letter gave news of Hasan Feyzi's severe and dangerous illness. I felt absolutely certain that Hasan Feyzi had assumed the greater part of my calamity similarly to the martyr Hâfız Ali (May God have mercy on him), performing an act of self-sacrifice. Just as Hâfız Ali, according to several signs, departed for the Intermediate Realm in my stead; so too with Hasan Feyzi, for exactly concurrently with my illness, at the same time, for the same period, in the same way, and in the coincidence of distressing constriction, was a powerful sign that that brother of ours who so kindly pitied me had partly taken my illness on himself. There was just one difference in this four-sided coincidence: my illness was due to poisoning, while he had caught cold. Certainly, the Treatise for the Sick consoled him in our place and enquired about him like a visit to the sick, and transformed the ailment into great rewards and the suffering into joy. May Almighty God grant him a speedy recovery. Amen! ∗∗∗

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One time, in a treatise I wrote in Barla as a parable, two men were on their way to Istanbul. Ninety-nine out of a hundred friends of one of them were already there, so he set out eagerly. With the other one, it was the opposite, and so on; it was written in similar fashion. Now, alerted in the same way by this illness, I travelled to the past and toured in the imagination around the places I had spent my life at that time. Of the hundred friends in the places I had spent those sweet times, I could see only one or two. The others were all in the Intermediate Realm. Even in my own village of Nurs, I saw that my sole nephew and student Molla Dâvud (May God be pleased with him) had departed to join my old friends and relations there. In places like Barla and Kastamonu, which are to be counted as second homes of twenty years' standing, I saw only two out of the three groups of friends; the others were about to depart. In consequence of the truth of this vision, to depart for the Intermediate Realm did not weigh down on me but filled me with longing, since through the light of the Risale-i Nur we saw it to be truly luminous. Remaining behind me in this world were hundreds of Nur heroes: Husrevs, Tahirîs, Mustafas, Nazifs, Osmans, Abdurrahmans, Alis, Sabrîs, Feyzis, Ahmeds, Mehmeds, Atıfs, Mustafas, Sadıks, Osmans, and the rest, who would carry out my duty in my place and win reward, thus greatly alleviating the burden of death for me, With the thought that I was dying only in regard to sin and living in respect of good works, I offered endless thanks to Almighty God. ∗∗∗