Fikret Bocek says that Turkish quince, a fruit like a pear, takes a long time to grow and ripen, but it's delicious. Patience is key for good quince, he says, and also for the salvation of his fellow Turks, most of whom are Muslim like he once was.
Patience was key when the Turkish police arrested and imprisoned him for 10 days in 1988, when he was beaten, verbally abused, and tortured with electrical shocks. The police ordered Bocek, then a teenager and a new convert to Christianity, to recite the shahada, "There is no God but Allah." Despite a crippling fear, he found he could not physically open his mouth to say it, which he attributes to divine intervention.
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