to him. From time to time I would take other friends to him. He always gave excellent answers to the questions we asked him. I only lost the negative ideas about religion I had acquired from some of the teachers at school when I visited Ustad.

Another time I visited him, I asked: "Our teachers don't speak about God. Tell us about our Creator." Ustad explained at great length about this subject. I can't exactly remember when the answer to our question was written down. When we visited him, Mehmed Feyzi Pamukçu used to read from The Supreme Sign or The Short Words and we would write them down in our notebooks in the new letters...

One day at school it was the geography lesson and the teacher asked the class: "Who's been to that reactionary hoja they call Bediuzzaman?" Six people raised their hands. He asked why we'd gone, and said that Ustad was an enemy of the reforms and didn't like Ataturk. He sent us to the Disciplinary Council. They asked various questions. As a result, a friend called Suat and myself were banned from school for six days, and the others were given warnings. We said in the statements we gave that we had gone because we wanted to learn about our religion, no one had said anything against anyone, and that we were religious and liked performing our worship. A few days later the police raided the house where I was staying and went through it with a tooth-comb. My statement was taken by the police. I described what had happened to me. The Prosecutor asked: "There's the Mufti and lots of hojas. Why don't you go to them?" I said I didn't know the Mufti...

The reason I had first visited Ustad was this: he did not accept presents from anyone!

I saw the way he lived; he was really and truly poor! In one of his rooms was a woven rug and a few cloth prayer-mats. The other was completely bare. If the well-to-do people in the town brought him anything, he would most kindly and graciously refuse it. He did not want to offend anyone. He absolutely would not take anything or eat anything without giving some- thing in return. He really lived what he wrote. The only thing he spoke about was the Risale-i Nur. The way he acted was like a repetition of what it teaches. [^200]

[^200]:Abdullah Yeğin, in Son Şahitler, i, 370-1.

Abdullah Yeğin notes also another side of Bediuzzaman's character, his refusal to compromise his beliefs in any way in the face of threat or tyranny, which was a powerful source of strength and inspiration for others in those dark days:

Like his speech, Ustad's manner was unique, and everyone used to look