Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

My aim here is not to speak ill of the dead. From the beginning of time, our family has been afflicted by a fixation with marriage, and I too have suffered my share of this misfortune.

So, yes, like anyone else, my father had his shortcomings, and our neighbors were right to take advantage of them. But to accuse him of stealing — and from a mosque! — the property of a pious institution that had been ravaged by fire! No, sir, this is not the sort of thing my father would ever do.

In any case, the story of this grandfather clock is really quite unique. My father’s grandfather, Ahmet Efendi the Signer, was a civil servant at the Sublime Porte; having suffered the shame and frustration of slander during the Egyptian Affair — indeed there was even a period when his life was in danger — vowed that if he ever disentangled himself from the debacle, he would fund the construction of a mosque. The affair was finally settled, and after taking a moment to catch his breath, he took to the task; but fearing he might not have sufficient funds to complete the project, he did not proceed with construction beyond buying the plot. In any event, it was only after this mosque of his dreams was granted the status of a charitable foundation that he purchased, in addition to several other buildings, the large villa in Edirnekapı whose stable and servant quarters housed our entire family for many years.

He went on to use any remaining funds to procure furnishings that were eventually to be destined for the mosque: large wool carpets and kilims, a grandfather clock to stand by the door, and lamps and calligraphic panels to be hung on the walls. However, after taking care of these finer details, and before he could begin construction, he lost his job once again, and as such troubles were to plague him for the rest of his life, he was forced to pass on the fulfillment of his good deed to the next generation, although it shouldn’t be forgotten that the foundations for the mosque already had been prepared.

If anyone asked when he thought his charitable endeavor would be complete, he would always reply, “God willing, it will come to pass sometime in the next year!” And so toward the end of his life, he, his wife, and close friends knew him as Ahmet Efendi the Some Timer, not the Signer.

After Ahmet Efendi’s death it came out that his son Numan Bey, my grandfather, had been mentioned in his will in connection with the mosque: “My responsibility remains, as I was unable to realize my goal. God never granted me the chance. So it now rests in your hands. Finish the job as quickly as you can!” The imperative was Numan Bey’s ruination, for he inherited hardly a kurus apart from the house, which he was all but forced to sell, along with just about everything else, in order to meet his father’s obligation; but still he was never able to begin construction, and so it was that our family lived in that little house, surrounded by furnishings destined for a mosque.

As it was with my grandfather, so it was with my father: the inheritance virtually destroyed his life. Though he’d once enjoyed a respectable position as a civil servant at a pious foundation, he was, after a series of bungled affairs, demoted to the modest post of caretaker of a small mosque.

My father saw the clock as a kind of creditor and held it responsible for his misfortune; it irked him terribly to have to walk past it every day. And he suffered the neighborhood gossip in silence, not wishing to dredge up the story of the abandoned project, a story he himself would never tell. In time that clock would become his single most secret obsession — and his downfall.

It might have been the gossip that turned me against the clock, or it might have been the gloom it cast over the room. But still it was a beautiful piece. With a rhythm all its own, it was like a packhorse that had strayed from its caravan. Following whose calendar? In which year? What was it waiting for when it stopped running for days before suddenly heralding some mysterious event with a resounding clang that filled the space around it? We hadn’t the slightest idea. The free-spirited clock never submitted to adjustments or repairs. It followed a time all its own, far removed from human affairs. On occasion it would release an unexpected sequence of deep chimes, after which its pendulum would swing silently for months on end. My mother looked kindly on the clock’s elderly disposition. To her mind it was either a prophet or a being blessed with mystical powers. A fearful reverence for the clock was ingrained in us all on the death of Ibrahim Bey, for it sounded its deepest chimes that evening, perhaps at the precise time he passed away. The clock had been in disrepair for weeks. From that day on, my mother referred to it as the Blessed One. Despite all his religious fervor, my father maintained a more humanist outlook on life and called the clock the Calamity. Saint or calamity, the clock still embodies the spirit of my childhood.

In addition to the grandfather clock, a small clock sat on a table in my parents’ bedroom. Unlike the aforementioned timepiece, this one was neither religious nor destined for the world beyond. On the contrary, it was a secular clock with a unique spring mechanism that when properly set played a popular Turkish song at the start of every hour. When radios became popular, song-playing alarm clocks disappeared. Truth be told, I much prefer the singing alarm clock to the radio — though it might not seem entirely fair to harbor such an opinion, considering how my oldest sister-in-law, buoyed by our esteemed institute, has become a renowned chanteuse of popular songs, in a voice reminiscent of a door’s ungodly squeak, utterly failing to identify more than three basic Turkish makamsher . Her rise to stardom was essentially made possible by the support of Halit Ayarcı. But, then, what can I say? The radio was a needless invention. If nothing else, an alarm clock doesn’t warble without respite throughout the day, or bounce about to dance numbers as if possessed by an evil djinn, nor does it vex its listeners with warnings of a dangerous storm, and of course just when your radio goes quiet your neighbor’s cranks into action. In my opinion, as much as I am capable of judging the matter, of course — for, dear reader, as you listen to these ideas you mustn’t forget that they come from an old man who had a patchy education at best and has spent the better part of his life on wooden benches in coffeehouses! — the radio does little more than feed people useless ideas. Sometimes I consider just what strange creatures we are: we bemoan the brevity of our lives but do everything in our power to squander this thing we call “the day” as quickly and mindlessly as we can. Even at this age, I sit beside a radio for hours when I should be working, listening endlessly to commentaries on boxing and football matches I’ve only ever seen in the newsreels they show before films.

The third timepiece in our household was my father’s pocket watch, a strange contraption equipped with a compass, a hand that showed the direction of Mecca, and a calendar of universal time that told both existent and nonexistent alaturca and alafranga time. It had but one flaw: that even a master watchmaker found it impossible to familiarize himself with its many functions. Even Nuri Efendi wasn’t convinced he could bring all its features to optimum working order. Once the thing broke, it was no small task to repair it. Half of the watch remained out of order, like a house whose middle floor was lived in but whose ground and upper floors were vacant and silent. But the watch did strengthen my father’s friendship with Nuri Efendi.

My master Nuri Efendi, a true practitioner of the art, became so exasperated with having to repair the watch over and over again that he finally went so far as to forbid my father to wind it himself.