Fourth Point
The answer to a number of suspicious questions:
The First
The worldly say to me: “How do you live? What do you live on since you do not work? We don’t want people in our country who sit around idly and live off the labour of others.”
The Answer: I live through frugality and the resulting plenty. I am not obliged to anyone other than the One who Provides for me and I have taken the decision not to become indebted to anyone else. Yes, someone who lives on a hundred para, or even forty para, does not become indebted to anyone. I do not want to explain this matter. To do so is most disagreeable to me, as it may make me feel a sort of pride or egotism. But since the worldly ask about it suspiciously, I reply as follows:
Since my childhood, throughout my life, it has been one of my guiding principles not to accept anything from people, even zakat, and not to accept a salary – only I was compelled to accept one for one or two years in the Darü’l‑Hikmeti’l-İslamiye on the insistence of my friends – and not to become obliged to people for a worldly livelihood. The people of my native region and those who have known me in other places know this. During these five years of exile, many friends have tried earnestly to make me accept their gifts, but I have accepted none of them.
And so, if it is asked me, “So how do you manage to live?”, I reply:
“I live through divine bestowal and blessings.” For sure, my soul deserves every sort of insult and contempt, but the plenty and blessings, a divine bestowal, I receive as sustenance are a wonder resulting from service of the Qur’an. In accordance with the verse, But the bounty of your Sustainer rehearse and proclaim, I shall cite the bounties Allah the Most High has bestowed on me, and give a few examples by way of thanks. To do so is thanks, but I am still frightened that it will induce hypocrisy and pride, and that blessed plenty will be cut. For to make known a secret divine gift of plenty causes it to cease. But what can I do? I have to describe them.
The First: This six months one bushel (kile) of wheat, consisting of thirty‑six loaves of bread, has sufficed me. There is still some left, it is not finished. How much longer it will last, I do not know.
The Second: This blessed month of Ramadan I was given food by only two houses, and both of them made me ill. I understood that I am prohibited from eating other people’s food. The rest of the time, in the whole of Ramadan, three loaves of bread and one okka of rice were enough for me, as was witnessed and told by Abdullah Çavuş, the owner of a blessed house and a loyal friend who saw my economizing. In fact, the rice was finished two weeks after the end of Ramadan.
The Third: For three months on the mountain one kıyye of butter was enough for me and my guests, eating it every day together with bread. On one occasion even I had a blessed visitor called Süleyman. Both his bread and my bread were about to be finished. It was Wednesday. I told him to go and get some more. For two hours’ distance on every side of us there was no one from whom he could have got any. He said that he wanted to stay with me on the mountain on Thursday night so that we could pray together. I declared: Our reliance is on Allah the Most High, and told him to stay.
Later, although it had no connection with this and there was no reason for it, we both began walking till we reached the top of the mountain. There was a little water in the ewer, and we had a small piece of sugar and some tea. I told him: “Brother! Make some tea!” He set about making it and I sat down under a cedar‑tree overlooking a deep ravine. I thought regretfully to myself: we have a bit of mouldy bread which will only just be enough for us this evening. What shall we do for two days and what shall I say to this ingenuous man? While thinking this, I suddenly turned my head involuntarily and I saw a huge loaf of bread on the cedar-tree in among the branches; it was facing us. I exclaimed: “Süleyman! Good news! Allah the Most High has sent us food.” We took the bread, and looking at it saw that no bird or wild animal had touched it. And for twenty or thirty days no one at all had climbed to the top of that mountain. The bread was sufficient for us for the two days. While we were eating and it was about to be finished, righteous Süleyman who had been the most loyal of loyal friends for four years, suddenly appeared from below with more bread.
The Fourth: I bought this sack coat I’m wearing seven years ago second‑hand. In five years I have spent only four and a half liras on clothes, underwear, slippers, and stockings. Frugality and divine mercy and the resulting plenty have sufficed me.
There are many other things like these examples and numerous sorts of divine blessings. The people of this village know most of them. But do not suppose I am mentioning them out of pride, I have been forced to, rather. And do not think they were due to my goodness. These instances of plenty were either bestowal to the sincere friends who have visited me, or a bestowal on account of service of the Qur’an, or an abundance and benefit resulting from frugality, or they have been sustenance for the four cats I have which recite the divine names “O Most Compassionate One! O Most Compassionate One!”, which comes in the form of plenty and from which I benefit too. Yes, if you listen carefully to their mournful miaowings, you will understand that they are saying, “O Most Compassionate One! O Most Compassionate One!”
We have arrived at the subject of cats and it has recalled the hen. I have a hen. This winter every day almost without exception she brought me an egg from the treasury of mercy. Then one day she brought me two eggs and I was astonished. I asked my friends “How can this be?” They replied: “Perhaps it is a divine gift.” The hen also has a young chick she hatched in the summer. It started to lay at the beginning of Ramadan and continued for forty days. Neither I nor those who assist me have any doubt that, both its being a pullet, and the season being winter, and Ramadan, this blessed situation was a divine gift and bestowal. And whenever the mother stopped laying, it immediately started, never leaving me without eggs.
The Second Suspicious Question
The worldly ask: How can we be sure you won’t meddle in our world? If we set you free, you may interfere in it. Also, how do we know that you aren’t being cunning? How do we know that it isn’t a stratagem, pretending to have abandoned the world and taking things from the people not openly, but secretly?
The Answer: My attitude in the Court Martial and in the period before the proclamation of the Constitution, which are known by many, and my defence in the Court Martial at that time called The Testimonial of Two Schools of Misfortune, show decisively that the life I lived was such that I would not resort to the tiniest wiles, let alone cunning and subterfuge.
If I had resorted to trickery this last five years, I would have made application to you in sycophantic manner. A wily man tries to ingratiate himself. He does not hold back; he always tries to deceive and hoodwink. Whereas I have not condescended to respond to the severest attacks and criticisms levelled at me. Saying, “I place my trust in Allah,” I turned my back on the worldly.
Moreover, if he is sensible, a person who discovers the reality of this world and knows the hereafter, is not sorry; he does not turn back to the world and struggle with it again. After the age of fifty, a person who has no connection with anything and is alone, will not sacrifice eternal life for one or two years of the chatter and deception of this world. If he does, he is not cunning but foolish and crazy. What can a crazy lunatic do so that anyone should bother with him?
As for suspecting me of outwardly abandoning the world while inwardly seeking it, in accordance with the verse, Nor do I absolve my own self [of blame]; the [human] soul is certainly prone to evil, I do not exonerate my soul, for it wants everything bad. But in this fleeting world, this temporary guesthouse, during old age, in a brief life, it is not reasonable to destroy eternal life and everlasting happiness for a little bit of pleasure. Since it is not profitable for the reasonable and the aware, willy‑nilly my soul has had to follow my reason.
The Third Suspicious Question
The worldly say: Do you like us? Do you approve of us? If you do like us, why are you stand‑offish and have nothing to do with us?
If you don’t like us, that means you object to us and we crush those who object to us.
The Answer: Not you, if I had loved your world, I would not have withdrawn from it. I don’t like either you or your world, but I don’t interfere with them. For I have different goals; my heart is filled with different things, leaving no room for anything else. Your duty is to look to a person’s hand, not to his heart. For you seek your government and your public order. So long as his hand does not interfere, what right do you have to interfere in his heart and tell him, “your heart should love us too,” although you are in no way worthy of it?
Yes, just as I desire the spring during this winter and long for it but cannot will it or make it come; so too I long for the world to be righted and I pray for it and I want the worldly to be reformed, but I cannot will these things because I do not have the power. I cannot bring them about, because it is neither my duty, nor do I have the capacity.
The Fourth Suspicious Question
The Worldly Say: we have experienced so many calamities, we no longer have confidence in anyone. How can we be certain that given the opportunity you won’t interfere like you want to?
The Answer: The previous points should assure you. In addition, I did not interfere in your world while in my native region among my students and relatives, with those who heeded me in the midst of volatile events. So for someone who is alone in exile, with no one, a stranger, weak, powerless, turned with all his strength towards the hereafter, cut off from all social relations and communication, who has found only a few friends from far afield who also look to the hereafter, and who is a stranger to everyone else and whom everyone else regards as a stranger – for such a person to interfere in your fruitless, dangerous world would surely be compounded lunacy.