The Fifth Floor

“The Fifth Floor” is a designation for the place, where the honorable Fethullah Gülen Hodja Effendi used to stay, in the dormitories of educational institutions during the 1980s and 1990s.¹⁾ These places have hosted Hodja Effendi’s journey of knowledge and wisdom, and served as an environment where deep spiritual knowledge and love of God were attained, and contemplations and consultations were conducted to find solutions for the common problems of humanity.

“My friends and I always feel a special joy there, as if some Divine thing were trickling directly to our hearts. Whatever future generations might name this place, we have named it ‘The Fifth Floor.’ This name was not limited to the number five; that was just a perspective. The title might have been the tenth or the fifteenth floor, but it wasn’t, and that place was just an attic flat located on the uppermost floor of the building.”²⁾

“The Fifth Floor had always impressed a heartfelt demeanor, and an air of protocol, as if it raised its head to the skies, keeping watch and always looking down to welcome its guests. With its façade reminiscent of a trustworthy face, and its multi-purpose reciprocal backrooms suggestive of worshippers in prostration before God, it has always inspired awe in us, and sent shivers into our souls.”³⁾

“Looking very comfortable, the Fifth Floor has always stirred in us feelings of splendor—as if it had leaned its back against a solid surface, akin to the grandeur of a small mountain peak. Even among the relatively smaller buildings and the surrounding trees, it is a landscape that we have always relished to see in our hearts and minds. Its unique position as the nexus point between the blue of the skies and the green of the earth always reminds us of a mother’s compassion, a father’s willpower and strength, and the youthful hours filled with sentiments and imagination.”⁴⁾

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