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 State and the death of the Caliphate’s rule, and the world’s old age all caused me to look in a most grieved, compassionate 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*, 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 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 and historical eye as a coffin bearing my half-dead, suffering and desperately struggling corpse.

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(*) 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