Chapter Two: The Bell of Time
In the school hall there is a clock on the wall. Its long hand moves with a sound you can hear in the quiet, and the candidates lift their heads to it every two minutes. In the greater hall there is no clock to be seen, but its hand moves inside your own chest: your heart is the hand, your breaths are the ticks, and you carry your counter with you to your bed, to your work and on your journeys, and you cannot take it off for a single hour.
Time in this hall passes like cloud and travels like lightning, warning you of that sudden end where the breath is cut off and the papers are taken in. God has drawn the majesty of that ambush, and its severity, in His words:
مَا يَنظُرُونَ إِلَّا صَيْحَةًۭ وَٰحِدَةًۭ تَأْخُذُهُمْ وَهُمْ يَخِصِّمُونَ فَلَا يَسْتَطِيعُونَ تَوْصِيَةًۭ وَلَآ إِلَىٰٓ أَهْلِهِمْ يَرْجِعُونَ
They await but one Shout, which will surprise them while they are disputing. Then they cannot make bequest, nor can they return to their own folk.
Look closely at the scene: people in the middle of a quarrel, their voices raised, each pulling the right to his own side, not yet finished speaking. No illness came first. No farewell was said. No will was written. One Cry — and the quarrel hangs unsettled for ever, and the last word is never spoken. That is how the time is taken in the greater hall: no warning five minutes before, no invigilator's voice saying, you have one minute left.
No Extension and No Appeal
Everyone who has sat an examination knows that moment: the paper is not finished, the last question is begun and not completed, and the candidate lifts his eyes to the invigilator and asks him under his breath for one minute, only one. Perhaps the invigilator of this world gives way and grants it. In the greater hall the same request is set down in the text, and the answer is set down with it:
وَأَنفِقُوا۟ مِن مَّا رَزَقْنَٰكُم مِّن قَبْلِ أَن يَأْتِىَ أَحَدَكُمُ ٱلْمَوْتُ فَيَقُولَ رَبِّ لَوْلَآ أَخَّرْتَنِىٓ إِلَىٰٓ أَجَلٍۢ قَرِيبٍۢ فَأَصَّدَّقَ وَأَكُن مِّنَ ٱلصَّٰلِحِينَ وَلَن يُؤَخِّرَ ٱللَّهُ نَفْسًا إِذَا جَآءَ أَجَلُهَا ۚ وَٱللَّهُ خَبِيرٌۢ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ
And spend of that wherewith We have provided you before death cometh unto one of you and he saith: My Lord! If only thou wouldst reprieve me for a little while, then I would give alms and be among the righteous. But Allah reprieveth no soul when its term cometh, and Allah is Informed of what ye do.
He asks to be put off for a little while, and promises that he will give in charity and be among the righteous. There is nothing wrong with the request itself, had it come in its time; the failure is that it came after the pen had been lifted. And the answer is plain, with nothing hedged in it: no soul is put off once its hour has come. Then the same scene returns in another place, in words more urgent still:
حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا جَآءَ أَحَدَهُمُ ٱلْمَوْتُ قَالَ رَبِّ ٱرْجِعُونِ لَعَلِّىٓ أَعْمَلُ صَٰلِحًۭا فِيمَا تَرَكْتُ ۚ كَلَّآ ۚ إِنَّهَا كَلِمَةٌ هُوَ قَآئِلُهَا ۖ وَمِن وَرَآئِهِم بَرْزَخٌ إِلَىٰ يَوْمِ يُبْعَثُونَ
Until, when death cometh unto one of them, he saith: My Lord! Send me back, That I may do right in that which I have left behind! But nay! It is but a word that he speaketh; and behind them is a barrier until the day when they are raised.
He asks for one thing only: to be sent back. He does not ask for money, or children, or health. He asks to be returned to his seat. And the seat he used to sit in yawning, counting the minutes until the time was up, finding one line too heavy to write — that is the seat he will beg to be returned to, and will not be.
The bell at the end
The bell rings without warning while the candidate's pen is in the middle of a word. He says: one moment. Nobody hears him. He stretches his hand to finish the letter, and the paper is drawn out from under it. The pen stays hanging in the air, writing on the desk. He leaves with the others, with an answer in his pocket that never reached its paper.
The tick in the chest stops. No bell is heard, but the whole examination knows that one man has handed in. The record is folded up on what is in it: on the finished line, on the unfinished line, and on the blank space its owner meant to fill tomorrow. The door of writing is shut, the file is sealed, and it is not opened until the day it is laid out.
Every nation and every man has a fixed term that comes neither early nor late, and the instant the time is up the file of deeds is closed and the door of writing is shut. The point of this is not that a man should live terrified of his hour — a terrified candidate does not write one straight line. The point is that he should sit the way a man sits who knows the time is short. A brief text has come down describing that way of sitting, and it saves a great deal of talk:
«كنْ في الدنيا كأنَّك غريبٌ أو عابرُ سبيل»
Be in this world as though you were a stranger, or someone passing through on a journey.
A stranger does not build himself a house to settle in for ever in a land not his own, and a traveller does not spread out his belongings halfway along the road. And look at what the narrator adds after it: when evening comes, do not wait for the morning; when morning comes, do not wait for the evening; take from your health for your illness, and from your life for your death. That is exactly the method of the good candidate: he does not leave to the end of the time a question he can answer now, because he cannot be sure of reaching the end of the time.
A Door Left Open As Long As the Hand Turns
For all the severity of the counter in this hall, there is something in its rules that takes you by surprise: the door of correcting your own work stays open until the last second. The candidate who ruined the whole first page, who is halfway through the time and has written nothing worth mentioning, may begin now, and nobody says to him: you have missed your chance. Of how wide this door is, it has come:
«إنَّ اللهَ عزَّ وجلَّ يبسطُ يدَه بالليلِ ليتوبَ مُسيءُ النهار، ويبسطُ يدَه بالنهارِ ليتوبَ مُسيءُ الليل، حتى تطلعَ الشمسُ من مغربها»
God stretches out His hand by night so that the one who did wrong by day may turn back to Him, and stretches out His hand by day so that the one who did wrong by night may turn back to Him — until the sun rises from where it sets.
A hand stretched out at night for the one who did wrong by day, and a hand stretched out by day for the one who did wrong at night; and the door is not shut until one great sign in the heavens. So the matter is not how long the heedlessness has lasted. The matter is that the hand is still turning. And as long as it turns, the paper is in your hand, the pen has not been taken, and the next line is still a blank page.