SEVENTH HOPE

One time at the start of my old age when the laughter of the Old Said was being transformed into the weeping of the New Said, supposing me still to be the Old Said, the worldly in Ankara invited me there, and I went. At the close of autumn I climbed to the top of the citadel, which was far more aged, dilapidated, and worn out than me. It seemed to me to be formed of petrified historical events. The old age of the season of the year together with my old age, the citadel’s old age, mankind’s old age, the old age of the glorious Ottoman Empire, and  the death of the Caliphate’s rule, and the world’s old age all caused me to look in a most grieved, piteous and melancholy state in that lofty citadel at the valleys of the past and the mountains of the future. As I experienced an utterly black state of mind in Ankara  encompassed by four or five layers of the darknesses of old age one within the other,5  I sought a light, a solace, a hope.

As I sought consolation looking to the right, that is, to the past, my father and forefathers and the human race appeared in the form of a vast grave and filled me with gloom rather than consoling me. Seeking a remedy I looked to the future, which was  to  my  left.  I  saw  that  it  appeared  as  a  huge,  dark  grave  for  myself,  my contemporaries, and  future generations; it produced horror in place of familiarity. Feeling desolate in the face  of  the left and right, I looked at the present day.  It appeared to my heedless, historical eye  as a coffin bearing my half-dead, suffering and desperately struggling corpse. So despairing  of that direction too, I raised my head and looked at the top of the tree of my life, and there was my corpse; it stood at the top of the tree and was watching me. Feeling horror at this direction, too, I bowed my head. I looked to the foot of the tree of my life, to its roots, and saw that the soil there, the earth which was the source of my creation and the dust of my bones mixed together, was being trampled underfoot. That was no remedy, it only added further pain to my affliction.

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5   My state of mind at that time prompted me to write a supplication in Persian. It was printed in

Ankara, in a treatise entitled, Hubab.