Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

I never chased after things I didn’t need. I never wore myself out trying to fulfill doomed passions or ambitions. I never longed to be first in my class, or second or twentieth, for that matter.

The crowded classrooms of Fatih College offered me the chance to observe the ritual of competition from the back rows or, if you like, from the royal opera box. From there, I learned to observe human affairs with detachment.

I wasn’t accompanied to school by a servant or page, as most of my friends were. And I didn’t wear new or flamboyantly stylish clothes, waterproof boots, or a warm cloak. I wandered the streets with patches on my knees and my elbows almost popping out from my sleeves. No one kissed me and sent me off to school with a thousand warnings, nor did anyone wait impatiently for my arrival home. In fact the later I returned home, the better it suited my family. But I was happy. Though I lacked love and affection, I had my life and the street. The seasons were mine, in all their varied and playful guises, as was all humanity, the animal kingdom, and the inanimate world.

Twice a day I would walk from Edirnekapı to Fatih, plunging into a new fantasy with every dawdling step. But as I approached the age of ten, a passion came to sully this happiness. My life’s rhythms were disrupted, it would seem, by the watch my uncle gave me on the occasion of my circumcision. For no matter how innocent a passion might be, it is still a dangerous thing. But I was saved by my spirited nature. It even gave my life direction. One might almost say it gave my life shape. For it may well have been this passion that led me to freedom’s door.

IV

When my father recorded my birthday in the back of an old book as the sixteenth day of the holy month of Receb in the year 1310 of the Islamic calendar, he did so with the same conviction as I do now, in proclaiming that Hayri Irdal’s true date of birth was the very day he received this watch. From the moment they placed it on my pillow — its blue ribbon a testament to the lengths my aunt was willing to go to avoid paying for a chain — my life changed, its deeper meanings suddenly emerging. First the little timepiece nullified my little world, and then it claimed its rightful place, forcing me to abandon my earlier loves: I forgot about those two glorious minarets carved out of chipboard that my uncle had given me (perhaps because my father was the caretaker of a mosque, and also because we lived just beside the Mihrimah Mosque, my uncle always gave me such gifts, despite the fact that he gave his own children toys that were — to use words still relevant today — modern and secular); and so it was for the enormous kite I so lovingly assembled with the neighborhood children in the courtyard of our house, and the karagöz puppet set I bought after pilfering scraps of lead from various parts of the mosque and selling them to the chickpea peddler, and Ibrahim Efendi’s fickle goat I sometimes took out to graze in the cemetery in Edirnekapı and along the old city walls, suffering its mischief when I knew all too well that the stubborn beast wasn’t even mine. For me, the importance of each and every one simply disappeared.

I fear that readers of these memoirs may glance over what I have written thus far and think that up until that day I’d never seen a watch or that we had no way of keeping time in our home. But in fact our house was host to several clocks.

Everyone knows that in former times our lives revolved around the clock. According to what I learned from Nuri Efendi, the best customers of Europe’s clockmakers were always Muslims, and some of the most pious Muslims were to be found in our country. The clock dictated all manner of worship: the five daily prayers, as well as meals during the holy month of Ramadan, the evening iftar and morning sahur . A clock offered the most reliable path to God, and our forefathers regulated their lives with this in mind.

Time-setting workshops could be found almost everywhere in the city. Even a man with the most pressing business would come to a sudden halt before the office window to pull out a pocket watch befitting his wealth and age — of gold, silver, or enamel, with or without chains, as plump as a pin cushion or a baby turtle, or flat and thin — and, praying that this moment would be auspicious for him and his children, would utter a bismillah in the name of God and reset the timepiece before bringing it to his ear, as if to hear the triumphant tidings that had been promised him in both the near and distant future. To listen to a watch was to listen to the waters that ran from the ablutionary fountains in the mosque courtyards; it was the sound of an infinite and eternal faith, a sound like no other that reverberated in this world or the one beyond. Its ticking set the pace of the day, defined its myriad tasks, and led the listener down immaculate pathways, bringing him ever closer to the dream of eternal bliss.

A large grandfather clock stood in the living room on the top floor of our house, and whenever my father was hard-pressed for cash, he would try to sell it, but for various reasons, which I shall soon explain, he never could. The calligraphic panels of various sizes hanging on the walls, the cool damp smell of the straw mattresses on the floor, the thick curtains draped over the doorways and the entrances to stairways, and this clock my father had inherited from his grandfather — all gave the impression of being inside a little mosque.

Some of our neighbors — in particular Ibrahim Bey the owner of that fickle goat — took pleasure in slander, accusing my father of having lifted the clock from the small wooden mosque where he had once served as caretaker. According to these extravagant lies, my father came home one night with a whole slew of things he said he had rescued from a fire, including the various panels of calligraphy and the clock. In our neighbors’ minds, everything had come from the mosque — even the heavy drapes, the ostrich egg on the console, and the brooms from Mecca that dangled from the ceiling.

Undone by these false accusations, my poor father would sink into silence for days on end. Why do people lie and peddle such slander? In my humble opinion, such calumny is not only repugnant but also pathetic and absurd. Those compelled by the flaws of their own nature to disparage others find ready fodder in the lives of their enemies. For in the life of one individual, there are more imperfections than any imagination could ever concoct; and over an individual’s lifetime these flaws congeal to define his character.” This must be the source of the saying “nobody’s perfect.” He who strays from its wisdom, denigrating his neighbor instead of trying to understand him, is no more himself than if he were wearing clothes chosen at random from a rack in some bazaar. Personally, I have always adhered to the wisdom that so many choose to ignore. And for this very reason, readers of this memoir will not find in it a single lie or disparaging remark but rather will uncover truths that until now have been kept under lock and key. Perhaps as I relate them I shall make the odd amendment, as befits an author who has assigned himself the task of writing his memoirs.

My father had several weaknesses, which the poor man was unable to conceal. His sudden marriage, wholly approved by Islamic law, to a miserable woman who had begun renting a room in our house just a few days earlier, and who had divorced her former husband that very week, is perhaps the prime example; at the time my father could hardly support his first wife and her children.

The worst of it was that he was entirely devoted to my mother — he married the wretched lodger only because he thought she was rich. But the poor creature was penniless. Her wealth amounted to no more than the silver pieces stashed in the oversized coin purse she kept buried in her bosom, of which we caught a glimpse only when she had to pay rent or a long-overdue court fee. All the same, my father never managed to divorce the woman and remained a bigamist for the rest of his life.