A Conversation with Myself
[I'm leaving it to your discretion to allow, after correcting it, the departments of government in Ankara to hear this conversation.]
Were the judge to be prosecutor in addition to being judge, it would make unfortunates like myself exclaim: “I'm at a loss to know who I should complain to about whom!” For my situation now is more distressing than when in prison, even. A single day weighs heavier on me than a month's solitary confinement. I have been banned from everything, despite my being a stranger, elderly, ill, weak, and impoverished. I see no one except a child and a sick man. I have anyway suffered the torments of total solitary confinement for twenty years. If they cause me greater distress with their isolating me and their surveillance, it is to be feared that it will cause divine wrath to descend and a natural disaster to occur. As I said in court, there have been numerous events like the four earthquakes that occurred simultaneously with assaults on me. Now I reckon even, that the fire which broke out in Afyon Court may have occurred because it disregarded my application about the Risale‑i Nur made to Denizli Court and caused me to despair, although I had relied on it to defend my rights and protect me.
I say: The fair‑minded, humane authorities of this town, and its police and judiciary, have a weighty responsibility to protect me. For three courts and the central government gave the decision for our acquittal and release after scrutinizing for nine months all my works and correspondence of twenty years. But in order to reverse our acquittal, a secret society which strives on account of foreign interests to cause this nation and country severe harm, made mountains out of molehills and aroused suspicions against us in certain officials. Their purpose was to exhaust my patience and force me to give in. Anyway, one reason they're angry with me is that I maintain my silence and don't interfere with worldly matters. It's as though they are saying: “Why don't you meddle so that we can realize our aims?”
I am here revealing one or two of the stratagems they employ to arouse the suspicions of certain officials.
They say: Said is influential; his works are both effective and numerous. People who have contact with him, love him. So we have to destroy his influence by isolating him from everything, denigrating him, giving him no importance, putting people off him, and scaring them away. They confuse the government and cause me terrible distress.
So I say:
My brothers who love this nation and country! Yes, there is influence, as those dissemblers say, but it isn't mine; it's the Risale‑i Nur's. And it cannot be broken; the more it is attacked, the more it gains strength. It has never been utilized against the nation or country, and it isn't and it could not be. The fact that two courts with ten years between them could find no genuine reason to convict us after scrutinizing my vehement and impassioned documents of twenty years is irrefutable testimony to this claim.
Yes, it's true the works have a powerful effect, but they are powerful in serving the true interests of the nation and country and their happiness and eternal life, by instructing a hundred thousand people in true, affirmative belief without causing them any harm whatsoever. Absolutely undeniable proof of this claim is the fact that hundreds of convicts in Denizli Prison, some of whom had been convicted of serious crimes, became most well‑behaved and religious by virtue of the treatise The Fruits of Belief alone. Murderers of two or three people even refrained from killing bedbugs, and as testified to by the prison governor, the prison turned into a reformatory.
So to isolate me from everything is torturous torment and a compounded injustice and cruel treachery towards this nation. Certain evidence that although I have passed the last thirty to forty years of my life among this religious nation, it has received no harm but the benefits of strengthened morale and belief, is the fact that its people have disregarded the violent propaganda against me and on all sides have flocked to the Risale‑i Nur and shown extraordinary interest in it, and I have to admit also towards myself far greater than my due,
I heard that the authorities here had applied for a pension for me, to make things easier for me, and it was accepted. Although I thank them for their kindness, I say this:
What I need most is my freedom, which has been the guiding principle of my life. The restrictions on my freedom and my being held in oppressive circumstances due to baseless suspicions, have completely blighted life for me. I would prefer incarceration in prison, or even in the grave, to this situation. But my patience and fortitude are strengthened since the recompense for serving religious belief increases proportionately to the hardships suffered. These kind persons are not seeking to oppress me, so in the first place they should not restrict my licit freedom. I can live without bread, but not without freedom!
Certainly, someone who through practising severe economy and frugality has lived on a mere two hundred lira in the nineteen years of his exile and in order to preserve his freedom and the honour of the learned profession, has never exhibited any need nor become indebted to anyone nor accepted charity, alms, a salary or gifts — such a person needs his freedom within the bounds of justice rather than a pension. I am suffering oppression to an unparalleled degree, and here describe a couple of examples:
The First: In great consternation I was hiding The Fruits of Belief and defence speeches so that they should not be seized, although they had been accepted by the court as a scholarly defence of the Risale‑i Nur and had been sent to seven departments of government in Ankara and to the President and had consequently been a reason for our acquittal and had been recommended by the Ankara experts' committee, and several copies of which had been written out by our fellow-prisoners as a memento for me, and the Denizli police had seen them and had not bothered with them and they had been openly left for a night in Afyon police station and with the police here. I was extremely anxious and worried that they would carry out a search and that I would be unable to tell them to put them somewhere safe since in my banishment here I wouldn't know them.
The Second: Someone from Istanbul obtained the Treatise for the Elderly from someone here and took it to Istanbul. Denizli Court had found nothing objectionable in it and Eskişehir Court objected to a single word which was replied to with a single letter. Somehow or other it fell into the hands of an irreligious person who was hostile to me. He made ten mountains out of one molehill and threw the provincial police into confusion, who then started to question who I was meeting with and who was with me and to pressurize me. There have been so many distressing incidents like this. The most meaningless, however, was their scaring everyone away from me except for a child and a sick man, to prevent my explaining the matter.
So I say this:
In place of ten men who stay away from me, tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Muslims continue to read the Risale‑i Nur paying no atten- tion to any obstacles. Each of its thousands of copies which are spreading both here and abroad due to their powerful truths and benefits, speak in my place and far better than I do. They do not fall silent when I do, and they cannot be silenced.
Moreover, since it has been proved in court that for twenty years I have severed all connections with politics and there has been not the slightest sign to the contrary, it is surely completely meaningless to be suspicious of people who meet with me.