An Apple and a Pomegranate

A retelling based on Mahmúd's Diary by Mírzá Mahmúd-i-Zarqání, including the passage from The Diary of Juliet Thompson that its notes quote. Words in quotation marks are as recorded in those accounts.

In the summer of 1912 'Abdu'l-Bahá had asked Lua Getsinger to go to California to proclaim the Covenant. Lua wanted to stay near Him, and she kept putting off the journey.

On 29 June He gave a Unity Feast for the believers in the grounds of Roy Wilhelm's house at West Englewood, New Jersey. He had just told Lua that she must leave very soon for California. During the feast, her friend Juliet Thompson wrote, Lua "went off alone, an exceedingly naughty purpose in her mind." She walked in poison ivy, back and forth, until her feet were thoroughly poisoned.

"Now, Julie," she said when it was done, "He can't send me to California."

That night, when the Master spoke from the top step of the porch, Lua was among the few gathered around Him: "dear guilty Lua," Juliet called her, "with her poisoned feet."

The next morning in New York, Juliet went early to see the Master, and He sent her straight to Lua, who was staying at a hotel nearby with Georgie Ralston. Lua was in bed, her feet terribly swollen.

"Look at me, Julie," she said. "Look at my feet. Oh, please go right back to the Master and tell Him about them and say: 'How can Lua travel now?'"

Juliet went back, found the Master in His room, and put Lua's question to Him. He laughed, crossed the room to a table where a bowl of fruit stood, chose an apple and a pomegranate, and gave them to her. "Take these to Lua," He said. "Tell her to eat them and she will be cured. Spend the day with her, Juliet."

Lua ate the apple, then the pomegranate, chewing them "all the way through till not even a pomegranate seed was left: thoroughly eating her cure, which was certain to send her to California."

In the late afternoon the Master came to the hotel Himself. He drew back the sheet and looked at Lua's feet, which by then were slim again, and burst out laughing. "See," He said, "I have cured Lua with an apple and a pomegranate."

Lua tried once more. The Master had asked Juliet to paint Lua's portrait, and there had already been one sitting. The next day Lua drew Juliet aside at the Master's house and sent her in with a new question: if Lua was in California, how could Juliet paint her? The portrait was begun; how could she finish it?

The Master laughed again, for this was too transparent. "In a year," He said, "Lua will join Me in Egypt. She will stay in New York a few days on her way to Me and you can paint her then, Juliet."

"So poor Lua had to go to California," Juliet wrote. "There was no way out for her."

On Sunday, 7 July, Mírzá Mahmúd recorded that the Master again told Lua to leave for California, and that His words to her were "very emphatic and clear." Among them were these: "We must obey the Blessed Beauty. We must never forget His favors and exhortations." The Blessed Beauty, He said, had entered into this Covenant for obedience, "that is, that no one should utter a word from his own self or cause any conflict."

'Abdu'l-Bahá sent Lua on her way with Mrs Ralston, a new believer whom He had welcomed warmly, and He gave Mrs Ralston a beautiful small Persian carpet.

Of her friend, Juliet wrote: "Oh precious Lua—strange mixture of disobedience and obedience—and all from love!"

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Mahmúd's Diary by Mírzá Mahmúd-i-Zarqání and The Diary of Juliet Thompson by Juliet Thompson.

Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, M.. (1998). *Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání*.