It was during the first week of our stay in Government House that an aide-de-camp arrived. He asked for Ustad then said the general had summoned him. They took Ustad to the place the general was staying in Mahallebaşı by stretcher, because his leg was broken. Ustad went in. The general asked a number of questions. These were centred on someone well-known called Abdülmecid, who had gone to Iran and was planning to go from there to the Caucasus to organize the Muslims there to fight against the Russians. They wanted information about him from Ustad. Ustad answered the questions as required. The general's questioning and the coming and going continued for about two weeks. Since we waited in the room outside, we could hear them speaking. We would hear Ustad's terse answers and sharp retorts, and from time to time the sound of a fist being thumped on the table. We would get worried and shudder at the possibility of being lined up and shot, and when from time to time Ustad emerged from the room, we did not neglect to reproach him because of these sharp exchanges.

On the twenty-seventh day of our stay in Government House they took us to what was then the gendarme station and is now the courthouse. They had brought there around twenty-five captured officers and government officials, most of whom were high-ranking. Then the general's aide-de-camp again came, and said to Ustad: 'Take one of your students, we are sending you away now.' Ustad took a student called Said. We did not want to part from him. To console us he said to the police chief, İrfan Bey, who also a prisoner: "I entrust my students to you. Show them the police there."

Before leaving the gendarme station, he said as a prayer: "I am hopeful that, God willing, you will return, but I cannot say the same for Said." And in fact, the student he took with him called Said was killed while fighting the Russians in Turkestan. They separated us from Ustad and sent us to Russia. Ustad told me on his return from captivity that they had made him wait a further month because his leg was in plaster.

A month later, they sent Ustad to Van, and from there on to Khuy in Iran, from where he was put on a train for Russia. We remained in Russia thirty months as prisoners. On the communist revolution, we got away to Rumania by way of Hungary and handed ourselves over to a Turkish division there. As for Ustad, I read in the newspapers in Rumania that he had got to Berlin by way of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, and from there had returned to Istanbul.

The 15 th Division in Rumania was formed into the North Caucasus Corps with some reinforcements, and I served a further fourteen months in it before being demobilized after the Treaty of Sévres, when I returned to Van. [^268]

[^268]:Ali Çavuş, "Erek Dağında Bir islam Mücahidi," İttihad Gazetesi, No. 181, 20 Nisan (April) 1971, as quoted in Şahiner, Said Nursi, 169-174.