Reham El-Adawi discovers a rare species of collector Mention time in this cozy neighbourhood near the Citadel and immediately you will be led through a narrow labyrinth of lanes to one of many houses -- nondescript on the outside. It is to its occupant, a civil servant well known throughout the neighbourhood as a mender of time-keeping machinery -- a service he provides gratis to his neighbours -- that you are now being introduced. Already Adel El-Nadi -- also well known as a patron of the Mameluke Mosque in the vicinity, to which he donated a rare grandfather clock -- is welcoming you in with a smile. Yet it is to the breath-taking number of clocks that your attention is irrevocably drawn -- more than 500 of them lining the walls (some are even set up on the ceiling), cluttering the tables, the floor, filling every available space in the bathroom and the kitchen; so much so that there is barely any room to sit. El-Nadi as it turns out leads a double life: On the surface he is a department head at the cultural programme of national radio; deep down he lives to collect and mend old clocks. Indeed, he explains as we squeeze into our seats, it takes an entire year of painstaking exertion to repair some of these rare specimens: "Some pieces date back to the 19th century; they seem to encapsulate so much history and mythology in themselves, stories of kings and nobles -- and, hidden inside the wooden frameworks that contain them, the dynamics of political alignments through the ages." Among the more remarkable pieces is the clock that used to hang in the office of the general director of the Egyptian post in Ataba -- it dates back to 1920 -- and the clock that hung in the Muslim Brothers headquarters in the 1930s. "It was a gift to the Brothers from Germany, strangely enough," El-Nadi explains; "it seems they had political connections with the Nazi regime." Designed specifically for the Brothers, it carries their logo -- an open Qur'an and two crossed swords with the words for "Be prepared for them" inscribed in the middle. There is also a German-made rarity depicting Zeus punishing Atlas by ordering him to bear the globe on his shoulders for all eternity, and three American clocks with hand-made enamel dating back to 1882. One of El-Nadi's own favourites is the Zodiac clock: made of pure bronze, it sports the 12 Zodiac signs in place of the numbers. "You ask what time it is and the answer is '15 past Gemini'," El-Nadi quips, pointing to it. It was a lunar clock -- the property of a once feudal family in Mansoura, with which they would not part for less than LE120,000 -- that was his most challenging acquisition, however. "This was 10 years ago," he recalls, "and the clock is now worth LE250,000. But at the time I went through many difficulties, including embezzling my own relatives," he laughs, "in order to gather the required sum." As we fall prey to the omnipresent tick-tocking of the house's honoured residents -- a peculiarly soothing sound, once you get used to it -- El-Nadi recounts how it all started a little over 30 years ago, when his father, the proud owner of two old grandfather clocks, decided to have them repaired. "He went from one saati [clock and watch mender] to another," El- Nadi recounts, "all in vain. And I knew how much the clocks meant to my father so I decided I'd have a go at them myself." This led to a meticulous process of discovery -- self- education. El-Nadi drew a diagramme of each clock as he dismantled it, working out, one by one, where each of its constituent elements should fit. His success ultimately was more than a pleasant surprise for his father: It encouraged him to repeat the experience, fixing the clocks of friends and relations. "This gave me the chance to extend my understanding of the inner workings of the clock," he says. Appointed at the radio at age 20, El-Nadi was already spending 10 hours a day fixing clocks. He became so enamoured of them he began to seek them out, asking an antique dealer friend of his first to hand over all the rare pieces he might encounter, then to introduce him into the auction scene. Today El-Nadi has contacts with brokers all over Egypt. In being part of the business El-Nadi is hardly after profit, though. The owner of what is arguably Egypt's most impressive collection (the value of which he estimates at $3 million), El-Nadi leads a quiet life, living on his moderate salary. "Although I have a limited income," he elaborates, "I've actually spent money on this hobby. I can't deny that sometimes I'm forced to sell, but it's not so much to make a profit as to make another purchase possible." The clock market, he adds, is a strange realm. "On one occasion I bought a single clock for LE120,000 but paid LE5 for a whole set of clocks -- just as marvellous." And the criteria by which he judges the clocks he acquires include not only age and history but appearance and condition. Why does he not exhibit? The idea occurred to him in March 1998, he says, but the auctioneer raised the prices too much for anything to be sold; more tragically, some pieces were damaged in the process of transportation. He has not considered a public exhibition since. That said, El-Nadi's wife is jealous of his passion for clocks: "She gets angry because the hobby takes up all my time, because the flat is more and more cluttered -- so much so that I'm seriously considering renting another place for the collection." One can hardly blame her, after all: The couple sleep in a room that contains 17 fully functional grandfather clocks. "Some people like wallpaper," El-Nadi says. "I prefer clocks..." But it warms his heart, occasionally, to realise he is not all alone in this passion. Once a local carpenter asked him to come and repair an old clock in the house of an old aunt who refused to let it out of the house. "The woman was 90 years old. She told me how her late husband had placed the clock on the wall in 1936. It had to come down to be fixed, though, and the moment I took it down I felt as if I was carving out the woman's heart." When he brought it back, working, after two days, both he and the woman burst out crying. "I could not help myself," he says.
