The Time Regulation Institute (5 page)

And that is precisely what happened. Unable to believe such a thing was possible, or simply assuming it to be some kind of joke, people began to storm our centers with their watches in hand or to stop our inspectors on the street and ask to be fined. Throughout the city, it was suddenly all the rage to pay these fines voluntarily, and even with a smile. There was no longer any need to buy children toys; the little dears had found a more exciting way to share in the happiness of adults.

I should mention that it was not just the people of Istanbul who took a passionate interest in the fines but also those in surrounding villages and even in cities some distance away—so much so that in the initial months of enforcing the system of discounted fines, and particularly when the subscription plans were instated, the state railway management bureau was forced
to add additional trains to several lines. Every day the railroad stations of Haydarpasa and Sirkeci would be overrun with people smiling, often splitting their sides in laughter, as they cried, “My goodness, take a look at this!” or “Unbelievable, but true!”

So eager were the masses pouring in from the countryside that we were forced to take regulation teams from as far out as Pendik, on the city's Asian side, and Çatalca, in Thrace, and relocate them to stations closer to the city and the central terminals. Not only did we have to transfer some of our people to different posts, but when we needed to recruit new regulation teams in the villages, we were also obliged to hire youths, for we had insufficient manpower to carry on as it was.

It would not be incorrect to say that much of the fame our institute won abroad is due to this system of cash fines. Certainly you've read in the papers how cruise ship passengers forced captains to change course for Istanbul, where they would stay a week in the city, returning with receipts of discounted fines in hand before continuing on their journey, and how many of these passengers would not leave the city until they had been granted an interview with either myself or Halit Ayarcı, and how they scoured the city shops for our photographs.

I shall not enumerate all the indignities our institute has suffered in recent times. As I progress through these memoirs, my readers will see for themselves just what kind of cruelty was thrust upon us. Yet here again I simply cannot continue without making just one personal observation.

Like those who criticize the Time Regulation Institute, those who praise it always overlook one fundamental aspect: the strong connection it has to my person—in fact to my past. I would never deny that the institute was born of Halit Ayarcı's entrepreneurial gifts and powerful mind. In every sense and meaning of the words, he was both my benefactor and a great friend. But my role in the Time Regulation Institute was by no means what those on the outside claim or imply: I was not merely a cog, or a means to an end. It could very well be that the institute was the result of Halit's imaginative mind and that all my life I was destined to live through the contingencies
born of his creation, with much pain and suffering as the price. But this is the very essence of my being.

My first responsibility in writing these memoirs is to discredit all who have slandered or scorned the institute or its late founder; my second, of no less importance, is to assert a small but very important truth.

III

I've already mentioned on several occasions my life's various misfortunes. As my memoir unfolds, my readers will see how want and privation have been my lifelong companions, together serving practically as a second skin. But it would be wrong to say that I have never been graced with happiness.

I was born into a family fallen on hard times. But I had quite a happy childhood. As long as we are in harmony with those around us—assuming, of course, the right balance—poverty is never as terrifying or intolerable as we might think. For it offers certain advantages. The privilege I most treasured as a child was that of freedom.

Today we use the word only in its political sense, and how unfortunate for us. For I fear that those who see freedom solely as a political concept will never fully grasp its meaning. The political pursuit of freedom can lead to its eradication on a grand scale—or rather it opens the door to countless curtailments. It seems that freedom is the most coveted commodity in the world: for just when one person decides to gorge upon it, those around him are deprived. Never have I known a concept so inextricable from its antithesis, and indeed entirely crushed under its weight. I have been made to understand that in my lifetime freedom has been kind enough to visit our country seven or eight times. Yes, seven or eight times, and no one ever bothered to say when it left; but whenever it came back again, we would leap out of our seats in joy and pour into the streets to blow our horns and beat our drums.

Where does it come from? And how does it vanish with such
stealth? Are those who bring us freedom the very ones who snatch it away? Or do we simply lose interest from one moment to the next, passing it on to others as a gift, saying, “Here you are, sir. I have already had my share of pleasure from this. Now it's yours. Perhaps it will be of some use to you!”? Or is it like those treasure troves that sit gleaming at the back of fairy-tale caverns, only to turn into coal or a pile of dust at first touch? I must confess I've always found freedom an elusive concept.

At the end of the day, I must conclude that no one really needs such a thing in the first place. This love of liberty—and here I'll borrow a phrase much loved by Halit Ayarcı, as he can no longer reprimand or tease me for dipping into his personal lexicon—this love of liberty is nothing more than a kind of snobbism. If we really needed such a thing, or if we truly felt passionately about it, then wouldn't we have grasped onto one of its many avatars and never let it out of our sight? But to what end? The next day it already would have vanished. How strange that we accustom ourselves to its absence so quickly. We are content to invoke its name in the odd poem or schoolbook or public speech.

The freedom I knew as a child was of a different kind. First, and I think most significantly, it was not something I was given. It was something I discovered on my own one day—a lump of gold concealed in my innermost depths, a bird trilling in a tree, sunlight playing on water. There was no going back; from the moment I discovered it, everything changed: my humble existence, our humble home, the very world in which we lived. In time I would lose them all. Nevertheless I owe all the most precious things in my life to freedom. It has filled my days with miracles that neither the miseries of my early years nor the comforts of today could ever take from me. It has taught me how to live without possessions, without a care in the world.

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.