Stranger in the Mountains

Background:

[Bahá'u'lláh left Baghdad to travel alone in the mountains of Kurdistan for two years. He did not tell anyone there who He was. There were others in Baghdad who wanted people to believe that they were the Promised One. Bahá'u'lláh left so that He would not hurt even the ones who wanted to be His enemies. You can read about His journey in ‘God Passes By’, by Shoghi Effendi, pp. 120-126, or in Bahá'u'lláh: The King of Glory, by H. M. Balyuzi, pp. 115-122. Here is a story from that time.]

Story:

The boy was sitting on the hillside crying bitterly. He could see the mountain village below which was his home. He wanted to go home but was afraid. He had been punished at school and would be punished again at home. So instead, he ran to the hills and cried.

A stranger, who did not live in the village, heard his crying. Coming closer the stranger asked the boy why he was crying. The boy looked up. There, coming toward him, was a dervish, one who had no home and who spent the days wandering the countryside praying and thinking about God.

The boy answered, "Oh, sir, my teacher has punished me for writing so badly. I can't write nicely and now I've lost the lesson he gave me to copy. I can't go back to school without it or I will be punished even more. And I can't go home for my parents will be ashamed."

Then the boy began to cry some more. The stranger gently asked him to stop crying, and offered to write a lesson and to teach the boy to copy it so that his teacher would be proud of him.

From His clothes the stranger took out a pen and paper and wrote beautiful letters. Then He showed the boy how to copy them. The boy copied the writing again and again. After a time he could do it so well you could hardly tell the difference between one writing and the other.

The stranger told the boy to take his writing lesson to show the teacher now that he could write so well.

With a happy heart the boy jumped up and went running down the hillside to his village and his teacher. "Thank you, kind sir," he called back with a smile full of joy.

Breathlessly the boy arrived at his school. There was the teacher sternly waiting for him. The teacher demanded, "Where have you been!?" And, "Is your lesson ready?"

"Oh yes," answered the boy proudly. "Here is the work I've done." The boy showed the teacher the writing of the stranger and his own copy underneath.

The teacher was astonished. "Where did you find this writing? It is beautiful. Do you know the kind of people who write this way?"

"No, sir," answered the boy. "A strange dervish saw me on the hillside and wrote it for me."

"Your strange dervish is no dervish at all," replied the teacher. "Only people connected with the royal family and ministers of the king write in this manner.” The teacher wondered why a member of the royal court would be wandering in the mountains as a dervish.

The teacher told his friends about this stranger in the mountains and the writing of the boy. His friends told their friends, and they told their friends. Soon everyone in the village knew there was a strange and wonderful person in the mountains but no one knew who He was.

Note: We don't know the name of the boy or of his village, but we do know that it was in the mountains of Kurdistan, in what is now Iraq. The "dervish" was Bahá'u'lláh, and the story really happened. He disguised Himself as a dervish so He could be alone to pray and meditate to prepare Himself to teach the Faith of God for this new age.

Source: Duane Herrmann, Brilliant Star, Summer Schools 1991 special edition (adapted from Child's Way, September–October 1982), via Baha'i Stories for Children (https://bahaistoriesforchildren.blogspot.com/2018/08/stranger-in-mountains.html). The incident is told by Bahíyyih Khánum in Lady Blomfield, The Chosen Highway, Part II, ch. III ("Baghdad").

Various. *Baha'i Stories for Children*. https://bahaistoriesforchildren.blogspot.com/2018/08/stranger-in-mountains.html