My Esteemed Brother in Religion!
For forty days I have been preoccupied with you as I lie ill. Owing to what I have heard and imagined, in line with the believer is beset by many tribulations, it seems to me that you must be suffering some indisposition. Around ten days ago I called from my window to someone who was selling pure Afyon butter, and bought some from him. My intention was to ask about you. I was very upset to learn that you had been exiled to Emirdağ and that its people were forbidden to meet with you.
My esteemed brother!
The person writing this letter to you is the former Erzurum deputy, Yeşiloğlu Mehmed Salih, who thirty‑one years ago was with you during the Great War in the Esad Paşa Medrese in Erzurum and the snowy Caucasian mountains, and twenty-four years ago when I was a deputy met you in the hall of the Parliament building together with your friend, the Governor of Van, Haydar Bey.
Mehmed Salih