Also present in the bus was an official from İnebolu called Ziya Dilek, who was also later arrested and sent to Denizli. His account of the journey was recorded by Necmeddin Şahiner:

I had got on the bus to go to my job at Ilgaz. It was stopped by police and gendarmes at Olukbaşı [where the police station was] and space for three people cleared at the back. They put Bediuzzaman Hoja Efendi there. When the bus moved off Hoja Efendi felt unwell; he was seventy years old and ill. He said: "They count me as a political prisoner, so I should be sent by a private taxi." Whereupon a soldier sitting next to me got up and offered his seat to the hoja, and they changed places. I was very scared and could not do anything to help him. When he sat down beside me he asked me my name. On my saying Ziya Dilek, he said. "Are you our Ziya? Did you come to see me off on behalf of the people of Kastamonu?" Turning to the policeman Safvet behind him, who had brought him, he said; "Safvet! Where is the Qur'an was I reading when you raided my house?" And asking for a piece of paper, got me to write down the verse, "So bear in patience the command of your Sustainer for you are in Our sight, and offer praise and glory" (Qur'an, 52:48). Then asking, "Wasn't I reading this verse?" , he showed it to Safvet and the others. Then he said to me:

"Ziya, tell your friends not to worry. We won't be convicted. They'll either make a truce or give an amnesty." He was sending through me greetings and the good news to his friends who had been arrested. But I was not going there and I had not been arrested.

Later he said: "Would you tell the driver to please stop the bus. There's no compulsion in religion. I have a few words of advice for the passengers." So the driver stopped the bus and Hoja Efendi immediately started to address the passengers:

"Tonight is most likely the Night of Power. When recited on other days each letter of the Qur'an yields ten rewards, in Ramadan a thousand rewards, and on the Night of Power thirty thousand. If you were told you would be given five gold liras in return for doing something, wouldn't you want to obtain them?" The passengers replied that they would, so the hoja continued: "You spend all your strength and energy to gain five gold liras for this transitory life, don't you want to prepare some provisions for your provisions-bag for eternal life?" Again the passengers replied in the affirmative. So Bediuzzaman said: "In that case, if a Muslim recites Sura al-Ikhlas three times, Sura al-Fatiha once, and Ayat al-Kursi once, he will have prepared some provisions for his bag for eternal life."

The driver, Rizeli Lütfü, and the passengers thanked Bediuzzaman, and soon afterwards it was time to break the fast. He stopped the bus at a famous spring in the pine forests in the Ilgaz Mountains for a break. There, Hoja Efendi gave me the food given to him by the Town Council and I