The Guardian's Last Days in London

A retelling for children, based on The Priceless Pearl by Rúḥíyyih Khánum, the wife of Shoghi Effendi, who was with him in London in his last days.

Shoghi Effendi was the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith. For thirty-six years, from Haifa, he guided the Bahá'ís of the whole world.

In the autumn of 1957 he went to London to buy a few more things for a new building in Haifa, the International Archives, where he planned to keep precious things from Bahá'í history. He meant to go home to Haifa in November.

That autumn a bad flu was spreading all over Europe, and both Shoghi Effendi and Rúḥíyyih Khánum caught it. He had a high fever for a few days. A good doctor, whom he liked and trusted, told him not to travel until he had been free of fever for a whole week.

Even in bed, Shoghi Effendi kept working. He read a great deal and dealt with his letters and cables. When a week had passed, he had a big table put in his room and stood beside it for hours, finishing a map that showed how far the Bahá'ís had come in their ten-year plan to spread the Faith around the world. Rúḥíyyih Khánum begged him to wait until he was stronger, but he said he must finish it. He finished it that day.

Early in the morning of the fourth of November, he had a sudden heart attack in his sleep. Rúḥíyyih Khánum wrote that it came so gently and so suddenly that he died without even knowing it. When she went into his room that morning to ask how he was, there was no look of pain on his face.

She knew the news would be a terrible shock to Bahá'ís everywhere, especially to those who were old or ill. So first she sent a message saying that the Guardian was very ill, and asking everyone to pray. Later that day she sent the news that he had passed away. The Hands of the Cause, Bahá'ís whom the Guardian had appointed to protect and spread the Faith, came to London to be with her.

In His book of laws, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Bahá'u'lláh taught that a person should be buried within an hour's journey of the place where they die. So Shoghi Effendi was laid to rest in a cemetery near London. Bahá'ís from more than twenty-five countries came to the funeral. The next year a white marble column was raised over his grave, with a globe of the earth on top and a golden eagle standing on the globe.

The Bahá'ís felt a sorrow as deep as the sorrow they had felt thirty-six years before, when 'Abdu'l-Bahá passed away.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "The Guardian's Passing in London".

Khánum, R.. (1969). *The Priceless Pearl*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust.