Also, forty years ago on the day of the Kâğıthane fair in Istanbul and the two sides of the Golden Horn from the bridge as far as Kağıthane were lined with thousands of unveiled Greek, Armenian, and Istanbul women and girls, I boarded a rowing-boat with the late deputy Molla Seyyid Tâha and the deputy Haji İlyas and we passed by all those women. I was not aware of it, but Molla Tâha and Haji İlyas had decided to test me and they observed me in turn. At the end of the hour-long trip, they confessed what they had done, and said: "We are astonished at your behaviour; you didn't look at them at all!" I replied: "Unnecessary, fleeting, sinful pleasures yield only pains, so I have no desire for them!"

Also, all those who have been companions to me know that throughout my life I have avoided accepting gifts and becoming beholden to people and accepting their charity and benefactions. Also, it has become absolutely clear in the two court cases in the course of my twenty years of torturous captivity that in order to defend the honour and benefits of the Risale-i Nur and its services to belief and the Qur'an, I have evinced no curiosity about the material, social, and political matters of this world and I have renounced all their pleasures, and that I attach not the slightest importance to any of the threats of our malicious enemies, including the gallows.

While this has been my principle in life for seventy-five years, a man who occupies an official position calumniated me in a way that devils even could not dream up in order to denigrate the extraordinary value of the Risale-i Nur. He said: "He is being visited at night by prostitutes and other evildoers with trays of baklava!" But my door is locked on both the inside and the outside at night, and on the orders of that wretch a watchman was posted at the door till the morning. And my neighbours here and all my friends know that I receive no one at all from after the late-evening prayer until the morning. An idiotic fool, or an ass, or even Satan could not utter such slander. The man understood this and gave up such schemes, and left here and went elsewhere, to Hell, With this scheme which he devised, not in his official capacity, in order to smear the Nurjus, not me, he was the cause of this new incident and intended to blacken the students' reputation. But in wondrous fashion, divine protection, preservation, and providence confounded it. I am not exonerating my own soul with these explanations; I want to say rather that the sacred service for belief induced my soul to give up all its desires and that the spiritual (mânevî) pleasures in that service suffice it. I am making clear too the Nurjus' need for caution and vigilence.

Secondly: I am sending to you my private scribe, who is experienced and capable, with the duplicating machines. I write only with difficulty and will henceforth write to you briefly. So don't be offended.