can of water and take it in these latrines. There were usually seventy to eighty prisoners in any one of these wards. Some food was distributed by the prison, but this had to be paid for. Since the great majority of prisoners were local, they had their food sent and laundry done by relatives outside. But since the Risale-i Nur Students were from other areas and mostly had little money, they subsisted on the very meagrest of rations. Ibrahim Fakazli describes the tarhana (dried yogurt) soup that he subsisted on. The prisoners used to cook this soup on little braziers made of old tin cans. It was made with oil of such low quality that it was inedible if not first scalded. The tarhana was then added to this. He described how the stench of the scalded oil together that of the latrines was so powerful, it almost knocked him unconscious when he first arrived. He grew accustomed to it after two or three days. Part of the time, Bediuzzaman’s food was prepared by his students, and sent from the Sixth Ward, where Mehmet Feyzi, Hüsrev, Ceylan, and others were. Bediuzzaman would not eat the bread provided by the prison. Nevertheless he was poisoned on at least three occasions in the prison. There are heart-rending descriptions of him on these occasions. And also his own description in letters, one of which is as follows. It is taken from one of two personal notebooks which Zübeyir Gündüzalp kept in prison:
"My brother!
"My life is in danger, the torments and most severe oppression with which they are torturing me on account of freemasonry and communism in a way which is beyond my endurance and entirely outside the law and contrary to prison regulations, compels us to transfer our case to another court. With all your strength you must inform both the lawyers here, and by telegraph our fiends in Istanbul, and Hulûsi in Ankara that my life is in danger. I can no longer endure it, due to being poisoned as part of a conspiracy, and illness, and old age, and solitary confinement, and even [being forbidden] to look and speak with whoever brings my food to the hatch. And now for the third time was yesterday's incident, a plot. On visiting day, Ceylan is to inform Zübeyir of this and my pitiful condition, and let him do whatever is possible. In my opinion those two men are trying on account of the Masons to force me into