The Time Regulation Institute Read Online Free PDF

But here I am this morning, struggling to write my memoirs in the oversized notebook before me. In fact I woke up at five o’clock—much earlier than usual—with this very task in mind. All the good-natured and industrious employees at Clock Villa were still asleep: not just our maids, but also our chef, Arif Efendi, whose only flaw is that he isn’t from the town of Bolu, though he does whip up truly delightful dishes just the same, and our Arab
kalfa
,
Zeynep Hanım, for whom we searched far and wide, suffering a thousand hardships, just to give our home that taste of the old world—how strange that blacks are now as rare as imported goods while in my childhood there were so many of them in Istanbul. So for better or worse I was left to make my own morning coffee, after which I ensconced myself in my armchair and began trying to imagine my life, sifting through all the things I would soon record—things that needed to be changed or embellished or omitted altogether. In short, I have tried to arrange the events of my life into some semblance of order, bearing in mind the many strict rules of what we might call sincere writing: these are never as indispensable as when one is composing a memoir.
    For above all else, I, Hayri Irdal, have always argued for absolute sincerity. Why write at all if you cannot say honestly what you mean? A sincerity of this order—disinterested and unconditional—by its nature requires close scrutiny and constant filtering. You must agree that it would be unthinkable to describe things as they are. If you are to avoid leaving a sentence arrested in midthought, you must plan ahead, choosing only those points that will resonate with the reader’s sentiments. For sincerity is not the work of one man alone.
    But please don’t assume from this that I set too high a value on my life or that I deem it too important to be left unrecorded. I number myself among those who believe that the Lord, our Creator, granted us this life to be lived, for either good or evil, and not for us to write it down. Besides, it’s already there in written form. I am alluding here to our fate as set down in the periodicals of the Divine Presence.
    No, when I say I am writing my memoirs I don’t mean to say I have set out to describe my life. I simply wish to record a series of events I happened to witness. And in so doing to remember—to honor—the saintly man we laid to rest three weeks ago.
    I may be the most humble and absurd man in the world and, as my wife says, the most slovenly creature you may ever meet—that is, before the founding of our institute—but I did come to know a truly great man who possessed a natural genius for invention. I spent years at his side. I watched the way he worked. I witnessed how an idea would suddenly catch fire in his mind and take shape, like a tree sprouting shoots and branches, before coming into being. It was in this spirit that I witnessed the Time Regulation Institute—perhaps the greatest and most important organization of this century—evolve from a sudden spark in his eyes to the splendor it enjoys today, or did, rather, yesterday. Without fear of ridicule or affectation, I now can say that—despite my pitiful shortcomings, I, Hayri Irdal—was able to play a vital role in the foundation of this institute, if only thanks to coincidence and a run of good luck.
    It seems to me that my greatest obligation to future generations is to record all I have seen and heard. For only one person could have written the history of our institute better than myself, and that man, Halit Ayarcı, is no longer with us. Last night at the dinner table I found his chair empty once again. I will never forget the way my wife fixed her gaze upon it throughout the meal. She seemed a stranger in her own home. In the end she could bear it no longer and, wiping her eyes with a napkin, rose from the table and shut herself in her