My Dear, Loyal Brothers!
Don't be offended that, because of my indisposition, I am answering your numerous letters with one, single, wretched letter.
Firstly: Our secret enemies have employed every stratagem to gain a hold over several high‑ranking government officials and by needling my most sensitive points and harassing me to incite an incident resembling the Menemen or Shaykh Said incidents. But they realised that the Old Said is no more, and that the New Said endures everything, so they switched plans to other plans; in short, to poisoning me. But divine preservation foiled that one too. Now those dissemblers are officially utilizing black propaganda to scare the people away from me and induce them to give me up. However, don't you worry about this at all. Divine providence continues; the Risale-i Nur's victories are gradually spreading.
Secondly: Hasan Feyzi's new eulogy and Halil İbrahim's of a week ago, showing their extraordinary good will towards my person, and their sincere and sorrowful poems of farewell, have been accepted with a few modifications for three reasons:
The First: They wrote them not on account of my person, but on account of my being a servant of the Qur'an and belief and the Risale‑i Nur; they were looking to that sacred duty.
The Second: Their descriptions, which far exceed my due, and those of our sincere brothers in that region whom they represent, are a sort of earnest prayer, and an auspicious omen (tefe'ül), and an elevated desire for good, and a reflection of their abilities, their belief, and their most serious concern for the Risale‑i Nur.
The Third: In so far as in their view I am the representative and exemplification of the collective personality of the Risale‑i Nur and its students, there would be no benefit in slighting that wondrous good will of theirs and breaking their morale. I send thousands of greetings to both of them and their friends, particularly Ahmed Feyzi and our brothers in Denizli Prison and those striving for justice for our sake.
Thirdly: I cannot find the time to extract key passages from each of Husrev's many letters, which have so often soothed my difficulties and which I keep with me, and add all of them to The Additional Letters. God willing, I shall study them when the occasion arises. Ahmed Nazif's letters, written in the name of the İnebolu students and showing that he shared in Halil İbrahim's heart‑rending eulogy, dispelled my worries about my steadfast brothers in that region. May God be pleased with them!
Fourthly: Our old and new brothers whose names are mentioned in the letter from Ahmed from the village of Çoban İsa are working at the Risale‑i Nur and getting their children to work at it and at the Qur'an, which is indeed a noteworthy service for the Risale-i Nur. May Almighty God grant them success. Amen!
Fifthly: Perhaps twenty times, Jaushan and Awrād‑i Qudsiyya-i Shāh-i Naqshband have saved me from losing my life due to the physical and spiritual poison of my dissembler enemies, but regretfully, due to their cruelty I suffer such effects, tension, grief, and revulsion in my nerves, and such sensitivity and strain, that I can't endure having even my truest friend and most loyal brother with me for an hour; my spirit cannot abide it. I feel distress if one of them merely looks at me, The unsociableness that I used to suffer from slightly, has become very severe due to the cruel maltreatment of those oppressors and their surveillance. It is as though I have died to social life before dying my death; it is on account of this truth and mystery that my select brothers are writing their eulogies.
Also, the climate here abrades my nerves and irks me terribly. One winter day here weighs on me and distresses me more than the whole winter I spent in Denizli Prison.
However, I can tell you in all certainty that just as the eye cannot endure the weight of a hair; so too, although my spirit is pained by a hair's weight, it takes on itself and endures gratefully and patiently mountains' weight of oppression and difficulties for the well‑being of the Risale-i Nur and its students and in their place. But since my powerlessness and weakness and sorrow are excessive, instead of increasing my load with their praising me, my select brothers should lighten it with their prayers and compassion, and help me with their saintly influence and pity. It is a manifestation of divine grace that this severe sickness of unsociability that I suffer reduces to nothing the solitary confinement the tyrants inflict on me; it pleases me in a way, rather than tormenting me‥