The Time Regulation Institute (7 page)

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.

Years later, when I conveyed these very words to Halit Ayarcı, my esteemed benefactor, he fairly swooned with excitement, nearly throwing his arms around me as he cried, “But, my good friend, you have worked alongside a great philosopher!” Later I will describe in full detail the day, or rather the evening, I first met Halit Ayarcı. But I will note here only that our institute's slogans, which surprised, amused, and even challenged the minds of the people of Istanbul, were born of these sayings first uttered by Nuri Efendi.

How strange that for years as I listened to these and all the other sayings born of my late master, I suffered under the illusion that I was squandering my youth. In reality it was these very words that would lead me to enjoy the success and well-being that only heartfelt public service can provide.

But what other road was open to me? In those years I was struggling to finish college (a goal I was likely to achieve only if I stayed as far away as possible from my teachers and the school itself), so what could I really have understood of the affinities Nuri Efendi saw between watches and human beings, and watches and society? And with no explanation forthcoming, how was I to see these affinities reflected in his life and his philosophy of human fellowship? Because indeed it was an authentic philosophy, according to what both Halit Ayarcı and Dr. Ramiz later told me. But let me make this clear at once: Dr. Ramiz came to understand the value of Nuri Efendi's words only after Halit Ayarcı declared his own admiration for them, though he had heard those words many a time, and long before he ever introduced me to my benefactor. Dr. Ramiz was so absorbed in his own world that he found everything beyond it difficult to comprehend. Certainly he was not inclined to stray far from public opinion. And the same applies to his dealings with me: He was always unfailingly pleasant and kind. He enjoyed his chats with me and never tired of listening to my troubles. If our paths didn't cross, he would seek me out to ask after my children's health and even offer to help with minor matters. It was through him that I came to know Halit Ayarcı. But he didn't see my true worth; he saw me only as others saw me, which is to say that he took me for a reprobate redeemed by a paltry array of virtues, a half-deranged eccentric who viewed the world in a singular way. But upon discovering Halit Ayarcı's admiration for me, he changed his opinion, and from then on he never ceased to sing my praises. So much so that in the indexes of his four most recent works, the name that appears most often after those of Freud and Jung is none other than my own. I appear almost as frequently as my late mentor Nuri Efendi and Seyh Ahmet Zamanı. Though in my view he went a bit too far. I'm not the kind of man worthy of being discussed
in such scientific studies. Of course, considering my love for humanity, I wasn't about to overlook these flatteries: I had Ramiz duly remunerated. I've always supported the man with modest increases in what I paid him. But let me not be entirely unfair: Dr. Ramiz treated me for quite some time, and he had much to do with making me aware of the part of my life that was bound to that of another, Seyit Lutfullah, as my readers will discover in due course. This only goes to show that Halit Ayarcı was the first person to appreciate me and Nuri—or, more correctly, Nuri through me, and, naturally, me through him—and the first person to discern the preternatural role that time pieces play in our lives, with time itself ruling them by imperial decree.

And let us not forget one of Halit Ayarcı's more outstanding qualities: his knack for uncovering hidden talents and treasures.

Nuri Efendi and Halit Ayarcı—my life circled these two great poles. One I met when I was still quite young, at a time when my eyes had only just opened to the world and the people in it. The other stepped into my life when I had lost all hope, when I believed the story of my life was at an end. These two men, so distinct in virtue and mentality, were likewise distinct in their understandings of time, but in me their opposites merged in such a way as to never again diverge. I was the product of their combined efforts. I was like the secondhand watches Nuri Efendi repaired by carefully assembling parts made by different craftsmen; I was a mechanism made of two personalities combined and harnessed to the caravan of time, an “amended” alloy, a composite work of art.

Nuri Efendi was perhaps more meticulous in regulating watches and clocks than in repairing them. An unregulated timepiece would drive this otherwise mild-mannered man to despair. As more and more clocks appeared around the city following the reestablishment of the constitution in
1908
, he would no longer set foot outside his workshop for fear of “exposure to an unregulated clock.” To him a broken or damaged clock was like a sick human being, and while it was natural for man to fall ill, an unregulated clock had no such excuse. To his mind it was a social affront, a mortal sin. And it was
inevitable that these unregulated timepieces would provide the devil with yet another way to delude humanity, driving men from the road to God and robbing them of their time.

As Nuri Efendi so often said, “Regulation is chasing down the seconds!” This was yet another of his deft turns of phrase that so astonished Halit Ayarcı:

“Think about the implications of these words, my dear friend Hayri Irdal. This means that a properly regulated clock never loses a single second! And what are we doing about it? What about the people in this city, in the country at large? We're losing half our time with unregulated clocks. If every person loses one second per hour, we lose a total of eighteen million seconds in that hour. Assuming the essentially useful part of the day consists of ten hours, we are left with one hundred eighty million seconds. So in just one day a hundred eighty million seconds—in other words three million minutes; this means a loss of fifty thousand hours per day. Now perform the calculations and see how many lifetimes suddenly slip away every year. And half of these eighteen million people don't even own watches; and if they do, they don't work. Among them you'll find some that are half an hour, even a whole hour, behind standard time. It's a maddening loss of time . . . a loss in terms of our work, our lives, and our everyday economy. Can you now see the immensity of Nuri Efendi's mind, his genius? Thanks to his inspiration, we shall make up the loss. Therein lies the truly beneficial aspect of our institute. Let the critics say what they will. Our society will undertake this vital task. I want you to get right to work on an accurate and comprehensive statistical field report, so we can print brochures this weekend . . . But, then again, I'll prepare them myself—I mustn't delegate such a delicate job. You shall write the life of Nuri Efendi, a book in the European style. Only you can meet such a challenge—it is your duty to introduce this man to the world.”

I never wrote the book; instead I wrote
The Life and Works of Ahmet the Timely
,
using all the same ideas and materials, as it was deemed more beneficial and more contributive to the politics of our institute. Was this a betrayal of my master?

Nuri Efendi never gave me much work, and what he did pass
on to me he never expected me to finish right away. There was never any need to rush. He was the proprietor of time. He'd spend it as he wished, and, to a certain extent, he gave the same privilege to the people around him. More than anything, he had accepted me as an avid listener. From time to time he'd say, “Hayri, my son. I cannot say if you'll ever become a fine watchmaker. Of course I'd be the first to wish you such good fortune, for you'll be sure to face grave problems in the future if you don't fully commit yourself to a profession early on. But as the humble image of the Great Creator, you lack the fortitude to endure this life and everything it will thrust upon you. Only work can save you, and it's a shame that you lack the necessary focus for this kind of work.” Then to flatter me, he'd say, “Nevertheless you love watches and clocks, and you take pity on them. That is important. What's more, you're a good listener. Of that I am sure. You know how to listen, and that is a rare talent. If nothing else, it masks one's shortcomings and elevates one to the level of an interlocutor!”

Every year Nuri Efendi published an almanac. Toward the end of November, he would begin compiling the material, transferring a large part of the almanac from the previous year, so by the middle of February it would be ready for me to take to the printer in Nuruosmaniye. I would watch in awe as the work unfolded before my very eyes: the months from both Arabic and Gregorian calendars; other divisions of time and years, from elsewhere, that were older than the seasons to which they were respectively aligned; the solar and lunar eclipses; the meticulously calculated times for morning, noon, afternoon, sunset, and evening
prayers; the great storms and the seasonal winds, the latter, according to his calculations, no less relevant than the former; the solstices; the days scheduled to be bitterly cold or unbearably hot. Dream after dream came to life from his brass inkpot as he sat on his low divan in the small room beside the mosque, a skullcap on his head and a reed in his hand; he would line up his calculations like little grains of rice on the scrolls propped up on his right knee, and they all swirled together in a corner of the room where the light was most dim
and the sound of all the watches and clocks was most concentrated, as if waiting for their time to rule the world.

On days when he was working on his almanac, I would lose myself in a mysterious haze as I watched the miracle unfold. Knowing that the previous year's almanac had been similarly elaborated, and that the accumulated work would embrace all the various stages of our lives, I felt myself bathed in a light born of its creator's will, in a world rearranged by his very hand, as the passionate connection I felt to my late master was infused with a little fear.

VI

Among those who came to visit Nuri Efendi were Seyit Lutfullah the Mad, who lived like an owl in a dilapidated
medrese
on the hill between Vefa and Küçükpazar; Abdüsselam Bey, a Tunisian aristocrat who indulged in an extravagant lifestyle in an enormous villa with a broad ocher facade, near the Burmalı Mescit and just below the Sehzade Mosque; the hunter Nasit Bey, who lived behind the Halveti dervish lodge in Hırkaiserif; and the pharmacist Aristidi Efendi, a Christian of modest repute who managed his apothecary in the largely Muslim neighborhood of Vezneciler.

Abdüsselam Bey was a wealthy, exuberant man whose entire tribe lived with him in his villa of some twenty or thirty rooms. The house had an uncanny way of trapping anyone who had the misfortune of being born there and many, it seems, who merely set foot inside. This old Istanbul aristocrat, so distinguished and refined in his starched white shirts, had stuffed his vast mansion with relatives and servants from every corner of the Ottoman Empire: the in-laws, young brides and grooms, countless children, ancient maternal and paternal aunts, youthful nephews and nieces, pages, and at least a dozen female slaves. At my father's insistence, my mother visited the lady of the house on several occasions and each time returned home
exhausted and exasperated, her head still reeling from the ordeal. Once, when I was very young, I tagged along.

I shall never forget that day, which I spent dazed and bewildered in a throng of nearly twenty women, young and old (and just as many children), dressed in extravagant headdresses, petticoats, gowns of white silk, and low-cut lace blouses whose sleeves billowed down to their wrists, finishing with ornaments and gently undulating lace fringes. Although the house looked infinite from the outside, the people inside it lived virtually on top of one another. And for all the domestic confusion, there was no denying that we were in distinguished company. Abdüsselam's first wife was a close relative of the bey of Tunis and a direct descendent of the Serif line. His second wife was an elegant Circassian who had served in the Ottoman palace and was said to have once been intimate with Sultan Abdülhamid. The wife of one of Abdüsselam's many brothers was from the eminent Hidiv family, and the wife of another was the daughter of the warlord of a far-flung Caucasian tribe. If the brides were not daughters of famous field marshals or grand viziers, they were granddaughters of Albanian beys. Fearing that under the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid a family so disordered might give rise to gossip and endless paranoia, Abdüsselam succeeded in marrying one of his brother's daughters to an agent who was highly praised by the sultan himself. This honored individual was a secretary to the Council of State, of which Abdüsselam was also a member; thus the agent was able to keep a close eye on Abdüsselam Bey, both at home and at work. People who knew them took great delight in watching Abdüsselam and Ferhat Bey, his brother's son-in-law, travel together to and from the Council of State in their rubber-wheeled phaeton. The strange thing about it was that while the above-mentioned relation felt oppressed by his obligation to spy on a man he truly loved and considered something of a benefactor, Abdüsselam Bey was more than pleased with this friendship of forced circumstances, for Abdüsselam Bey was the sort of man who would scream “fire!” if left alone for more than an hour—the sort of man who always sat next to the only other passenger on a trolley or, if it was empty, hovered over the conductor.