Wasting Eternity

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

‘YES, sir!’ said a tourist who was trying to impress me, ‘Yes, sir! we have five hours difference between Boston and San Francisco. Five different kinds of time in one country!’

‘Ah, well,’ said I, passing him the conventional tablespoonful of coffeemud, ‘ah, well! But in this one city of Jerusalem we have lour different kinds of time, and four different kinds of calendars. You must come to the East to learn about time. We have so many kinds we have to specify which we’re talking about, and we have so much of it we can afford to be extravagant. If it could be bottled and shipped to rushing America, we should have the most valuable export-trade in the world. But like Oriental perfumes, Oriental time loses its virtues away from home.’

The tourist gasped, and tried to chew his coffee. He was one of those to whom time is no more than money. To the Oriental, time is eternity. We never hear of wasting eternity, — how can one waste the inexhaustible? Wasting eternity would be like wasting seawater in mid-ocean. Only an Occidental can waste time or money.

The hours in Jerusalem are measured by the tall, white clock-tower which crowns the gray wall by the Jaffa Gate with the same fitness with which a tall, silk hat would crown a grav-haired Bedouin. The clock in the tower has four faces and two times, — Christian and Moslem. What the Jews go by, I do not know. It may be that they split the difference.

Moslem time is very simple. At sunset it is six o’clock; that is all; and if it is cloudy for a week, the clocks are several minutes out of the way.

Christian time is much more complicated, say the sons of Ishmael. Certain Latin Fathers have charge of it, and sometimes there is no correct time to be found in the whole city. One Christmas morning I started for church down on Mount Zion, a mile away. Looking at my watch, I found it was five minutes of ten, and rather than be late, I turned into a neighboring chapel which began at the same hour. I entered softly, and lo, the auditorium was empty, save for the organist, practicing glad Christmas hymns. And the clock said nine-thirty. I compared it with my watch, and decided that the latter had gained thirty minutes over night. But the organist helped my bewildered mind.

’Our time must have been wrong for several weeks,’ he explained gravely, ‘but we did not know it till yesterday, when the Fathers found out that they were half an hour ahead. Then they set the clock back. Your watch is all right for yesterday’s time, but not for to-day’s.’

As I turned toward the church on MountZion, I thought of Mark Twain’s friend who tried in vain to regulate his watch by the ship’s clock.

Moreover, in Jerusalem, town-time and train-time are different, forty minutes different, and both are variable. Train officials say the train leaves for Jaffa at 6:40 in the morning; but 6:40 by train-time is 7:20 by town-time. One morning when we were starting for Egypt, we ordered our carriage for seven o’clock. Arriving at the station at 7:15, we found the train gone, and the station empty. At last we routed out an official.

‘Where’s the train?’ we demanded.

‘ Gone, messieurs! ’

‘Gone! You ’ve changed the hour of the train, then?’

‘Non, non, messieurs! The train leaves at the same hour as always, but the time has changed. Yesterday 6:40 train-time was 7:20 town-time. Today 6:40 train-time is 7 town-time. No, no,’ and he smiled patronizingly, ‘the train always leaves at the same hour, our trains never change, — it is the time that alters itself, not the train, messieurs! ’

We sought the telegraph office.

‘To the Hapag agent in Jaffa,’ we dictated. ‘Missed train. Cancel passage on boat for Egypt. Wire date of next sailing to Port Said.’ This was turned into flowery Turkish and sent. A reply came soon.

‘ Plenty of time. Your boat will wait till to-morrow afternoon, for the water is so rough she cannot land her passengers and cargo to-day. Plenty of time, if you take the train to-morrow.’

But there are disadvantages. For instance, if you give an afternoon tea in Jerusalem, and invite Moslem ladies, instead of arriving at the hour assigned, some of them are sure to come before luncheon. Then you or some woman of your household must occupy that sofa opposite the door. For the Pasha’s wife will probably arrive late, and, if she comes and finds the most honorable seat taken, — and no power on earth short of dynamite will dislodge native occupants, — she will have to find a less honorable place, and you will have insulted her. But no one thinks of the morning you have wasted trying to spread yourself over that large sofa.

Thus an hour of Jerusalem is as a drop in the Sea of Eternity. It does not count.

‘Wasting their time!’ I said to Abu Selim, as I bargained with him over a rare rug, and pointed to two sturdy porters dozing under the shadow of his awning. ‘Wasting their time!’

Abu Selim looked at me in amazement.

‘How can we waste time?’ said he. ‘For time has no beginning, neither has time an end.’ And he puffed at his nargileh, and sipped his coffee, while between us lay the rug.

Past the open front of his shop drifted the endless stream of leisurely Arabs, breathless tourists, begging children, laden donkeys. ‘See,’he said, and pointed to the throng, moving like a steady river. ‘It was so in my father’s day, some hastened, some lingered, some watched. It will be so all my days, and all my sons’, — there is no real change. All time is ours, the gift of Allah the Merciful. How then can we waste time?’