The Journey from Tihrán to Baghdád, Winter 1853

In The Chosen Highway the Greatest Holy Leaf, Bahíyyih Khánum, gives Lady Blomfield her own recollection of the family's exile from Tihrán to Baghdád in the winter of 1852–1853.

Bahá'u'lláh had spent four months chained in the Síyáh-Chál. When at last He was released, it was on condition that He and His family be banished from Persia to Baghdád. Ten days were allowed for preparation, because He was very ill. The chains had cut into His neck, and His feet, wounded by the bastinado, had gone long untended.

Ásíyih Khánum nursed Him and tried to make ready. The government provided nothing for those it exiled. She sold almost all that remained of her marriage treasures — jewels, embroidered garments and other belongings — for about four hundred tumans, and with that made what provision she could. None of their friends or relations dared to come to help them, or even to say good-bye, except one old lady, Ásíyih Khánum's grandmother. A faithful servant, Isfandiyár, and one woman stayed with them.

The children were very young: 'Abdu'l-Bahá was eight, Bahíyyih Khánum six. The youngest, Mírzá Mihdí, was only two and very delicate, and their mother allowed herself to be persuaded to leave him behind with her grandmother. The parting, Bahíyyih Khánum remembered, was very sad.

The weather was bitterly cold, snow was upon the ground.

Sometimes they camped in wilderness places, and they were not well prepared for the intense cold. Ásíyih Khánum, who was expecting another child, rode in a takht-i-raván, a litter borne on a jolting mule. Her daughter remembered that she never uttered one word of complaint, and was always thinking of some kindness for somebody else.

When they came to a city, her mother would take the clothes to wash at the public baths and carry them away, cold and wet, in her arms; drying them was almost impossible, and her hands, unused to such coarse work, became very painful. At the caravanserais only one room was allowed to a family, for one night; no light was permitted, and there were no beds. Food was a little tea, a few eggs, some cheese and coarse bread. Bahá'u'lláh was so ill that He could not eat the rough food, and grew weaker. One night Ásíyih Khánum, having found a little flour, made Him a sweet cake, but in the dark she used salt instead of sugar, and the cake could not be eaten.

Soldiers sent by the Governor of Tihrán escorted the exiles to the frontier, where Turkish soldiers met them and brought them on to Baghdád. There the family lived at first in a very small house.

As she listened, Lady Blomfield records, tears came to her eyes, and the Greatest Holy Leaf offered to stop, saying that this time was very sad. When Lady Blomfield asked her to go on, Bahíyyih Khánum answered:

Well, well! If I did not live in my thoughts all through the events of the sad days of our lives, I should have naught else in my life, for it has been all sorrow; but sorrow is really joy, when suffered in the path of God!

Shoghi Effendi, in God Passes By, gives the dates of the journey: Bahá'u'lláh set out on 12 January 1853 on His three months' journey, and reached Baghdád on 8 April 1853. (In Lady Blomfield's text the Greatest Holy Leaf remembers the journey as lasting about four weeks.)

A retelling based on The Chosen Highway. For the fuller account, see the original.

Blomfield, L.. (1940). *The Chosen Highway*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust.