Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

Lutfullah made no secret of his dabbling in opium. For him the drug was not a dangerous pleasure so much as a means to beauty, truth, and exultation or, to use his own vague terminology, “a mystic path.” There was, he said, no way of achieving truth without casting aside reason, and indeed there were many occasions when he would wander about semiconscious. Deep in these fogs, he would ramble on about “the other side of the curtain,” enumerating the delights that awaited us in the world beyond our sight.

Listening to him, it was difficult not to believe that the man walked in a world we could not see: among turquoise palaces filled with gold, jewels, and silver-laced tapestries, a world that promised a thousand and one delights. While wandering about that pleasure-filled world, he enjoyed a lover named Aselban, a beautiful creature with whom he frolicked among ever-blooming roses, at the edge of a crystal pool, listening to the rippling of cool waters and the songs of nightingales, taking delight in the fragrances of jasmine and rose as she strummed her baglama beside the harem’s fairest ladies or sat alone at a window, her hands busy with embroidery, ever dreaming of him. Aselban’s hair was darker than night, her skin fairer than jasmine flowers, and even the pheasants swooned with envy at her heavenly sway.

This magnificent creature was madly in love with our friend but, sadly, a union between them was a “philosophical impossibility.” For first Lutfullah had to discover the treasure of the emperor Andronikos, a condition put forward by those who lived in the world beyond — namely Aselban’s mother, father, and violent sister, whose beauty was not inferior to Aselban’s. The treasure itself was merely an illusion created by a magic spell. And of course Lutfullah had no need for such riches, so sure was he that all his desires would be met in the world beyond — provided he met the conditions set by its inhabitants. Once Seyit Lutfullah found the treasure, Aselban would become human, and he would regain his true sunlike countenance. They would live together happily ever after, as just rulers and paragons of grace.

When in low spirits, Seyit Lutfullah could not but despair over the difficulty, even impossibility, of his task, but when his mood lifted — which is to say, when he was thoroughly out of his gourd — he would assure us that he was not the person we saw: the blinding effect of the dazzling beauty of his face rendered it invisible. According to our dear friend, who often slept at Aselban’s feet during his visits to his mysterious retreat, he bore a close resemblance to the oriental princes and Indian rajas that were popular in American films of the time.

“I was out hunting with Aselban the other day, when suddenly a hundred greyhounds were bounding alongside us! Oh, the gazelles we bagged, and the tigers… There was one that…”

And if the hunter Nasit Bey was in attendance, with his greyhound so decrepit it could barely rouse itself for a hunt, the tales grew longer still.

But when Lutfullah spoke with Abdüsselam Bey, he skipped over the hunts and concentrated on the lively hordes that peopled his world of bliss. In the palace of Aselban’s father there were nearly a thousand children, and up to three times as many close relatives of all ages, forever overflowing with love and worry for one another, never apart for more than a moment. And when Lutfullah described the orgies that Aselban’s father enjoyed with the forty young concubines who lived at his beck and call, Abdüsselam Bey nearly lost his mind.

Just one thing darkened Lutfullah’s happiness: he could travel to the world beyond only at Aselban’s invitation. When none was forthcoming, he would wander, sometimes for months on end, through our worthless world, as worn as the rags that clothed him, as ruined as the ruin in which he dwelt. Ill-tempered and belligerent, he avoided human society, for he was given to violent bouts of rage that seemed very much like epileptic seizures; these horrifying episodes clearly took a toll on his constitution.

His chest pumping with pride and his mouth spewing foam, he’d sputter a string of strange and indecipherable profanities, inviting damnation upon his enemies, threatening to murder and destroy them with his own grisly hands. “I… Ah, yes, I… I… Does the individual not know who I am? The individual knows not who I am? I shall rain misfortune upon the head of this individual.” Lutfullah’s opponent was always an “individual” or at least addressed in the third person: “Is he aware that I shall burn him to a crisp?”

His rage was like the opium, a kind of divine madness, and in those rages Seyit Lutfullah was himself the master of life and death, his hubris justified by a mad philosophy that claimed to explain both the animate and inanimate worlds. But when his rage subsided, he was overcome by sadness. “The other day my enemies — the ones from the world beyond, of course — they provoked me. I disclosed many secrets. Now the journey will be more difficult. Until further notice they will not allow me to exercise my powers to their full extent!”

My father actually believed in some of these powers.

“There’s something about that brute,” he’d say. “The baker Ahmet Efendi would never have ended up as he did. In just three days his house and business were burned to the ground, his family destroyed. Now the fellow’s ruined and living in the poor house.”

Shuddering at the thought of Lutfullah’s gruesome powers, he’d adjust his collar and hock a ball of phlegm to the ground.

“He’s not a man. He’s a devil! God protect us from the stones this monster might send down upon us. Why doesn’t the government put the evil wizard behind bars? Just last night I saw him hobbling toward the graveyard in Edirnekapı. Has he done someone in?”

It was rumored that whenever Seyit Lutfullah convened with his auspicious spirits by turning his head toward the wall, his prophecies always came true, and that his breath, and even his hand, had a healing effect on people afflicted with certain nervous disorders.

In 1906, the year Lutfullah’s fame began to spread, Abdüsselam Bey became convinced he’d lost a valuable gold watch. Through Nuri Efendi he consulted Seyit Lutfullah, who, after holding long talks with the world beyond, told Abdüsselam in his mangled Turkish:

“The watch a lady’s trunk, the trunk the hull of a ship, the ship the middle of the sea… Send telegraph at once… For if not…”

Such was his answer.

Three days later we discovered that the truth was really quite different. The watch was found in the pocket of a waistcoat in the bedroom wardrobe of a chambermaid who had been brought from Egypt by Abdüsselam’s second wife. But consider the coincidence: at around the same time, the following telegraph was received concerning a servant from Ünye who had left the household to return to her native village.

“Woman found. A cheap knock-off table clock in her trunk. Both clock and woman in custody. Waiting further instructions.”

One might say that Seyit Lutfullah owed his renown in Istanbul to this misinterpretation, which was somewhat correct in its details but muddled in its context.

Indeed this slight error in context was what made the man’s astounding powers apparent. Seen through this distorting prism, his divine inspiration was as clear as a lone ship on rough seas in the dead of night. After all, when asked to account for the discrepancies, Seyit Lutfullah never once claimed that his mediation with the spirits was entirely conclusive.

So the discrepancy came to seem like no more than a missing link — very much like that mosque (I can never remember which one) with no fewer than nine hundred ninety-nine windows. For if Lutfullah’s prophesy had come true, the whole thing would have been written off as mere coincidence, its assorted details forgotten. Yet not one of the details revealed by this minor error was lost; in light of the mistake, all the particulars — the watch, the servant who left Abdüsselam Bey’s villa, the hull of the ferryboat, the chest — were illuminated like roadside inns along an arduous journey. I am left to wonder whether there can be an example that better illustrates the crucial — and supportive — role error plays in human affairs.