The Room of Ásíyih Khánum

Lady Sara Louisa Blomfield came to Haifa a month after 'Abdu'l-Bahá's passing and stayed with the family, gathering from the Greatest Holy Leaf, Bahíyyih Khánum, and others the recollections that became *The Chosen Highway*. The book also prints a letter she wrote to her daughter Parvin from the House of Bahá'u'lláh in 'Akká, dated 2 May 1922. She had come there by train the day before with ladies and children of the Master's family.

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She wrote the letter, she says, on the balcony outside the room where Bahá'u'lláh had lived for about five years, in the larger house, the house of 'Abbúd, the Christian merchant. Next to it was the small house where, as she recorded, Bahá'u'lláh had lived in one room for twelve years, eight of them without once going out, even across the street. That house had only four rooms, for the pilgrims and for the family, and the best room was always kept sacred to Bahá'u'lláh. Ásíyih Khánum, their daughter and the Master surrounded Him with all the care they could.

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> In one of the rooms thirteen persons, pilgrims and the ladies, sometimes > slept. A shelf was there, on which an agile pilgrim would repose, and on > one occasion rolled off!

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This was the house, she wrote, where the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and many Tablets were revealed, and which was one day surrounded by soldiers sent to arrest Bahá'u'lláh and the Master.

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During that visit Lady Blomfield slept in the room that had been Ásíyih Khánum's. In her letter she wrote:

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> I am sleeping in the room of Ásíyih Khánum. I was conscious all night of > its benign atmosphere!

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The next morning the Greatest Holy Leaf and the Holy Mother, the wife of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, arrived from Haifa, and the party visited the old barracks of 'Akká. There the family and the exiles who came with them had been shut in on their arrival in 1868, and all but two of them, 'Abbás Effendi and one other man, fell sick with typhoid, while the Master nursed them and cooked for them.

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"The Greatest Holy Leaf, her eyes charged with memories, was with us while we listened," Lady Blomfield wrote. She had been there in that time and had caught the same fever, and she had suffered from its effects at times ever since.

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*A retelling based on **The Chosen Highway** (Lady Blomfield), Part IV, "Letter from Sitarih Khanum to Her Daughter Parvin." For the fuller account, see the original.*

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