treatment of your officials who tormented me, gave up the idea of cursing you. Often I was astonished at this; I was not angry at you despite your causing all this unjustifiable torment. That is to say, a premonition was inspired in my heart that in the end we would be friends. ∗∗∗

Part of the Conversation With the Interior Minister

Part of the Conversation

With the Interior Minister

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

I have been the target of an injustice the like of which has never at any time occurred on the face of the earth, and of cruel persecution which is illegal in ten respects. It is like this:

I am both ill at having been poisoned due to a violent conspiracy, and an extremely weak elderly seventy-one-year-old; I am all alone in piteous exile; and so poor as to sell my slippers to buy bread; and I'm solitary and unsociable and, having lived alone for twenty-five years, can meet only with one out of a thousand people who is totally loyal. This person, myself, has been declared innocent by three courts of law and the Ankara experts' committee, which having scrutinized down to the finest details his life and works of twenty years, gave the decision unanimously for their acquittal and ruled that his works were harmless for the country and nation, indeed, were beneficial. He is a son of this land who performed important services in the First World War; and is a patriot who with all his strength strives with his effective works which are there for all to see to save this nation and country from anarchy and the corruption of foreigners; and is a harmless person who, as has been proved by seventy witnesses in court, has not read a newspaper for twenty-five years nor has been curious about the news, and for seven years has not shown any interest in the Second World War nor asked about it, nor known about it, and whose works contain powerful proofs showing that he has severed all connections with politics, and concerning whom your judiciary has officially admitted that he has not interfered in your world. I, this wretched Said, who flees with all his strength from public regard lest harm comes to his sincerity and life of the hereafter, and shrinks from and dislikes his brothers' good opinions and praise of him, — which of your benefits demands that you, the Interior Minister, set the Governor of Afyon and Emirdağ police to pester me, and inflict on me in one day the torments of a month's solitary confinement,