Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

“But he is a perfect gentlemen; everything about him speaks of greatness.”

Halit Ayarcı shrugged and raised his glass. “Let’s drink!”

“Cheers.”

And we drank. From the moment the politician had placed his hand on my shoulder to look me in the eye, a strange change had come over me. Suddenly my appetite had returned, sending ripples of warmth through my body; swept away by a calm beatitude, I ate and drank and laughed and joined the fun. The drink had opened new doors to my flights of fancy. With each sip, and indeed with each new glass, I saw the woes that had so oppressed me taking flight, as the daybreak call to prayers might startle a murder of crows from the treetops in the mosque courtyard, dispatching them to far-flung lands, never to return.

This lightness of being, this ebb and flow of the heart — as my troubles scattered, as I drifted without fear in a most peculiar sea of bliss, I did not for a second forget that I owed it all to the weighty and glorious hand that had rested upon my shoulder, to those eyes that had latched onto mine like magnets.

It was beyond my comprehension. In my childhood I had been taken to see so many holy tombs and mausoleums of Muslim saints and to meet countless holy men whose very breath could remedy all ills. From Eyüpsultan all the way to Yusa Hill, and on to Selamiefendi in Kısıklı and Fatih, Aksaray, Hırkaiserif, Edirnekapı, Ayvansaray, Topkapı, Yedikule, Kocamustafapasa, Türbe, Sirkeci, and Eminönü, I knew where every tomb, grave, or mausoleum of any saint or miracle worker could be found in almost any neighborhood in all Istanbul, both within and outside the old city walls, and from time to time I’d visit them to pray and implore and collect stones from their graveyards, and if I couldn’t find anything better than cloth to tie to the tomb, I’d rip a piece of lining from my coat and tie that to the fence. Yet never had I been as deeply affected as I was now.

Each time, I’d return from my visits to these tombs a little more despondent and distraught and deeper in despair. Neither Bukagılı Dede, nor Elekçi Baba, nor Üryan Dede, nor Tezveren Sultan, not one — not even those who slept in the coolness of holy springs, nor the Christian saints drooling in their sleep on the high windswept hilltops of Heybeliada, Büyükada, and Kınalıada among the Princes’ Islands — not one offered any balm for my wounds, not one ever lifted a finger to ease my pain and suffering as I struggled to put food on the table.

Yet these sacred men are far removed from worldly affairs, and for them material possessions are of no value whatsoever; they gave away all they owned, to live in circumstances more abject than my own, and there to discipline their minds and strengthen their souls.

Seyit Lutfullah lived in his run-down medrese and Yılanlı Dede, who supposedly had been mentored by Seyit Lutfullah, though I never saw them together, lived in a cellar in Çukurbostan; Karpuz Hoca took refuge in a derelict house in Sütlüce; and Yekçesim Ali Efendi spent all his time wandering around the cemetery in Edirnekapı. The eminent Sheikh Mustafa of Altıparmak, Deli Hafız, Sheikh Viranı—they were all the same way. While I was bemoaning the fact that I didn’t have a clean shirt to put on in the morning, Dede the Shirtless was busy violently tearing up his in the middle of the street — shirts that had been given to him as gifts.

Clearly such personalities could not help me solve problems that stemmed from my worldly concerns. Furthermore, the dead ones never even looked me in the eye, and the ones who were still alive only counseled patience and contentment.

Among these people there was Emine of the Seven Brides, one of our neighbors; I hounded her for three years, begging her to intercede with her blessings for my lottery tickets, when finally one day she reached out and touched my ticket with her blessed hand and said, “All right, then, you’ve begged me for so long that you’ve made my heart heavy. I have prayed for you and, yes, you will win a little money back! But don’t ever ask this of me ever again. Don’t force such sins upon me!”

Yes, but why was it a sin for a miserable creature like me to win back a few of the pennies I had gambled away on the lottery? I just couldn’t make sense of it.

I pleaded with Emine of the Seven Brides so passionately that I threw myself at her feet: “Just a little more than what I’ve put in, oh blessed one!” I cried. “If nothing else, just refund me the total that I’ve lost over the last ten years playing this useless invention.” Was that so much to ask? I didn’t think so. “Well, then just give me back everything I lost this year! That comes to about ten kurus. Please, that’s the least you can do for me!” I begged. But she was stubborn as a rock. It was the intractability of a saint, simply said. So I returned home in utter despair. I waited out the entire month, thinking, “Maybe she’s right, but certainly after so much groveling she’ll work something out for me!” But no use — the holy woman’s prophecy came true. Amid the big money prizes that literally drowned their recipients with sums as staggering as the fortune showered upon sultans during their accession to the throne in olden times, a single lira coin, dry as a bone, meandered back to me like a goat let out to graze.

The politician was in a class apart; he was not the kind of man who would subject himself to misery and pain just to temper his mind and soul, a man who blunted the edge of his fortune, ready to dismiss the bounties of this world for eternal happiness in the world beyond. He was in every way the opposite: for he belonged to the society of men who snatch, seize, devour, and smash whatever takes their fancy, only to look for something new when they finish, becoming bored and restless until they find it. It was clear that he had never flirted with the ascetic life, nor was he the type of man who would sacrifice his diet, even when struggling against the gravest illness. The way he looked down at our table, his manner of complimenting others, the celerity with which he zeroed in on the mullet, the split second it took him to notice the bit of fried mussel dangling on the end of my fork, his falconlike attention to the bounties the table promised, and the swiftness with which he swooped down to claim what was rightfully his, even if it happened to be in the hands of another… No, he was forged of a different sort of steel. He was born for this life. Consider for a moment: he did not hesitate in relieving Hayri Irdal of the mussel dangling before him in midair because Hayri had spent his whole life in the corner of a coffeehouse, scrounging for food day in to day out, and now that he was sitting in an elegant Bosphorus restaurant in Büyükdere he couldn’t bring himself to eat it; this man was gracious enough to savor it on his behalf. With this gesture he had propelled Hayri Irdal into celestial bliss, while his old friend Dr. Ramiz watched on with envious desire.

To meet such a man, to look him directly in the eye — this was without doubt an auspicious event and a great source of happiness. And naturally it promised an abundance of good fortune (as indeed it did). My life’s orbit and its very meaning changed the next day; in fact it started to change that very night.

It began when the aforementioned weight on my shoulders was lifted and I first felt the new lightness of being to which I have already alluded. Then slowly but surely my patterns of thought began to shift. Indeed my very perception of the world began to alter, as did the manner in which I perceived objects and understood humankind. Of course all this did not occur in just one day; it happened incrementally, and not without some growing pains. Indeed on many occasions the transformation negated the man I had previously been. But, yes, in the end it all happened.