The Clockmaker's Apprentice

Kerem had been working in Usta Rıfat's tiny clock repair shop for almost eight months, yet he had not been allowed to touch a single watch that mattered. Every morning, the old man handed him a cloth and a bottle of oil and told him to clean the tools. Every afternoon, Kerem watched customers come and go through the narrow door, carrying family heirlooms that ticked unevenly, stuttered or had simply fallen silent. One rainy Thursday, a woman brought in a silver pocket watch that had belonged to her grandfather. Usta Rıfat examined it under his lamp, murmured something about a damaged balance spring, and left to collect a part from a supplier two streets away. "Don't touch it," he said, buttoning his coat. "I mean it." For a while Kerem obeyed. But the watch lay open on the bench, and the problem looked so obvious that he began to wonder why the master made such a fuss. Surely, he thought, a steady hand and a pair of tweezers were all that was needed. Hardly daring to breathe, he lifted the spring, and in a single careless second it jumped out of position and vanished into the dust on the floor. When Usta Rıfat returned, Kerem confessed at once, expecting to be sent home for good. The old man said nothing. He knelt down, switched on a small torch and, after ten silent minutes, found the spring wedged between two floorboards. Then he handed Kerem a magnifying glass. "Look at how thin it is," he said. "Thinner than your hair. If you had listened to me, you would never have lost it. But since you have, you may as well learn how to put it right." For the next three hours, the master guided him through the repair, stopping him whenever his fingers moved too quickly. "Slower," he kept saying. "The watch will not run any faster just because you are in a hurry." By evening the pocket watch was ticking again, a soft, regular sound that Kerem found strangely moving. He wished he had not been so impatient that morning, but he also felt, for the first time, that he had earned his place in the shop. "Tomorrow," said Usta Rıfat, hanging up his coat, "you may clean the tools again. But this time you will know what they are for."