Understanding Time

Time hates certain phrases.

When time hears the response ‘Nothing, I'm killing time!’ or ‘Nothing, I'm passing the time!’ to the question ‘What are you doing?’, it snorts through its nostrils, frowns, shakes its finger, and says, "You shouldn't have said that, you shouldn't have said that!" It snorts through its nose, furrows its brow, shakes its finger, and will surely demand an accounting for this insolence and this idle chatter.

Time has become the executioner of those who set out to kill time and has taken their lives. While the villains in films can eliminate the good guys in the most savage way within 5-10 seconds, time has tortured even the good guys for a lifetime before killing them.

Is there anyone who has attempted to kill time and been buried in a fresh grave in modern cemeteries such as Zincirlikuyu, Karacaahmet, or Karşıyaka, covered with soil, with a stone placed on their head, and left to decay?

Time has dealt such a heavy blow to those who try to pass the time that these insolent, empty-headed people have never been seen to recover for the rest of their lives.

Time's teeth are innate.

Time has never had baby teeth. Time's teeth have been perfectly and evenly aligned since time was created with the command ‘Kun feyekun!’. They are always shiny, never fall out, never break, never need fillings or implants, and never dull, being self-sufficient.

Many powerful armies, many heroes, many wrestlers and many executioners have been crushed between its teeth and turned into dust, ‘once they were, now they are no more!’

Time has either watched the funeral prayers of those it has killed with a smirk on the sidelines or, without performing ablutions and with its back turned towards the Kaaba, has performed the prayers itself for the potential dead! Time's eyes are free from blindness, squint, myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, and hypertension. Time's ears are free from deafness or hearing loss. Time is neither mute nor stammering.

It says, ‘Time, just a little time!’ and when the time comes for the tasks it has endured, it shoves what it has seen into even the eyes of the blind without bending or twisting, breaking its silence and making even the deaf hear what it has heard, even in a whisper.

Time is unrivalled and unmatched. You cannot stick a stick in the wheel of time or place a stone in its path; you cannot be hostile to time or be its rival. Is there anyone who, despite all kinds of tricks and deceit, can defeat time on the battlefield? Is there anyone who, competing with time, does not fall flat on their back or have their wrist broken at the root, who does not lose all their wealth in the gamble they play with time?

A human being swears on the strongest entity, the thing he loves most, and the thing he would never sacrifice; he gives his most beloved thing as a gift and as a reward; he also threatens his counterpart with the thing he fears most. Allah also swears on time, saying, ‘By the greatness of His reward and threat,’ ‘I swear by time!’ Despite this, despite Allah's oath, if one still does not understand how valuable and powerful time is, then ‘if the creature does not understand, what can the deity do?’ That being the case, how wise is it to attempt to kill such a powerful and valuable entity, or to be its enemy or rival?

Stop time, something is coming!

The things that can stop time are clear. Time cannot be stopped by a beloved who has been reached, nor by a policeman, nor by a red light, nor by a hand signal! On the contrary, there is no one whom time's ‘stop!’ warning or red light can stop.

Time's ‘go!’ signal and the other colours it lights up besides red are a hidden trap for the accident it wants the recipient to have a little further on.

Only death and the grave, the apocalypse and the gathering place, heaven and hell, a prisoner, a sick person, a victim of a cruel administrator, or a victim of a cruel lover can stop time. The concept of time is helpless against death, the grave, the apocalypse, the gathering place, heaven and hell; it is indifferent to the sick, the prisoner, the oppressed worker and the lover.

The patient who waits impatiently for a cure, the prisoner awaiting release, the slave who desires freedom, and the lover who watches for his beloved's path say, ‘Oh, please, if only you would pass by me sooner!’ They look into time's eyes and beg time.

But time plays the three monkeys: deaf, dumb and blind, paying no heed to those who say, ‘Stop, go away!’ It stands at the head of the prisoner, the patient, the oppressed servant and the lover like a nail hammered into a wall, a stake driven into the ground, or a sentry soldier.

Time passes before those who want to stop it: sometimes silently, tiptoeing, sometimes with a great roar, a great fury and a devastating storm, and in any case, with a big laugh, ‘tucking its nose up’.

Those who think time flows like water are, in fact, helpless logs caught in a raging torrent, swept along in the flood of time, unaware that they are about to crash onto its shores, ‘drowned’.

What trickles out of the hourglass, grain by grain, is the person's ‘remnants after being ground down by the teeth of time,’ but what accumulates at the bottom is the person's depleted existence and transience. It is because of this depletion that the hourglass cannot be turned upside down and time, or anything else, cannot be restarted from scratch with a ‘where were we?’

However time passes, it stuffs its enemy's youth, beauty and dreams into its luggage, scattering them left and right, pouring them out, passing not only in front of the person, but also through them. Only those who hear the frequency of the sound it makes and feel the wind of its passage notice time.

Whether you notice the passage of time or not, whether you care or not, time flows like water or, very rarely, blows like a breeze or a morning wind. Do you think you remain as immovable as a rock?