dinary personal qualities, in a letter to one of his students written when being held in another prison, Afyon, in 1949, The story had appeared in the newspapers. He wrote:

The incident which happened while I was a prisoner-of-war is basically true, but I did not describe it in detail because I had no witnesses. Only, I did not know [at first] that the squad had come to execute me; I understood later. And I did not know that the Russian commander had said some things in Russian by way of an apology. That is to say, the Muslim captain who was present and told the newspapers of the incident understood that the commander had said repeatedly: "Forgive me! Forgive me!" [^276]

[^276]:-

In the spring of 1918, Bediuzzaman found a way to escape amid the confusion following the Bolshevik Revolution. In later years, he wrote an evocative description of his "temporary awakening" in the winter darkness of the days preceding his escape, and the almost miraculous ease with which it was accomplished. The following is a translation of part of the piece, which forms a section of the Twenty-Sixth Flash.

In the First World War, I was a prisoner in the distant province of Kosturma in Northern Russia. There was a small mosque belonging to the Tatars beside the famous River Volga. I used to become wearied among my friends, the other officers. I craved solitude, yet I could not wander about outside without permission. Then they took me on bail to the Tatar quarter, to that small mosque on the banks of the Volga. I used to sleep there, alone. Spring was close. I used to be very wakeful during the long, long nights of that northern land; the sad plashing of the Volga and the mirthless patter of the rain and the melancholy sighing of the wind of those dark nights in that dark exile had temporarily roused me from a deep sleep of heedlessness. I did not yet consider myself old, but all those who had experienced the Great War had become old. For they were days that, as though manifesting the verse: "A day that will turn the hair of children grey" (Qur'an, 73: 17), made even children old. While I was forty years old, I felt myself to be eighty. In those long, dark nights and sorrowful exile and melancholic state, I despaired of life and of my homeland. I looked at my powerlessness and aloneness, and my hope failed.

Then, while in that state, succour arrived from the All-Wise Qur'an; my tongue said: "God is enough for us; and how excellent a guardian is He" (Qur'an, 3:173).

And weeping, my heart cried out: "I am a stranger, I am alone, I am weak, I am powerless: I seek mercy, I seek forgiveness, I seek help from You, O my God!"

And, thinking of my old friends in my homeland, and imagining myself dying in exile there, like Niyazi Misri, my spirit poured forth these lines: