Denizli hero, Hasan Feyzi (May God have mercy on him), who would work according to Hafız Ali’s system, and his friends were secretly serving the Risale-i Nur effectively; and because the other prisoners were being reformed by the Risale-i Nur, even our enemies supported our being released from prison; and like the Companions of the Cave, the Risale-i Nur students turned that place of ordeal into an ascetic’s cave of olden times; all this, together with their endeavours in writing out and disseminating the Risale-i Nur with easy hearts, proved that divine grace had come to our aid.
It also occurred to my heart that since a great interpreter of the law like Imam A‘zam suffered imprisonment; and a supreme mujahid like Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal was severely tortured in prison for the sake of a single matter of the Qur’an and endured it in perfect patience, yet not remain silent about the matter in question; and numerous religious leaders and scholars were completely patient and unshaken, offering thanks, despite suffering torments far greater than yours; for sure you are obliged to offer endless thanks for the very few difficulties you suffer, although the reward you receive is great for those many truths of the Qur’an. Yes, I shall describe briefly a manifestation of divine grace in the midst of man’s wrongful tyranny:
When I was twenty years old I used to say repeatedly: “Towards the end of my life I shall withdraw from the life of society into a cave or onto a mountain like the people of olden times who abandoned the world and withdrew into caves.” Then when in the Great War I was being held as a prisoner in the north-east, I took this decision: “After this I shall spend my life in caves. I shall slip away from political and social life. Enough now of mixing in them.” At that point both dominical grace and the justice of divine determining were manifested. It transformed the caves I had imagined into prisons, places of seclusion, loneliness in places of ordeal and solitary confinement in a way far better than my decision and wish, compassionately for my old age. It bestowed on me Schools of Joseph and places of solitary confinement where my time would not be wasted that were far superior to the mountain caves of ascetics and recluses. It gave both the benefits pertaining to the hereafter of the cave, and strenuous service of the truths of belief and the Qur’an. I had even determined to show myself guilty of some crime and remain in prison after my friends had been released. Solitaries like Husrev and Feyzi would have remained with me, and on some pretext I would have remained in the solitary confinement ward so as not to meet with people and waste my time on unnecessary conversation and egotistical artificiality. But then divine determining and our