Lost in Time: Rediscovering our Spaces

Recently, I came across a YouTube channel called Lost in Time. [1] The channel displays short clips of old and historic footage using newsreels, home movies, travelogues, and the like.

Contents

Snapshots in time Our links to people of earlier times Significance of time and space Timeless lessons in the Qur’ān Time keeps us here; it’s also why people we see on old film are no more Islamic teleology and rediscovered spaces Action points

Immediately, the viewer feels drawn into a time long past. In some cases, the buildings and sites have outlived the people captured in the videos, but it is the scene of the ordinary, commonplace, regular happenings of life that pulls at one’s conscience. It is in “seeing” oneself through the eyes of those who stare back at the camera, and onto your screen, and into your consciousness that is utterly moving.

Everyone I was looking at isn’t alive anymore. In one video, a small boy from 1920 was featured; I looked closely at the child in range of the camera, almost posing. What was he to know of our world, a hundred years later?

The video caption poignantly read,

“What would you say if you could meet him?”

I was drawn to almost mimic his grin, his boyish smile. I tried to see in him that moment of nervous excitement when one has to pose. Nowadays, perhaps, there’s less of that feeling because everyone’s a photographer.

But growing up in the 80s and 90s, only a handful of our family actually had a camera, and having your picture taken was quite a big deal. Having the pictures processed by handing in the reel at the local chemist and then waiting some days before they were printed… was a big deal.

Snapshots in time

In Zelizer’s view, a photograph…

“…draws from broad symbolic systems in lending meaning to what is depicted.” [2]

We can mentally traverse back in time and consider the news story from the picture’s associative sides.

A photograph is able, as Moeller notes, to…

“…provoke tension in us — not only about the precise moment that the image depicts, but also about all the moments that led up to that instant and about all the moments that will follow.” [3]

This being said, an image’s impact cannot be guaranteed, and visual spaces are both opened and suppressed over time in relation to what is meaningful, appropriate, and in keeping with a particular conception of the world.

Our links to people of earlier times

With photographs, we see ourselves almost in an imaginary past — imaginary in the sense that we have no physical association with anyone in the scenes — but not so imaginary since we see something of ourselves in them.

We see the ongoing nature of life, though, without any context behind anyone or anything in the scene. We are blinded by that. The few seconds of a clip are enough, however, to transport us into that past because of perspective-taking and the imagined storytelling we impute onto such scenes.

We see ourselves in the hustle and bustle of 1890 Copenhagen, 1910 Delhi, or 1920 London. Life just seems normal. The people in the scenes behave, seemingly, without a care in the world, though that is only what is observable.

Significance of time and space

What are points of learning for us all, as we encounter a time long past, a people, none of whom are with us anymore, and how do we relate to ourselves through them?

What is it in them that is also in us, and what can we take from them that they were completely unaware about?

A person typically might not look at a camera lens and evaluate time and its significance. In some way, he may do. He might have a picture taken at a graduation or with his small children, for posterity. But how do we relate to seeing others?

The Qur’ān calls on us to travel the world and consider those who were once inhabitants of spaces:

“Have they not travelled through the land and seen how those who lived before them met their end? They were more numerous than them, stronger than them, and made a more impressive mark on the land, yet what they achieved was of no use to them at all.” [4]

Transitioning through space, considering of numbers, strength, and self-imagined impact on the world can mean nothing when life and living serves only self-promoting and gratuitous ends. In the above verse, we are reminded that whatever psychology of man informs his actions today also existed in peoples of yesterday.

In numbers, so too did nations of the past boast of excessive strength and prosperity. Magnificent buildings, fortresses, and towers that were one day a source of pride came in time to mean nothing for the sculptors and builders and for whom they were constructed.

In Percy Shelley’s eighteenth-century poem, Ozymandias, centred on the pharaoh Rameses II, he writes,

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”[5]

The point being that time has corroded the person of Rameses II, his sculpture, and as the Qur’ān describes of previous nations, “his impressive mark on the land”. [6]

Though, in the words of the poet, he gloated his social standing, “nothing beside remains”, the land is “boundless and bare”, and the sands that stretch far away are “lone and level”. [5]

Timeless lessons in the Qur’ān

There are many examples in the Qur’ān wherein an event is described and its lesson in time for later generations is emphasised.

The Qur’ān describes the Prophet Moses (Mūsa) instructing his antagonist Pharaoh (Firʿawn) to exhibit a mindfulness of Allah,

“And say, ‘Would you be willing to purify yourself, and let me guide you to your Lord so that you will be in awe of Him?’” [7]

The lesson was lost with the Pharaoh, but the revelation of the Qur’ān positions his example as a timeless reminder about the potentiality of man at a later time to attain what the Pharaoh failed to in his time — khushūʿ of Allah (awe of Allah).

“Surely, in this is a lesson for whoever stands in awe of Allah.” [8]

Time then becomes a crucial reminder.

As the viewer stares back at people staring at a camera lens, some maybe for the first time — in this, their behaviour speaks of the novelty of the moment. They squirm, giggle — one video shows a group of boys trying to get in view of the camera and one of the boys takes centre stage by posing with his new linen. Life is ongoing but so, too, is time ticking away. We forget the seconds that pass us, which become minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years.

As time lapses for us all and we, too, one day become a memory, and perhaps in time others we have never met will look at us on old YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram clips and feel in us what we feel in others. Maybe they will comment on our behaviours, our poses, our sense of unmindful acting out in the world. Time, for the observer and the observed is what really joins us.

Time keeps us here; it’s also why people we see on old film are no more

Time, the essence of that which keeps us here, and that which also means that those we see in photographs or moving images are no longer here.

Allah says in the Qur’ān,

“By the passing of time, indeed, mankind is in loss, except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience.” [9]

A monumental chapter, al-‘Aṣr (The Time) — revealed in Makkah according to the majority of commentators — reveals a remarkable comprehensiveness compressed into a few brief words.

When two companions of the Prophet ﷺ would meet, they would not depart until they had read Surat al-‘Aṣr. [10] Their focus on this short, three verse chapter as a departing reminder speaks profoundly as to the world view of the Prophet’s companions.

They lived with the realisation and the action-producing belief that life is short and the way they lived their lives had immense consequences in the life to come, as well as in shaping their realities at the time.

The Prophet ﷺ said that the wisest of believers is he who remembers death the most and prepares for death the most. As a result, preparation for the eventual return to Allah becomes an integral part of any undertakings in the believer’s life.

In watching the lives of others long gone, the reminder is for us.

Islamic teleology and rediscovered spaces

The Prophet’s cousin, ‘Alī ibn abī Tālib (radiy Allahu ‘anhu), said,

“Set out with the world at your back and the Hereafter at your front. Each of them both has their children. Be children of the Hereafter and not children of the world, for today is for action and not reckoning, while tomorrow is for reckoning and not action.” [11]

These words of ‘Alī ibn abī Tālib hit home a salient point about life and purpose. They designate life and living as mediums for realisation in the next life, situating one’s future reckoning as determined by one’s present actions.

And the insight of the Prophet’s companion is drawn from numerous Qur’ānic verses that deliberate on this point, for example:

“And so, he who shall have done an atom’s weight of good, shall behold it; and he who shall have done an atom’s weight of evil, shall behold it.” [12]

Dan Maria comments that spaces need to be dug out from forgetting, that…

“…there is an essential difference between the rediscovered space, and a space which went lost, somewhen in time compared to the ‘found’ space.” [13]

In the context of this piece, that ‘found’ space and ‘rediscovered’ space both exist in one paradigm. What was lost is often man’s realisation about the fading nature of time, and what is rediscovered through contemplative introspection is an awareness about that.

The attention to old clips and photographs, to old memories, to an imagined storying of the past, can each reconnect us to what need be meaningful in the present.

Time, the Prophet’s companions would say, “works on you day and night, so why don’t you also work in those days and nights?” You, they would say, “are only a collection of days, and when a day leaves you, a part of you also leaves.”

The teleology of Islam positions life as a test to determine the extent to which a person will embrace goodness, and shun the immoral. The state of man can both blossom as well as deteriorate, and it is the test of life that man seeks to know and love God through the refining of his inner self:

“Consider the human self, and how it is formed in accordance with what it is meant to be. And inspired it to know its own rebellion and piety!” [14]

In life, man is called to be conscious, to utilise and honour the time he has, to know His Creator, to love and serve Him.

This correct mindset should propel him to view the utilisation of time as an investment for the life to come.

Time, therefore, is a remarkable gift, an opportunity, an experience.

Allah in the Qur’ān says,

“O you who have believed, fear Allah. And let every soul look to what it has put forth for tomorrow — and fear Allah. Indeed, Allah is Acquainted with what you do.” [15]

Action points

Being mindful of the value of time is an essential attribute of a Muslim.
Being conscious of the world around us and the way time also has its effects on others is a precious skill.
Remember that good deeds performed in our short time have immeasurable consequences in this life and the next.