Common Cuckoo

Timeless trickery

The Sound of Music is one of my favorite films of all time. I have genuinely lost count of the amount of times I have watched it and I know most of its songs by heart. One of my favorites is the song the Von Trapp children sing as they leave to go to bed:

There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall

And the bells in the steeple too

And up in the nursery an absurd little bird

Is popping out to say, "Cuckoo"

Ever since I saw that film for the first time, I’ve wanted a Cuckoo clock. Cuckoo clocks were first created in Germany in the 17th century. Like many other traditional clocks, they produce a sound every hour to tell the time. But whereas other clocks use bells and chimes to do this, the Cuckoo clock has a little bird popping out, accompanied by a coo-coo sound of wooden whistles. One coo-coo for every hour. Traditionally, Cuckoo clocks were decorated with pinecones as weights. Over time, they developed to have many more moving parts, including dancing townsmen and women. The clock is a true child of the rural German Black Forest region. Many farmers made these iconic timepieces from local wood to gain some extra income during the winter months.

Although Cuckoo clocks have nowadays fallen out of fashion, we are most definitely a people of the clock. Never in human history have people been as aware of the exact calculation of the time at any given moment as we are. Our phones, computers, microwaves, digital alarm clocks, watches, and even our cars ensure that we are never in doubt about what time it is, to the minute.

Before the rather recent invention of the clock, time was more relative. When it was measured, it was mostly done by tracing the sun, such as with a sundial. That means that in the winter, as the days were shorter, time literally went by faster than in the summer. The mechanic clock detached time from the cycles of the sun and the moon and turned it into an abstract, exact science. With the dawn of electricity, time was detached even from its pendulum as electronic clocks replaced clockwork mechanisms and made even more precise and continuous calculations. No more 'rewinding the clock’. Nowadays, atomic clocks calculate the exact time based on the oscillation of an atom. Every second, the atom used for these calculations moves a little over nine billion times: 9,192,631,770 times to be exact.

Time also used to be a very local phenomenon, as most cities and communities lived on their own time. Because traveling was slow and immediate long-distance communication was not possible, there was no need for time zones or standardization of time. But with processes of centralization, the creation of nation-states, and the rise of the Industrial and Transport Revolutions came a need for the unification of time. Then, with the coming of clock time, suddenly, we found our ‘workday’ extending far beyond the hours of daylight. Suddenly, workers were no longer paid for the product of their labor, but for their ‘labor’ itself, by the hour. And suddenly, in some places, we started greeting each other with “good afternoon” long before the solar noon, and with “good evening” long before the setting of the sun.

But Muslims are reminded every now and then to let go of this tight and standardized grip of the mechanical hands of time. At least five times a day, to be exact. The time for our prayers is calculated based on the position of the sun. The first prayer of the day, fajr, is prayed in the magical and quiet time just after the break of dawn, before sunrise. Zuhr, the second prayer, interrupts the busyness of the day and is prayed after the solar noon. ‘Asr, the third prayer, is prayed after the sun is halfway on its journey down towards the horizon. After sunset, it is time for the fourth prayer, maghrib. The fifth and last prayer of the day, ‘isha, is prayed after the last hues of light have left the horizon and the blanket of night is firmly tucked in. And when after a peaceful night of sleep, the blanket loosens and the first brave rays of light escape its embrace, we start all over again.

Prayer times differ from city to city, even from mosque to mosque, just like all of time used to before standardization. The Islamic sense of time is not centered around a machine. It is centered around God and promotes localized relationships with God’s creation. As creation is in constant worship of its Creator, so too we are reminded not to forget what truly matters as the cycle of time progresses.

But for many Muslims, the mechanical hands of time have also gotten hold of their prayers. Many Muslims no longer look at the sun but at their phones to determine whether it is time to pray. I was once a guest at a friend’s house during Ramadan. I told her I thought it was time to start our fast and pray fajr, since I could see the light on the horizon from her window. She, however, assured me that her app told her we had another thirty minutes. Thirty minutes later, the sun was already rising. Similarly, I once attended a Muslim event where maghrib prayer started whilst the sun was still up because they were following the standardized calculation of their prayer app.

I don’t think God rejects any prayers or fasts when performed with sincere intentions. In the end, we are the ones in need of our prayers, not God. But I do think these examples show the extent to which we have become confused and detached from our natural environment, and from rooted, meaningful conceptions of time.

The Cuckoo was chosen to be the teller of the time for a reason. Long before the invention of the Cuckoo clock, the Common Cuckoo had already been associated with the passing of time, but not on an hourly basis. Before, the calls of the Cuckoo were welcomed in many parts of Europe as a hopeful sign that spring was just around the corner and the cold and dark winter days would soon be a distant memory.

The song of the Cuckoo was thus a beloved song amongst many peoples, symbolizing change and the passage of time. But the song of the Cuckoo is not equally beloved amongst other birds, for it symbolizes a different sort of change. Cuckoos are known for their so-called ‘brood parasitic activities’. This means they have a tendency to lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. They then rely on these other birds to incubate their eggs and raise their young.

Sometimes the host birds will recognize that the egg is not their own and push it out. But at other times, they don’t, and they simply incubate the egg. When the Cuckoo egg hatches, the young Cuckoo pushes any other Chicks or eggs out of the nest, to ensure it receives the host parents’ full attention. This leads to incredible scenes, such as the scene below of a European Robin feeding a much larger young Cuckoo that it is raising as its own.

European Robin feeding a young Common Cuckoo

The Cuckoo of capitalism has laid its egg in the Muslim mind. It hatched the contemporary idea of time, and we have raised it as if it is our own flesh and blood. We don’t even know that this mechanic idea of time is not indigenous to our tradition. In fact, in certain ways, it may even be in opposition to it.

The capitalist conception of time tells us that all seconds are created equal. Time is a neutral, measurable resource that becomes positive only when it is used as productively as possible. An hour spent in work is valued, and an hour lost in rest is not. Similarly, in the eyes of the capitalist, all dollars are created equal. A dollar spent in charity is therefore a loss, whereas a dollar made through exploitation is a profit. Our faith tells us the exact opposite.

Not all seconds are created equal. For example, if we were to take this capitalist conception of time and apply it to prayer, we would conclude that the more we pray, the more we profit. But this is not necessarily true. In the Islamic paradigm, value comes not from the quantity of time but from the quality of intention. As such, a whole night of prayer performed out of social pressure is void of any value, whereas a single prayer uttered with sincerity is invaluable. But even when prayer is performed with beautiful intentions, it may not lead to insight and good character. As such, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said that an hour of true reflection can be worth more than a year of prayer. In another narration, he said that making peace between people among whom there is discord is more valuable than praying, fasting, and charity combined. In the end, the best believers are those with the best character, which are not necessarily those who spend the most hours in prayer. So in the Islamic framework, an hour of rest could be more valuable than an hour of work and even an hour of prayer. It is all dependent on the ever-changing context, intentions, and effects on one’s character.

The relativity of time is emphasized in chapters such as Surah Al-Qadr, ‘The Power’, the ninety-seventh chapter of the Qur’an. In it, one night, Laylat Al-Qadr (‘The Night of Power’), the night in which the Qur’an was sent down, is said to be “better than a thousand months” (Qur’an 97:3). If you pray sincerely on this night, it is as though you have prayed sincerely for at least a thousand months. Similarly, we are told that for those who fast an additional six days in the month after Ramadan, it will be like they have fasted an entire year. But the lesson many Muslims learn from this is not that time is relative, a formable clay in the hands of the Shaper of All. Rather, like capitalists, we greedily attempt to optimize our productivity and try to say as many prayers as possible during these moments when the stock value of time rises exponentially. We focus not on the quality and sincerity of the ‘subhanallah’ (‘Glory to God’) we utter, but instead try to say the devotional phrase as many times as possible to reap maximum rewards. We have been taught to manage time, but in doing so, we have forgotten to simply value it.

Far beyond the trickery of the Cuckoo, time itself is the greatest trickster. There are moments when she stands still. At other moments she crawls, runs, or even flies. That’s because time is not an objective reality. In every moment, time is God’s canvas, and we are the colors and shapes with which God paints the story of creation. In every moment, we are the hands of time. In this very moment, God writes these words in your sight, the thoughts in your brain, and the feelings in your heart. And the Qur’an tells us to “Read!” (Qur’an 96:1). But we prefer to just focus on reading the clock.

Time makes us believe that there is a barrier between this second and the next, between today and tomorrow, and ultimately, between this life and the next. It’s a trickery our eyes cannot unsee, just like they cannot see beyond darkness and light. But for the One Who is the First and the Last, it is all but the blink of one eye.

We have broken up time into seconds, even milliseconds, but in reality, time is continuous, like a flowing river that speeds up sometimes and slows down at other times. The only certainty we have is that it will one day reach the ocean. But in a mysteriously beautiful way, the river is already connected to the ocean. It’s already a part of the same body of water. In the here and now, we are already connected to the hereafter. And even in separation, we are already with God.

As the clock separates hours from hours and minutes from minutes, it comes with the danger of separating much more. Of separating the worker from his product. Of separating humanity from our natural environment. And of ultimately separating creation from the Creator.

It doesn’t have to be that way. If we’re mindful of the trickery of time, we can honor our time on this earth in a beautiful way. In Surah Al- ‘Asr, ‘The Passage of Time’, the 103rd chapter of the Qur’an, we are taught: “By the passage of time, humanity is in loss, except those who have faith, do good, and urge each other to the truth, and urge each other to patience” (Qur’an 103:1-3). Those are the things with which we value our time. Whether they are found in rest or in work, and in prayer or in care. Time passes by, but the here and now is a constant. The here and now is undivided by the blinking of our eyes, the coming and going of our words, and the chopping of the hands of our clocks. And in the here and now, we can always choose to do what is faithful, good, truthful, and patient.

In Mecca, the Clock Tower of modernity looks down on the traditional ways of the pilgrims. The cycle of its hands is literally raised above the cycle of the tawaf, the circumambulation of the Kaʿba. Pilgrims at the Kaʿba look up not at God’s creation but at humanity’s creation to see whether it is almost time to pray. Let’s look up at the sun again. And let’s focus a little more on the concept of time symbolized by the song of the real Cuckoo, as opposed to the one symbolized by the Cuckoo clock, so perhaps we may see through the timeless trickery every now and then.