I am someone who has spent thirty-five years in seclusion, and particularly at night forgets the world, and having for twenty-three years suffered the annoyance of being under hostile surveillance, has become unsociable. Being all alone, I become fed up if I am for even an hour with anyone other than those who assist me or are desirous of the lessons of the Risale-i Nur. But then, on the pretext of the petition I wrote to the Court of Appeal about being held for eleven months in total solitary confinement in Afyon Prison, they forcibly transferred me to Ward Five and forbade my brothers to come to me. I was feeling truly alarmed that I would be unable to endure the crowded conditions when suddenly as a sign of wrath and anger, the cold became so severe I would not have survived had I remained in my former place. The hardship turned into mercy for me.

It occurred to me as I was reciting the tesbihat following the prayers: “In all the wards the Risale-i Nur students are working as hard as they can at the Risale-i Nur and its lessons both on their own account and in your place. But because this fifth ward is somewhat isolated and is constantly being filled and emptied, the need here is greater for the Risale-i Nur’s instruction. The youths and elderly people read the newspapers, which write about the assaults of Russia with its awesome denial of God, and are therefore in far greater need of its definitive, powerful instruction about belief in God’s existence and unity.” I was thinking of writing a brief summary of the Twentieth Letter and the sacred sentence:

There is no god but God, He is One, He has no partner; His is the sovereignty and His is the praise; He gives life and deals death, and He is Living and dies not; in His hand is all good; He is Powerful over all things; and to Him shall be your return,3

which for years I have recited ten times after the morning prayer. For it points out the affirmation of Divine unity on a vast

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