The Nameless One Comes Home

A retelling for children, based on The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield, drawn from what the Greatest Holy Leaf remembered of her own childhood.

She was only a little girl — perhaps eight years old — on the day her father went away.

Her name was Bahíyyih Khánum, and one day she would be honored with a beautiful title: the Greatest Holy Leaf. But she was a child then, living in the city of Baghdád, and she would remember what happened next for the rest of her whole life.

One quiet day, her father, Bahá'u'lláh, left their home. He did not tell anyone where He was going. He walked away into the faraway mountains of Kurdistán, and then there was only silence. He had gone for a reason the little girl was too young to understand — there had been arguing and bad feeling among the believers, and He withdrew so that their hearts might grow quiet again. But to the small family He left behind, it felt as if the very center of their home had vanished overnight.

What came after were two of the hardest years the child ever knew.

Her mother was Ásíyih Khánum. She had grown up rich, in a house full of comfort, where servants did the heavy work. But now there was no one to do it for her. Every day she went to the deep well herself and pulled the family's water up on rough ropes, hand over hand, hour after hour, until the ropes wore her hands raw. They had become poor. They were often hungry. Worst of all, the baby of the family — a little brother — grew sick, and a hard, unkind houseguest would not let them call a doctor or go for help. And so the baby died.

Through all of this, the mother somehow held the family together. She carried sorrow that would have crushed almost anyone — and she carried it without growing bitter or angry. The children watched her, and they learned from her, even when no words were spoken.

And they waited.

That was the hardest part of all: not the water, not the hunger, but the not knowing. Was their father even alive? Would He ever come back? Or would the silence simply go on and on forever? Two whole years passed that way, with no answer.

Then, at last, came a tiny thread of hope.

Travellers began to tell a curious story. Far away, in a mountain region called Sulaymáníyyih, there lived a mysterious holy man. He dressed in the plain, rough clothes of a wandering dervish. He would not tell anyone His name. Yet His wisdom and His love were so great that He had quietly won the hearts of that whole region. People had begun to call Him "The Nameless One."

When the family heard the story, their hearts jumped with a hope almost too big and too painful to hold. A holy stranger, full of wisdom and love, who would give no name? Could it be — could it possibly be — Him?

It was.

A message was sent into the mountains. And one day Bahá'u'lláh, still in the worn clothes of a dervish, came home.

Bahíyyih Khánum never forgot that moment in the doorway. Her mother rose to welcome Him. She did not faint, and she did not cry out. She stood there, as her daughter remembered, calm and gentle — like someone whose long, quiet trust had finally been rewarded. And her brother, a boy named 'Abbás, who would one day be known to the world as 'Abdu'l-Bahá, reached out and took His father's hand. He held on tightly, his sister remembered, as though never again could he let him go.

Two whole years of hardship — the water and the worn ropes, the hunger, the grief, the long not-knowing — all gathered themselves into that single moment in the doorway, and turned into pure joy. The family was together again at last.

The little girl who lived through those years learned something young that would stay with her through a long life of difficulty still to come: that love can wait through even the longest silence, and that what comes back to a patient, trusting heart is sweeter than anything the waiting ever took away.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "The Return from the Mountains".

Blomfield, L.. (1940). *The Chosen Highway*. George Ronald. https://bahai-library.com/blomfield_chosen_highway