more cramped and insalubrious than older buildings. Built of concrete, it was damp , dank and airless. With its tiny heavily barred and high up windows, the cells and dormitories were in perpetual gloom. The electricity was of a very low voltage and on only a few hours out of the twenty-four. It was also infested with lice and mosquitoes. At night bed-bugs and mosquitoes descended on the prisoners from the ceilings "like a fine rain". Bediuzzaman was put in a cell so small a bed could scarcely fit in it. According to Selahaddin Çelebi who was sent by the prison Govemor on one occasion to write out Bediuzzaman’s defence speech for him, it was airless and closed like a cave, and so damp the human body could scarcely withstand it. They had to work by the light of a candle. After one hour of writing down what Bediuzzaman dictated, he was completely exhausted. The cell had one small window which overlooked the long-term prisoner’s exercise yard. So since Bediuzzaman was in total isolation and his students and all the prisoners were forbidden to speak or communicate with him on pain of being beaten, he used to throw the notes, letters, and pieces he wrote out of this window to them. They were most often written on scraps of paper folded up inside matchboxes. When this was discovered by the prison authorities, they boarded up the window for a time. Bediuzzaman also sent them by means of a `go-between' called Arnavut Adem Aga. When they received them, the Students would start writing out copies. The cell was also next to the juveniles' ward, and the delinquents were encouraged by the prison authorities to disturb Bediuzzaman, who was extremely sensitive to noise, and to strike up a din particularly while he was praying or performing his worship.
When Selahaddin Çelebi, Mehmet Feyzi, and the other students from Kastamonu arrived, they were put in with the long-term and condemned prisoners. Among these was the prisoners' spokesman and leader, Süleyman Hünkâr, a person of considerable power and influence in the day to day affairs of the prison. Süleyman Efe as he was known both `reformed' and giving up his former bad ways, became a loyal student of Bediuzzaman's, and he struck up a close friendship with Tasköprülü Sadik Bey. Sadik Bey also had followed the fast life of a derebey till Bediuzzaman came to Kastamonu and