The Night Their Mother Held Them

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

Long, long ago, in the hills above the city of Tihrán, there lived a family. There was a little girl named Bahíyyih, who was about six years old. There was her older brother, who was eight. There was a tiny baby brother, too. And there was their father and their mother, whose name was Ásíyih Khánum.

One day, their father — Bahá'u'lláh — came riding home in a great hurry. Frightening news had reached the city, and trouble was coming for those who loved God in the new way that Bahá'u'lláh would one day teach the whole world.

Then the soldiers came.

They took the children's father away. They put chains on Him and led Him down the long path toward the city, to a dark and terrible prison far below the ground. And while He was being taken, other men poured into the house to carry off everything the family owned.

Little Bahíyyih never forgot the sound of it. The men took everything they could find.

They tore the rings from my mother's ears, the buttons from her dress, the very combs from her hair.

Now, here is the part of the story that shines the brightest.

In the middle of all that noise and fear, with strangers stealing everything and her husband marched away in chains, what do you think their mother did?

She did not scream. She did not run. She sat down on the floor of the empty room, and she gathered all three of her children close into her arms, and she held them.

She would not let them see her cry.

In a quiet, ordinary voice — as gentle as if it were any other evening — she told them not to worry. She said their father had been called away on a journey, and that He would come back when He could. The children were not silly; somewhere deep inside, they understood that something very big and very sad had happened. But oh, how safe they felt inside their mother's arms.

Many, many years later, when Bahíyyih was a very old woman, she still remembered that night. And do you know what she remembered best? Not the soldiers. Not the robbers. Not even all the lovely things that were carried away. What she remembered best was her mother's voice — calm and low and full of love — speaking softly into the dark, as if everything in the whole world might still turn out all right.

Their mother stayed brave for a long time after that. She kept the little family together. She sold the few things they had left, one by one, just to buy food. She watched over her children. And she prayed, and she prayed, and she prayed.

Their mother could not stop the soldiers from coming. She could not bring the father home that night. But she could hold her children close, and she could keep her voice gentle, and she could refuse to let fear win. That is its own kind of courage — the quiet, steady kind that wraps its arms around the people it loves and whispers, we will be all right.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "The Night of the Arrest: Asiyih Khanum's Vigil".

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