri Efendi called these watches the “amended”—a slightly ironic reference to the recycling of weapons in that era. The springs, mechanisms, and cogs of these watches all came from different manufacturers and craftsmen, and after having been treated with certain fundamental repairs, the watches were realigned with the racing chariots of time. Turning one such watch over in his hand, he would say, “How much they resemble us—the spitting image of our lives!” This was, to employ the term Halit Ayarcı later used for him, Nuri Efendi’s “sociological” aspect.

  Years later, when I conveyed these very words to Halit Ayarcı, my esteemed benefactor, he fairly swooned with excitement, nearly throwing his arms around me as he cried, “But, my good friend, you have worked alongside a great philosopher!” Later I will describe in full detail the day, or rather the evening, I first met Halit Ayarcı. But I will note here only that our institute’s slogans, which surprised, amused, and even challenged the minds of the people of Istanbul, were born of these sayings first uttered by Nuri Efendi.

  How strange that for years as I listened to these and all the other sayings born of my late master, I suffered under the illusion that I was squandering my youth. In reality it was these very words that would lead me to enjoy the success and well-being that only heartfelt public service can provide.

  But what other road was open to me? In those years I was struggling to finish college (a goal I was likely to achieve only if I stayed as far away as
possible from my teachers and the school itself), so what could I really have understood of the affinities Nuri Efendi saw between watches and human beings, and watches and society? And with no explanation forthcoming, how was I to see these affinities reflected in his life and his philosophy of human fellowship? Because indeed it was an authentic philosophy, according to what both Halit Ayarcı and Dr. Ramiz later told me. But let me make this clear at once: Dr. Ramiz came to understand the value of Nuri Efendi’s words only after Halit Ayarcı declared his own admiration for them, though he had heard those words many a time, and long before he ever introduced me to my benefactor. Dr. Ramiz was so absorbed in his own world that he found everything beyond it difficult to comprehend. Certainly he was not inclined to stray far from public opinion. And the same applies to his dealings with me: He was always unfailingly pleasant and kind. He enjoyed his chats with me and never tired of listening to my troubles. If our paths didn’t cross, he would seek me out to ask after my children’s health and even offer to help with minor matters. It was through him that I came to know Halit Ayarcı. But he didn’t see my true worth; he saw me only as others saw me, which is to say that he took me for a reprobate redeemed by a paltry array of virtues, a half-deranged eccentric who viewed the world in a singular way. But upon discovering Halit Ayarcı’s admiration for me, he changed his opinion, and from then on he never ceased to sing my praises. So much so that in the indexes of his four most recent works, the name that appears most often after those of Freud and Jung is none other than my own. I appear almost as frequently as my late mentor Nuri Efendi and Seyh Ahmet Zamanı. Though in my view he went a bit too far. I’m not the kind of man worthy of being discussed in such scientific studies. Of course, considering my love for humanity, I wasn’t about to overlook these flatteries: I had Ramiz duly remunerated. I’ve always supported the man with modest increases in what I paid him. But let me not be entirely unfair: Dr. Ramiz treated me for quite some time, and he had much to do with making me aware of the part of my life that was bound to that of another, Seyit Lutfullah, as my readers will discover in due course. This only goes to show that Halit Ayarcı was the first person to appreciate me and Nuri—or, more correctly, Nuri through me, and, naturally, me through him—and the first person to discern the preternatural role that time pieces play in our lives, with time itself ruling them by imperial decree.

  And let us not forget one of Halit Ayarcı’s more outstanding qualities: his knack for uncovering hidden talents and treasures.

  Nuri Efendi and Halit Ayarcı—my life circled these two great poles. One I met when I was still quite young, at a time when my eyes had only just opened to the world and the people in it. The other stepped into my life when I had lost all hope, when I believed the story of my life was at an end. These two men, so distinct in virtue and mentality, were likewise distinct in their understandings of time, but in me their opposites merged in such a way as to never again diverge. I was the product of their combined efforts. I was like the secondhand watches Nuri Efendi repaired by carefully assembling parts made by different craftsmen; I was a mechanism made of two personalities combined and harnessed to the caravan of time, an “amended” alloy, a composite work of art.

  Nuri Efendi was perhaps more meticulous in regulating watches and clocks than in repairing them. An unregulated timepiece would drive this otherwise mild-mannered man to despair. As more and more clocks appeared around the city following the reestablishment of the constitution in 1908, he would no longer set foot outside his workshop for fear of “exposure to an unregulated clock.” To him a broken or damaged clock was like a sick human being, and while it was natural for man to fall ill, an unregulated clock had no such excuse. To his mind it was a social affront, a mortal sin. And it was inevitable that these unregulated timepieces would provide the devil with yet another way to delude humanity, driving men from the road to God and robbing them of their time.

  As Nuri Efendi so often said, “Regulation is chasing down the seconds!” This was yet another of his deft turns of phrase that so astonished Halit Ayarcı:

  “Think about the implications of these words, my dear friend Hayri Irdal. This means that a properly regulated clock never loses a single second! And what are we doing about it? What about the people in this city, in the country at large? We’re losing half our time with unregulated clocks. If every person loses one second per hour, we lose a total of eighteen million seconds in that hour. Assuming the essentially useful part of the day consists of ten hours, we are left with one hundred eighty million seconds. So in just one day a hundred eighty million seconds—in other words three million minutes; this means a loss of fifty thousand hours per day. Now perform the calculations and see how many lifetimes suddenly slip away every year. And half of these eighteen million people don’t even own watches; and if they do, they don’t work. Among them you’ll find some that are half an hour, even a whole hour, behind standard time. It’s a maddening loss of time . . . a loss in terms of our work, our lives, and our everyday economy. Can you now see the immensity of Nuri Efendi’s mind, his genius? Thanks to his inspiration, we shall make up the loss. Therein lies the truly beneficial aspect of our institute. Let the critics say what they will. Our society will undertake this vital task. I want you to get right to work on an accurate and comprehensive statistical field report, so we can print brochures this weekend . . . But, then again, I’ll prepare them myself—I mustn’t delegate such a delicate job. You shall write the life of Nuri Efendi, a book in the European style. Only you can meet such a challenge—it is your duty to introduce this man to the world.”

  I never wrote the book; instead I wrote The Life and Works of Ahmet the Timely, using all the same ideas and materials, as it was deemed more beneficial and more contributive to the politics of our institute. Was this a betrayal of my master?

  Nuri Efendi never gave me much work, and what he did pass on to me he never expected me to finish right away. There was never any need to rush. He was the proprietor of time. He’d spend it as he wished, and, to a certain extent, he gave the same privilege to the people around him. More than anything, he had accepted me as an avid listener. From time to time he’d say, “Hayri, my son. I cannot say if you’ll ever become a fine watchmaker. Of course I’d be the first to wish you such good fortune, for you’ll be sure to face grave problems in the future if you don’t fully commit yourself to a profession early on. But as the humble image of the Great Creator, you lack the fortitude to endure this life and everything it will thrust upon you. Only work can save you, and it’s a shame that you lack the necessary focus for this kind of work.” Then to flatter me, he’d say, “Nevertheless you love watches and clocks, and you take pity on them. That is important. What’s more, you’re a good listener. Of that I am sure. You know how to listen, and that is a rare talent. If nothing else, it masks one’s shortcomings and elevates one to the level of an interlocutor!”

  Every year Nuri Efendi published an almanac. Toward the end of November, he would begin compiling the material, transferring a large part of the almanac from the previous year, so by the middle of February it would be ready for me to take to the printer in Nuruosmaniye. I would watch in awe as the work unfolded before my very eyes: the months from both Arabic and Gregorian calendars; other divisions of time and years, from elsewhere, that were older than the seasons to which they were respectively aligned; the solar and lunar eclipses; the meticulously calculated times for morning, noon, afternoon, sunset, and evening prayers; the great storms and the seasonal winds, the latter, according to his calculations, no less relevant than the former; the solstices; the days scheduled to be bitterly cold or unbearably hot. Dream after dream came to life from his brass inkpot as he sat on his low divan in the small room beside the mosque, a skullcap on his head and a reed in his hand; he would line up his calculations like little grains of rice on the scrolls propped up on his right knee, and they all swirled together in a corner of the room where the light was most dim and the so
und of all the watches and clocks was most concentrated, as if waiting for their time to rule the world.

  On days when he was working on his almanac, I would lose myself in a mysterious haze as I watched the miracle unfold. Knowing that the previous year’s almanac had been similarly elaborated, and that the accumulated work would embrace all the various stages of our lives, I felt myself bathed in a light born of its creator’s will, in a world rearranged by his very hand, as the passionate connection I felt to my late master was infused with a little fear.

  VI

  Among those who came to visit Nuri Efendi were Seyit Lutfullah the Mad, who lived like an owl in a dilapidated medrese on the hill between Vefa and Küçükpazar; Abdüsselam Bey, a Tunisian aristocrat who indulged in an extravagant lifestyle in an enormous villa with a broad ocher facade, near the Burmalı Mescit and just below the Sehzade Mosque; the hunter Nasit Bey, who lived behind the Halveti dervish lodge in Hırkaiserif; and the pharmacist Aristidi Efendi, a Christian of modest repute who managed his apothecary in the largely Muslim neighborhood of Vezneciler.

  Abdüsselam Bey was a wealthy, exuberant man whose entire tribe lived with him in his villa of some twenty or thirty rooms. The house had an uncanny way of trapping anyone who had the misfortune of being born there and many, it seems, who merely set foot inside. This old Istanbul aristocrat, so distinguished and refined in his starched white shirts, had stuffed his vast mansion with relatives and servants from every corner of the Ottoman Empire: the in-laws, young brides and grooms, countless children, ancient maternal and paternal aunts, youthful nephews and nieces, pages, and at least a dozen female slaves. At my father’s insistence, my mother visited the lady of the house on several occasions and each time returned home exhausted and exasperated, her head still reeling from the ordeal. Once, when I was very young, I tagged along.