The City of Smoke and the Quiet Parlour

A retelling for children, based on Mahmúd's Diary (entries for May 6-9, 1912).

One spring, a train carried 'Abdu'l-Bahá and His small group of companions over a long range of mountains called the Alleghenies. He had spent many days in the cities of the east, and now He was going west for the first time. The faraway goal was Chicago. But along the way the train stopped at two cities that were very different from each other — and the way 'Abdu'l-Bahá treated them both is the whole point of this story.

The first city was Pittsburgh.

In those days, Pittsburgh was the great steel city of America. Huge mills stood along the river, and their fires burned all day and all night, never stopping. One of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's companions, a man named Mahmúd, had come all the way from Persia, and he had never seen anything like it. A thick haze hung over the whole river valley. And here is a little detail Mahmúd wrote down himself: within just one hour of arriving, soot from the mills had settled on the clean white cuffs of his shirt.

The friends in Pittsburgh had rented a room in a hotel so the Master could speak there. When the evening came, look who filled the seats! There were merchants in fine clothes. There were ministers from the churches. And right alongside them, still wearing their work clothes from the mills, sat the steelworkers themselves.

What do you think 'Abdu'l-Bahá chose to talk about, in front of all those rich and important people?

He talked about the workers.

He spoke about how much honour belongs to the labourers — the men who, by the strength of their own two hands, feed the whole world its bread. He gently warned the wealthy people in the room not to look down on the workers who shaped the metal. The world is changing, He told them, and one day the wide gap between the rich and the poor must be closed — not by fighting, but because everyone finally understands a simple truth: that all people are the children of one Father.

Every kind of person in that hall listened closely. And when the talk was over, some of the workmen waited quietly at the back of the room, hoping for a chance to greet Him. He welcomed them — and here is the part to remember — He welcomed them with exactly the same warmth He had shown the important people sitting in the very front row.

A few days later, the train brought Him to the second city, Cleveland.

Cleveland was nothing like loud, smoky Pittsburgh. There were only a few friends here, and no grand hall was rented. Instead, the meetings were held in people's own homes, and everything was quiet and close and gentle. Some of the believers had travelled from other towns just to be there. They sat together in the front room of the house, and one by one, each person asked the question they had carried with them all that way.

'Abdu'l-Bahá answered every single one.

Mahmúd did not write down any grand, famous speech from Cleveland, because there wasn't one. What he wrote down instead was something smaller and just as beautiful: a guest from faraway Persia, sitting in an ordinary living room in Ohio, patiently answering the questions of a small group of friends, one by one.

And that is the quiet lesson hidden in this train ride. In the roaring steel city, with hundreds listening, 'Abdu'l-Bahá gave the same loving attention to a tired workman as He gave to the richest man in the room. In the small, quiet town, with only a handful of friends, He gave that same care to every single question. Big crowd or small, rich or poor, loud city or quiet parlour — to Him, every person mattered just as much.

Then the train carried Him onward to Chicago. The mountains had been crossed, and a whole new part of His American journey was beginning.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "Across the Alleghenies: 'Abdu'l-Bahá in Cleveland and Pittsburgh".

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