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.
The worst of it was that he was entirely devoted to my mother—he married the wretched lodger only because he thought she was rich. But the poor creature was penniless. Her wealth amounted to no more than the silver pieces stashed in the oversized coin purse she kept buried in her bosom, of which we caught a glimpse only when she had to pay rent or a long-overdue court fee. All the same, my father never managed to divorce the woman and remained a bigamist for the rest of his life.
My aim here is not to speak ill of the dead. From the beginning of time, our family has been afflicted by a fixation with marriage, and I too have suffered my share of this misfortune.
So, yes, like anyone else, my father had his shortcomings, and our neighbors were right to take advantage of them. But to accuse him of stealing—and from a mosque!—the property of a pious institution that had been ravaged by fire! No, sir, this is not the sort of thing my father would ever do.
In any case, the story of this grandfather clock is really quite unique. My father’s grandfather, Ahmet Efendi the Signer, was a civil servant at the Sublime Porte; having suffered the shame and frustration of slander during the Egyptian Affair—indeed there was even a period when his life was in danger—vowed that if he ever disentangled himself from the debacle, he would fund the construction of a mosque. The affair was finally settled, and after taking a moment to catch his breath, he took to the task; but fearing he might not have sufficient funds to complete the project, he did not proceed with construction beyond buying the plot. In any event, it was only after this mosque of his dreams was granted the status of a charitable foundation that he purchased, in addition to several other buildings, the large villa in Edirnekapı whose stable and servant quarters housed our entire family for many years.
He went on to use any remaining funds to procure furnishings that were eventually to be destined for the mosque: large wool carpets and kilims, a grandfather clock to stand by the door, and lamps and calligraphic panels to be hung on the walls. However, after taking care of these finer details, and before he could begin construction, he lost his job once again, and as such troubles were to plague him for the rest of his life, he was forced to pass on the fulfillment of his good deed to the next generation, although it shouldn’t be forgotten that the foundations for the mosque already had been prepared.
If anyone asked when he thought his charitable endeavor would be complete, he would always reply, “God willing, it will come to pass sometime in the next year!” And so toward the end of his life, he, his wife, and close friends knew him as Ahmet Efendi the Some Timer, not the Signer.
After Ahmet Efendi’s death it came out that his son Numan Bey, my grandfather, had been mentioned in his will in connection with the mosque: “My responsibility remains, as I was unable to realize my goal. God never granted me the chance. So it now rests in your hands. Finish the job as quickly as you can!” The imperative was Numan Bey’s ruination, for he inherited hardly a kurus apart from the house, which he was all but forced to sell, along with just about everything else, in order to meet his father’s obligation; but still he was never able to begin construction, and so it was that our family lived in that little house, surrounded by furnishings destined for a mosque.
As it was with my grandfather, so it was with my father: the inheritance virtually destroyed his life. Though he’d once enjoyed a respectable position as a civil servant at a pious foundation, he was, after a series of bungled affairs, demoted to the modest post of caretaker of a small mosque.
My father saw the clock as a kind of creditor and held it responsible for his misfortune; it irked him terribly to have to walk past it every day. And he suffered the neighborhood gossip in silence, not wishing to dredge up the story of the abandoned project, a story he himself would never tell. In time that clock would become his single most secret obsession—and his downfall.
It might have been the gossip that turned me against the clock, or it might have been the gloom it cast over the room. But still it was a beautiful piece. With a rhythm all its own, it was like a packhorse that had strayed from its caravan. Following whose calendar? In which year? What was it waiting for when it stopped running for days before suddenly heralding some mysterious event with a resounding clang that filled the space around it? We hadn’t the slightest idea. The free-spirited clock never submitted to adjustments or repairs. It followed a time all its own, far removed from human affairs. On occasion it would release an unexpected sequence of deep chimes, after which its pendulum would swing silently for months on end. My mother looked kindly on the clock’s elderly disposition. To her mind it was either a prophet or a being blessed with mystical powers. A fearful reverence for the clock was ingrained in us all on the death of Ibrahim Bey, for it sounded its deepest chimes that evening, perhaps at the precise time he passed away. The clock had been in disrepair for weeks. From that day on, my mother referred to it as the Blessed One. Despite all his religious fervor, my father maintained a more humanist outlook on life and called the clock the Calamity. Saint or calamity, the clock still embodies the spirit of my childhood.
In addition to the grandfather clock, a small clock sat on a table in my parents’ bedroom. Unlike the aforementioned timepiece, this one was neither religious nor destined for the world beyond. On the contrary, it was a secular clock with a unique spring mechanism that when properly set played a popular Turkish song at the start of every hour. When radios became popular, song-playing alarm clocks disappeared. Truth be told, I much prefer the singing alarm clock to the radio—though it might not seem entirely fair to harbor such an opinion, considering how my oldest sister-in-law, buoyed by our esteemed institute, has become a renowned chanteuse of popular songs, in a voice reminiscent of a door’s ungodly squeak, utterly failing to identify more than three basic Turkish makamsher. Her rise to stardom was essentially made possible by the support of Halit Ayarcı. But, then, what can I say? The radio was a needless invention. If nothing else, an alarm clock doesn’t warble without respite throughout the day, or bounce about to dance numbers as if possessed by an evil djinn, nor does it vex its listeners with warnings of a dangerous storm, and of course just when your radio goes quiet your neighbor’s cranks into action. In my opinion, as much as I am capable of judging the matter, of course—for, dear reader, as you listen to these ideas you mustn’t forget that they come from an old man who had a patchy education at best and has spent the better part of his life on wooden benches in coffeehouses!—the radio does little more than feed people useless ideas. Sometimes I consider just what strange creatures we are: we bemoan the brevity of our lives but do everything in our power to squander this thing we call “the day” as quickly and mindlessly as we can. Even at this age, I sit beside a radio for hours when I should be working, listening endlessly to commentaries on boxing and football matches I’ve only ever seen in the newsreels they show before films.
The third timepiece in our household was my father’s pocket watch, a strange contraption equipped with a compass, a hand that showed the direction of Mecca, and
a calendar of universal time that told both existent and nonexistent alaturca and alafranga time. It had but one flaw: that even a master watchmaker found it impossible to familiarize himself with its many functions. Even Nuri Efendi wasn’t convinced he could bring all its features to optimum working order. Once the thing broke, it was no small task to repair it. Half of the watch remained out of order, like a house whose middle floor was lived in but whose ground and upper floors were vacant and silent. But the watch did strengthen my father’s friendship with Nuri Efendi.
My master Nuri Efendi, a true practitioner of the art, became so exasperated with having to repair the watch over and over again that he finally went so far as to forbid my father to wind it himself.
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?