The Pilgrimage That Never Came

A retelling based on The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield, from the spoken chronicle of Munírih Khánum recorded there. Words in quotation marks are as recorded in that account.

Munírih Khánum was travelling from Isfahán to 'Akká, where she would become the wife of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. Bahá'u'lláh had directed her party to go by way of Mecca, and the road took her through Shíráz, the birthplace of the Báb. She arrived at sunset, and she remembered that her feelings that evening were indescribable.

She stayed at the house of Siyyid Muhammad, an uncle of the Báb. The ladies of the house were not fully Bahá'ís, so she did not tell them where she was going. When they asked, she said only that she was going to the Holy Land, and they took her to mean Mecca. Then one of them said that the widow of the Báb would come to visit her in the morning. Munírih was so moved that she wept.

When they met, the two women greeted each other meaningly, and Munírih saw that Khadíjih-Bagum knew where she was going. Khadíjih-Bagum took her to her home.

"I will first take thee to the room where He was born."

The room was kept sacred. There Khadíjih-Bagum embraced Munírih and gave way to the sorrow of her heart, and Munírih wept with her. She was still beautiful, Munírih remembered, with dark hair, dark eyes "lovely still for all their weeping," and soft, creamy skin.

She took Munírih to the house of the Báb's martyred uncle, who had brought Him up after His father died. The uncle's widow, Khadíjih-Bagum's eldest sister, was there. When Munírih asked about the Báb's childhood, she answered: "The child came to us when He was four years old. From the first He was quite different from other children, so wise and gentle and serene." She told how, when He was seven, His schoolmaster had come to her husband to say that He had no need of his teaching. Then Khadíjih-Bagum spoke of her own memories, among them a dream she had had before her marriage. Munírih stayed with her twenty-one days.

Khadíjih-Bagum told her also of the days when the Báb was in prison. She had been closely watched, and none of the friends was allowed to visit her. Very rarely one of them, disguised as a beggar, would reach her door with whatever news he had gathered. The uncle who had raised Him left Shíráz secretly to find where He was imprisoned, and perhaps to see Him, but he never arrived: he was arrested in Tihrán and put to death, one of the Seven Martyrs. When news came of the martyrdom of the Báb Himself, even her mother, who had been staying with her, was taken away, so that she had no earthly comforter.

Before Munírih left, Khadíjih-Bagum gave her two supplications to carry to Bahá'u'lláh. The first was that her family and the family of Bahá'u'lláh might be united in marriage. The second was that she might receive permission to make the pilgrimage to 'Akká.

Bahá'u'lláh granted both. The first came to pass when Munírih's eldest daughter, Díyá Khánum, married Áqá Mírzá Muhsin, one of the Afnán, the Báb's kindred. Munírih longed to take Khadíjih-Bagum with her to 'Akká, but the journey would have been too unsafe and too wearisome for her. They parted with great sorrow and weeping, and they never met again.

Some time afterwards a party of pilgrims set out from Yazd for 'Akká. They arranged to go by way of Shíráz so that Khadíjih-Bagum could travel with them. The plan gave her the utmost happiness, and she made ready for the pilgrimage "with much joyful looking forward."

Then conditions in Shíráz became so dangerous that the pilgrims from Yazd had to give up passing through the city. With difficulty they sent her a letter: "To our regret and sorrow, we are compelled to go to that place without thee, but we will send one of the Afnan as thine escort, to the place where it is thy desire to be."

In a life that had held every kind of grief, Munírih said, this was the last. When the letter arrived Khadíjih-Bagum was so distressed that she fell ill. She chanted: "We are from God and to God do we return. Praise be unto Him for the Coming of His Great Day, and for all the glory of my life." And with that, in Munírih's words, "her gentle spirit returned to its celestial shelter."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield, Part II, "The Spoken Chronicle of Munírih Khánum," chapter I.

Blomfield, L.. (1940). *The Chosen Highway*.