The Forget-Me-Not of Bárfurúsh

A retelling based on The Priceless Pearl by Rúhíyyih Khánum, with passages from Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By and Dawn of a New Day and from Adib Taherzadeh's The Child of the Covenant. Words in quotation marks are as recorded in those books.

In the early 1930s Bahá'í literature was banned from entering Persia. In January 1932 Shoghi Effendi asked the American believers to write to the Persian Government and to the Shah, expressing appreciation for recent reforms, stressing the spiritual ties between the two countries, and pleading for the ban on Bahá'í literature to be lifted. The request was refused. The reforms, Rúhíyyih Khánum writes, "were not big enough to include a bitterly hated community."

Five months later the Guardian cabled America again, asking the believers to send the Shah a written petition introducing Mrs Keith Ransom-Kehler as their "chosen representative empowered appeal for entry Bahá'í literature Persia."

Keith Ransom-Kehler was an American believer. Before becoming a Bahá'í she had been a minister of a Christian church, and she was a fiery and able speaker. In 1926, as Adib Taherzadeh records in The Child of the Covenant, she had written of the Guardian: "The unique and outstanding figure in the world today is Shoghi Effendi. Unique, because the guardianship of this great Cause is in his hands and his humility, modesty, economy and self-effacement are monumental."

In the first months of 1932 she was teaching in India. Letters written on Shoghi Effendi's behalf to the Indian believers, later published as Dawn of a New Day, said that the report of her work in Australia and New Zealand had been "brilliant," and that in America "she is considered among the first class national teachers." Word reached Haifa from Calcutta that her visit had "very much stimulated the teaching work in that city." By the end of May 1932 she was in Haifa, "taking some rest before starting for Persia, where she expects to stay a few months."

She had come to Haifa as a pilgrim, and Shoghi Effendi decided to send her to Persia. He kept her in Haifa for many weeks, briefing her on the country and on what he hoped she could do there to win greater freedom for the Faith and at least a measure of recognition.

In Persia, Shoghi Effendi later wrote in God Passes By, she "pleaded in numerous interviews with ministers, ecclesiastics and government officials the cause of her down-trodden brethren in that land," and "addressed no less than seven petitions to the Sháh."

The Shah refused to receive her, and the mission failed of its purpose. Yet, Rúhíyyih Khánum writes, her visit had an historic effect on the Persian Bahá'í community. She had been steeped in the Guardian's instructions about the development of the Administrative Order there, and she was able to stir "a frequently intimidated, always downtrodden and sometimes apathetic community" into a new awareness of its mission and of the urgent duties before it.

While she was in Persia, at a time when she felt keenly that her mission had failed, she wrote:

"I have fallen, though I never faltered. Months of effort with nothing accomplished is the record that confronts me. If anyone in future should be interested in this thwarted adventure of mine, he alone can say whether near or far from the seemingly impregnable heights of complaisance and indifference, my tired old body fell. The smoke and din of battle are to-day too dense for me to ascertain whether I moved forward or was slain in my tracks. Nothing in the world is meaningless, suffering least of all. Sacrifice with its attendant agony is a germ, an organism. Man cannot blight its fruition as he can the seeds of earth. Once sown it blooms, I think forever, in the sweet fields of eternity. Mine will be a very modest flower, perhaps like the single tiny forget-me-not, watered by the blood of Quddús, that I plucked in the Sabz-i-Maydán of Bárfurúsh; should it ever catch the eye, may one who seems to be struggling in vain garner it in the name of Shoghi Effendi and cherish it for his dear remembrance."

In June 1933 a letter written on the Guardian's behalf told the Indian believers that she was "doing such a fine work in Persia" and planned to return to India at the beginning of winter. "She is such a wonderful soul, so devoted, so active and so capable." She did not live to make that journey. "Heedless of the warnings of age and ill-health," in the Guardian's words, she "at last succumbed in Isfáhán." On 28 October 1933 Shoghi Effendi cabled the American believers: "Keith's precious life offered up sacrifice beloved Cause in Bahá'u'lláh's native land. On Persian soil for Persia's sake she encountered challenged and fought forces of darkness with high distinction indomitable will unswerving exemplary loyalty." He called her the American believers' "first and distinguished martyr," lamented his separation from an "invaluable collaborator unfailing counsellor esteemed and faithful friend," and asked the local Assemblies to hold memorial gatherings for one whose services entitled her to "eminent rank among Hands of Cause of Bahá'u'lláh."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Priceless Pearl by Rúhíyyih Khánum, chapter 13, and God Passes By, chapter 25.

Khánum, R.. (1969). *The Priceless Pearl*.