Istanbul, Istanbul by Burhan Sonmez

Author:Burhan Sonmez
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846592065
Publisher: Saqi

7TH DAY

Told by the Student Demirtay

THE POCKET WATCH

“When the director of Beyazıt Library, Şerafat Bey, arrived at work that morning, he realized that there was no one waiting at the door. Every morning there were always a couple of bibliophiles there, but this morning he was alone. Walking toward the lateral wall of the building that had been converted from a mosque stable into a library, he opened the parcel of liver he was carrying. He crouched down and placed the finely chopped pieces of liver onto the cobblestones. He watched the cats gather, then turned his attention to the pigeons under the plane tree. He took a paper bag filled with wheat out of his briefcase and scattered a handful around the tree. Here the cats and the pigeons got on well together, they didn’t bother one another. As the director stood up and was walking toward the door he saw the two early-bird bibliophiles approaching. He wished them good morning and reminded them that they were ten minutes late that day. The two bibliophiles consulted their wristwatches and said they were on time. The director took his pocket watch out of his waistcoat pocket. He compared it with that of the bibliophiles. Theirs was slow. The director gave them an indulgent smile, but when, throughout the day, he saw that they were not the only ones, that everyone’s watches, inside and outside the library, were ten minutes out, he realized that there was something going on. Time’s gracious hand was changing in Istanbul. School bells, cinema performances, and boat trips were all ten minutes out, and no one was aware of the discrepancy. The children selling newspapers in the mornings at the tops of their voices announced no such news. Every day the director opened the library according to his own watch, and asked himself the same question: Why were all the clocks suddenly slow? It’s actually a long story but I’ll be brief. In one part of the world a war was ending, while in another a new one was brewing. Despite the smell of spring, the air in Istanbul was oppressive. Mariners set out to sea with a serene expression, women forgot their washing on the line for days. The director, Şerafat Bey, couldn’t bear the fact that everyone’s watches were slow and that his regulars were arriving late, and resolved that he had to do something. Once he had fed the cats and the pigeons in the mornings and worked in the library until midday, he started to delegate tasks to his assistants and spend the rest of the day visiting the other libraries in the city. Whispers circulated around the reading rooms. The presenter on the state radio read the news and the muezzin in the mosque called the faithful to prayer ten minutes late. While the time in Istanbul was undergoing a complete change, now the only watch that appeared to be wrong was his. He didn’t know that he was in danger, that he was being watched by men with black rosettes.

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