Amman, Sept. 20 (Petra) -- In a small watch repair shop in downtown Amman, the ticking of an old clock can mean far more than the passing of seconds. For some customers, it is the sound of a father, a mother or a grandparent, returning with a timepiece that has survived long after its original owner.

For Mazen Mustafa Al-Awali, known as "Abu Darwish the Watchmaker," bringing those clocks and watches back to life has become both a profession and a way of preserving memories.

Al-Awali inherited the craft from his father, whose journey as a watchmaker began in Beirut before taking him to Haifa and eventually Jordan. He opened his first shop in Aqaba in 1948 before moving to Amman, where he established several branches over the years.

The family business eventually settled in downtown Amman’s Nabulsi Market, near the former Al-Salam Restaurant.

Al-Awali told the Jordan News Agency (Petra) that his relationship with watches began in childhood, when he would watch his father and older brothers work with the tiny gears, springs and mechanisms hidden behind watch faces.

The youngest of the brothers to learn the trade, he gradually mastered it through observation and practice. What began as a childhood fascination became a lifelong craft and, for Al-Awali, a way of carrying his father’s name and legacy forward.

He still recalls his father’s stories about Amman’s old watch market, when the city had only a handful of watchmakers and competition looked very different from today.

The craftsmen, he said, shared breakfast and even customers. If one watchmaker had already made his first sale of the day and another had not, the next customer might be directed to the colleague who was still waiting for business.

The idea was simple: everyone should earn enough to support a family.

For that generation, Al-Awali said, the trade was a livelihood that could be shared rather than a market in which customers had to be guarded from competitors. They believed cooperation brought blessing to their work and income.

The watches on his workbench have changed considerably since then.

Electronic and quartz watches, battery-powered models and automatic movements transformed the industry, while repairing older pieces has become increasingly difficult as some manufacturers have stopped producing the components needed to restore them.

Yet the most challenging watches are not always the most mechanically complicated.

Some arrive covered in dirt after years of neglect. Others have worn or broken parts that are difficult to replace. But many carry something less visible: a family story.

A customer may bring in a father's watch, a mother's clock or a timepiece inherited from a grandparent, hoping not simply to make it work again but to hear a familiar sound that has been absent for years.

When the hands begin moving again, Al-Awali said, the reaction can be deeply emotional.

Some customers cry when an old clock begins ticking, particularly when it is tied to someone they have lost or to an important period in their lives. Those moments, he said, are among the most rewarding parts of his work.

They have also taught him that the value of a watch cannot always be measured by its price.

An inexpensive timepiece may be priceless to its owner because of the memories attached to it, while some older watches have become rare artifacts whose historical value far exceeds their original cost.

That is why Al-Awali approaches old watches as more than instruments for measuring time.

For him, they also represent precision, discipline and respect for time, qualities he believes continue to give watches a place in people's lives even in an age when the hour is displayed on almost every digital device.

Watchmaking itself demands patience, accuracy and an affection for detail, he said, qualities he hopes a younger generation will be willing to learn.

Al-Awali is prepared to teach the craft free of charge to any young person genuinely interested in mastering its skills and secrets.

His ambition goes further. He hopes eventually to establish a specialized center or institute where people can learn to repair old watches, wall clocks and alarm clocks, passing on knowledge that he fears could otherwise disappear.

For now, that knowledge remains alive in his downtown Amman shop.

There, as the world outside moves ever faster, Abu Darwish continues to work over stopped hands and silent mechanisms, restoring their movement one piece at a time.

And when an old clock begins to tick again, it sometimes restores more than time. It gives a memory its voice back.

//Petra// RZ