Works

from THE TIME REGULATION INSTITUTE
Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitusu (1992 – first edition 1962). Istanbul: Dergah Yayinlari, pp. 27-33.

Author: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Translator(s): Ender Gurol

Genre: novel

PART ONE

Chapter Five
Only clocks and watches existed in the Time Regulation Center of Nuri Efendi where I passed most of my time. In front of each window a pair of couch clocks faced each other; along the walls tall pendulum clocks, lined up in rows, stood guard over time; on the right, above Nuri Efendi's couch, was the wall clock. A multitude of other clocks and watches which had been brought in for repair were scattered all over the place, some resting on window sills, some along the base of the couch and on tiny shelves, some half dismantled and some taken to pieces, some stark naked and some with their lids off. All day long, Nuri Efendi kept himself busy with the clocks and watches, and when his eyes grew tired, ordering a cup of coffee, he would stretch himself out on the couch and lie still listening to the tick tocks of the clocks which swelled in ever rising waves in this room with the stone floor, and would meditate on all the clocks and watches in the world that he would never be able to set his eyes on, or touch, or hear.

When I got to know Nuri Efendi, he was about fifty-five or sixty, of medium height, gaunt, and skinny, but robust nonetheless. He said he had never suffered ill health, not even the slightest toothache. And he attributed this to his Thracian origin. "My father was a wrestler. I myself did some wrestling in my youth," he said exhibiting his strong muscles which formed a puzzling contrast to his lean stature. When he got angry with someone or was in low spirits, he lifted the huge rock which stood in the courtyard of the mosque — dating from God knows which restoration period — and carried it back and forth.

He left a strange impression on people with his long square face, white sparse beard, and large, chestnut-colored soft eyes. His gaze made people think that he had been created for the sole purpose of doing good deeds. He seemed like one of those old men who in fairy tales appears for an instant to present you with three hairs plucked from his beard only to vanish immediately thereafter. Later he may be conjured up by burning these hairs whenever you feel lost and do not know which course to follow. Shouting or flying into a temper was not his habit, and he had never been seen in such a state in the course of the thirty-five years since he had taken his abode at the center.

He had a sweet tongue. He articulated every syllable, and chose his words with meticulous care. Watch making was his favorite topic of conversation. Among his acquaintances some took him to be a great man of science, and some a quasi-saint. Actually his education had been modest, limited to a couple of years at a seminary. He did not conceal this, but rather used to say, "I've become what I am thanks to clocks and watches."

I think that he was the best clock and watch mender of the neighborhood. He did not work like a professional repairman, for this vocation had a special fascination for him. He never bargained with customers who brought their clocks and watches for repair and accepted whatever money they gave him. However, customers who had entrusted their watches to him and then left his workshop would hear him shout after them, "Don't come for your watch until I send word." And sometimes he would add, "Try to be patient! Don't be anxious to get it back soon!" And once having opened the watch or the clock entrusted to him, he would put it under a glass jar and gaze at it, sometimes for weeks, without ever touching it, and if it ticked, he would lean over it, and listen to its ticking. In these gestures he resembled a medical doctor more than a watch repairer.

In fact, he hardly made any differentiation between men and watches. He often said: "God created man in his own image, and man created watches in his own likeness." He would then add the following words in corroboration of his idea: "Man must not forsake watches, as otherwise they will perish like a man abandoned by God." His meditations on watches sometimes went far deeper: "Watches are the space, their march, time, and their regulation man himself. This proves that time and space coexist with man."

He expatiated on such similitudes. "Metal is valuable when it has been wrought," he would say. "So it is with man. Salvation and good can be attained only through God's blessing. So it is with watches. " This love of watches was a question of ethics for Nuri Efendi. "When a watch is out of order, take care of it as if it were a sick person. Take care of it as if it were someone in distress," he would say and then acted on his words. The watches which particularly absorbed his attention were pieces of junk, good only to be thrown away. Whenever he took such a watch in hand, his whole complexion became composed, and his speech grew more humane: "The heart has stopped beating," he would say. "The brain has ceased to function. " Or, "How on earth can it function, poor soul, when deprived of both of its legs?"

He bought mutilated watches from the stalls of secondhand dealers, and after repairing them and replacing the defective parts, gave them to his friends in need: "Now, take this," he would say, handing it out to such a friend, "Take it, and be the master of your time, and God will take care of the rest!" These were the very words addressed to those who told him of their complaints — provided, however, they were poor people. So the man who became once again the master of his time felt a great delight as if his reconciliation with his estranged wife would now become much easier, his sick child would now recover sooner, and he would immediately get rid of his creditors. He thought that this piously meritorious act had a twofold power. While on the one hand he resuscitated a quasi-dead watch, on the other he bestowed on a man an awareness of his existence and time.

Having subjected his watches to radical transformations — a process Nuri Efendi called "refitting" — he re-harnessed them to the chariots of time. Parts of these watches, such as the springs, the gears, and the wheels had their origins in different workshops and were, consequently, the work of different craftsmen. "How like us…the very image of our lives!" This was Nuri Efendi the Sociologist, as he was later to be called by Halit the Regulator.

When I repeated these words years later to Halit the Regulator, my venerable benefactor, he was so impressed that he nearly hugged me, exclaiming, "But my dear fellow, you've encountered a very great philosopher!" I shall tell in all its details, in the pages to come, the story of the day, or rather of the night, when I first shook hands with Halit the Regulator. Suffice it to say here that the slogans of our institute that so puzzled, mystified, and at the same time amused the inhabitants of Istanbul, had their origin in the words of Nuri Efendi which I quoted above.

How odd it is to think that I used to regret the time I spent in my youth listening to what my late illustrious mentor had to say, ignorant of the fact that it was due to his thoughts that I was to enjoy prosperity and success in public service in the future.

Alas! In those years when — remaining as aloof as possible from school and teachers — I was doing my best to get a secondary school diploma, how could I have possibly conceived of the affinities that Nuri Efendi thought existed between men and watches, and between watches and society, and of the philosophy of life and society he founded on watches without further clarifications? For, as I was later told by Halit the Regulator and Dr. Ramiz, this was an original philosophy. Let me tell you that although he had heard these thoughts on many instances long before he had introduced me to Halit the Regulator, Dr. Ramiz came to appreciate them only after Halit the Regulator had praised them. Dr. Ramiz's thoughts were always elsewhere. He hardly discovered anything by himself. In particular, he never disagreed with public opinion. As a matter of fact his behavior towards me was in the same spirit. He always acted in a friendly and hospitable way, never tired of listening to my grievances, sought me out when I was delayed, cared about my children's health, and rendered me assistance every now and then. It was thanks to him that I came to know Halit the Regulator. Nevertheless, he failed to see my actual merits. There was nothing original in his opinion of me. At first he took me to be a poor eccentric who had certain merits of his own, an inefficient fellow from outer space. It was only after witnessing Halit the Regulator's appreciation of me that his opinion about me changed, and thereafter he never failed to pay me tribute whenever the occasion presented itself. So much so that in the indexes of his four extant works, the name which appears the most frequently after that of Freud, Jung, and Halit the Regulator, happens to be mine. I am almost on an equal footing with my late tutor Nuri Efendi and Sheyh Ahmet the Timely. I find this a bit exaggerated though. I am not a man whose name deserves to be mentioned in such scientific works. Naturally, as a philanthropist, I did not leave these flattering remarks unremunerated. I always safeguarded his interests by modest wage increases year in and year out. We must do him justice, however. Dr. Ramiz, who treated me over a long period of time, was interested in quite another aspect of my life, namely that which was related to Seyit Lutfullah, as my readers will understand in due course.

This shows that it was Halit the Regulator who understood and appreciated both Nuri Efendi and myself, or rather Nuri Efendi through me, and through both of us the omnipotent role that watches and time played in life. In point of fact one of his outstanding merits was his unearthing of the treasures that remained hidden.

Nuri Efendi and Halit the Regulator were the two poles around whom my life revolved. I met one of these gentlemen when I was very young, at a time when my eyes had just been opened to life and men. I came across the other one at a time when I was in utter despair, when I thought I had written the last line of my life's book. But these honest men of different merits and temperaments, merging with each other, entered my life, once and for all. I was like those watches Nuri Efendi repaired with such great care by assembling the diverse parts of different workmanship, and harnessed to the caravan of time, a mere "transformed" alloy, a compound of them.

Nuri Efendi was perhaps more meticulous in regulating watches than in repairing them. A watch that did not indicate the correct time unhinged this otherwise quiet man. With the advent of the Constitutional Era, when the number of clock towers in the city increased, he stayed in the Time Regulation Center most of the time, lest he should come across "unadjusted clocks." A clock out of order, broken or defective, seemed to him like a sick man. This, by its very nature, was pardonable. But there was no excuse for an unadjusted clock. It was a social offense, a frightful sin. In the opinion of Nuri Efendi unadjusted clocks were, beyond a shadow of doubt, a means to which the devil took recourse in order to deviate mankind from the path of truth — tempting him and causing him to waste his time.

An often-quoted remark of his, at which Halit the Regulator marveled, was: "Running after seconds, that's what time regulation is."

"Can you imagine what these words mean, my dear Hayri Irdal? They mean that not even a second is wasted if the watch is well adjusted. And what are we doing? What is the city doing, what is the country doing? We are losing half of our time because of unadjusted watches. If we assume that each person in the country loses one second per hour every day, this amounts to a loss of eighteen million seconds in an hour. And assuming that the essentially useful part of the day is ten hours, the figure arrived at will be one hundred and eighty million seconds a day, that is, three million minutes, which boils down to a loss of fifty thousand hours a day. And with all these added up you will see how many people's fates are sealed in a year. On the other hand, half of the eighteen million people have no watches and most of the existing watches are out of order. Among them are those which are half an hour, or even one hour slow. A deplorable loss indeed! Loss of work, loss of a part of one's life, loss of time and money! Do you now see the acumen and genius of Nuri Efendi? We shall be able to prevent this loss thanks to him. This is the most useful function of our institute. Let our opponents say what they will. Now I would like you to waste no time and to prepare an accurate and comprehensive statistical account of the facts, so that we may publish the brochures by the end of this week. Or better yet, let me do it myself, for such an important duty cannot be delegated to others. And your task will be to write a book on Nuri Efendi's life. A book in the European style. Only you can do this. He must be known all over the world."

I could not write this book. Instead, in the hope that it would contribute more to the institute's policy, I became the author of The Life and Works of Ahmet the Timely. I wonder whether I betrayed my master, Nuri the Time Setter, by doing so.

Nuri Efendi never gave me much work, nor did he expect me to strictly perform what he assigned. There was no need to rush. He was a master of time. He could dispose of it as he liked, and to a certain extent, he let his retinue share this right. He had admitted me to his audience as a listener. He occasionally flattered me with the following words: "Hayri, my son, I don't know if, eventually, you'll turn out to be a skilled watchmaker. But I hope you will! For your own good! If you don't devote yourself early in life to a profession body and soul, you'll strike a bad path in life. You're of a modest nature and not tough enough to take up arms against life and society. Therefore, for you, work should be the only means to salvation. It's a pity you don't have that absorption of mind. Nevertheless, it's a good thing that you are fond of watches, that you have a feeling for them. This is very important. And you have an additional merit. You're a good listener. There is no denying it. Even though it is to little avail, it compensates for something lacking, and raises you to the level of your conversation partner."

Nuri Efendi published a calendar every year. Towards the end of November he began to compile this calendar, of which the greater part was the facsimile of his compilation of the preceding year, and in mid-February, he gave it to me ready to be handed over to the printer at Nuruosmaniye. This work, which evolved in front of my critical gaze, puzzled me greatly. Months of the Gregorian calendar and months of the Arabic calendar, different and older time and year divisions grafted onto the seasons of these months, solar and lunar eclipses, prayer times recorded meticulously to every blessed day of the world, big storms, light, but in his opinion, meaningful winds, solstices, severe colds, and dog days, all these things emanated from the reed pen and the yellow brass case of this man seated on his low couch, in this small mosque room, with his cap on his head. They evolved like a rich dream, gathering in a dark corner of the room where the ticking of the clocks was intensified, waiting to come to light, when it would be their turn to reign in the world.

In the days when he worked on this calendar, I used to feel a rapture as if witnessing a real miracle taking place. And since I knew that last year's calendar had been prepared in like manner, embracing all the stages of our lives, I used to feel as if I lived in a world designed by him, in a light emanating from his will, and commended myself to my deceased master with an admiration mingled with awe.

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