The Long Road Through the Snow

A retelling for children, based on The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield, who wrote down the words of Bahíyyih Khánum, the Greatest Holy Leaf.

Many years later, when she was an old woman, Bahíyyih Khánum told her friend Lady Blomfield about the winter when her family was sent away from their home.

Her father, Bahá'u'lláh, had been kept for four months in a dark prison under the ground, with heavy chains around His neck. When at last He was let out, the rulers said He and His family must leave Persia and go far away, to the city of Baghdád. They were given ten days to get ready, because Bahá'u'lláh was very ill.

The government gave them nothing for the journey. So Bahíyyih's mother, Ásíyih Khánum, sold almost all the beautiful things she had left, such as her jewels and her embroidered clothes, to buy what they would need. None of their friends dared to come and help, or even say goodbye, except one old lady: Ásíyih Khánum's grandmother. One faithful servant and one woman stayed with them.

The children were very young. Bahíyyih was six, and her brother, who would one day be known as 'Abdu'l-Bahá, was eight. Their little brother, Mírzá Mihdí, was only two, and he was delicate. So their mother agreed to leave him behind with her grandmother. Saying goodbye to him was very sad. Then they set out. Bahíyyih Khánum remembered:

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

Sometimes they had to camp out in wild, empty places, and they did not have the warm things they needed for such cold. Ásíyih Khánum, who was going to have another baby, rode in a covered seat carried by a mule that jolted along the road. But Bahíyyih remembered that her mother never complained, not once. She was always thinking of some kindness she could do for someone else.

When they reached a town, her mother would wash the family's clothes at the public baths and carry them back, cold and wet, in her arms. Her hands were not used to such hard work, and they became sore and painful. At night they stayed in rough inns where each family was given one room for one night. No lights were allowed, and there were no beds.

Bahá'u'lláh was still so ill that He could not eat the rough food on the road. One night Ásíyih Khánum found a little flour and made Him a sweet cake. But it was so dark that she used salt instead of sugar, and the cake could not be eaten!

Soldiers took the family as far as the border, and other soldiers brought them on to Baghdád, where they lived at first in a very small house.

When Bahíyyih Khánum told this story, Lady Blomfield had tears in her eyes. Bahíyyih Khánum offered to stop, because the story was so sad. But when Lady Blomfield asked her to go on, she said that her whole life had been sorrow, and then she added:

but sorrow is really joy, when suffered in the path of God!

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "The Journey from Tihrán to Baghdád, Winter 1853".

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