Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

So as you can see, my uncle’s gift to me of a watch was not wholly surprising. The place it would fill in my life had long since been primed. Could a boy that age receive a watch and not wonder what made it tick — especially a boy who spent his entire childhood in a house with a grandfather clock that to all intents and purposes had cast a spell over its surroundings? Up until that point, I had seen only the exteriors of timepieces, fearing I would be scolded if I looked inside. I would only observe them, taking pleasure in their presence. But my uncle’s gift sparked my desire to know timepieces more intimately, to plumb their depths. The first day I held it in my hand, my intellectual plane was elevated tenfold. And from that moment, I was plagued by questions: Whither? Whence? And how?

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.