The Boy Who Learned the Language of the World

*A retelling for children, based on **The Priceless Pearl** by Rúḥíyyih Khánum.*

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Picture a boy sitting in a classroom far from home, in a city by the sea called Beirut. All around him sat other students — boys from many different families and many different beliefs, from all across that part of the world. The lessons were in English, a language he had not been born speaking. And this boy, quietly working at his desk, was the grandson of 'Abdu'l-Bahá.

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His name was Shoghi Effendi.

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He had been born in 1897, in the old prison-city of 'Akká — a grandson of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and a great-grandson of Bahá'u'lláh. When he was small, he learned at home. Tutors in his family taught him to read and write in Persian and in Arabic. But when he was about eleven years old, he was sent away to school. First to a school in Haifa, then onward to Beirut, and at last to a big college there — a school that would one day be called the American University of Beirut.

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Now, why send a boy so far from home to study?

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It was 'Abdu'l-Bahá who wished it, and He had a reason. Looking ahead to the years to come, He could see that the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh would one day speak to the whole world — including the lands of the West, far away. And so He wanted His grandson to grow up able to understand that world: to read its books, to follow the way its people thought and argued, and to talk with them in their own language.

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So that is exactly what Shoghi Effendi did. He sat through every kind of lesson the college taught in those days — English stories and poems, the history of faraway countries, how governments worked, and the sciences too. And he learned all of this side by side with classmates from many different backgrounds, each with their own beliefs, gathered there from across the region.

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Rúḥíyyih Khánum, who later wrote his story, tells us honestly that he was not quite like the other students. He loved his grandfather, the Master, with all his heart, and everyone could see it. He said his prayers faithfully. And when the time of the Bahá'í fast came around each year, he kept it — going without food from sunrise to sunset — even though the boys around him did not know what he was doing or why.

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His classmates remembered him not as the flashiest or the cleverest boy in the room, but as someone serious and good, someone who cared deeply about doing what was right. And yet, quietly, he did very well. His test results were strong, every single time.

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He worked at himself in small, steady ways, too. He kept a private notebook where he wrote down new English words to learn. He wrote letters home in three different languages. Bit by bit, without making any fuss about it, he was getting ready — though for what, he did not yet know.

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Every summer, he came back from Beirut to Haifa, and each time he returned a little more able than before: knowing the languages a little better, thinking in new ways he had practiced all year. And the Master watched him grow, and was quietly pleased.

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Here is the part that is easy to miss. Neither the boy nor his grandfather knew, in those days, what all this learning was truly for. Shoghi Effendi was not studying because someone had told him a great task lay ahead. He was simply a grandson, getting a good education — broad, careful, full of prayer.

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Only later would the world find out. After 'Abdu'l-Bahá passed away, His Will and Testament was opened in 1921 — and in it, He had named Shoghi Effendi to lead the Bahá'í community after Him, as its Guardian. All those years in the classroom in Beirut, all those evenings copying words into a notebook, all those quiet summers of growing — they had been preparing him for this, even when he could not see it.

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That is something worth remembering. We do not always know what our hard work today is making us ready for tomorrow. Like the boy in Beirut, we can do our small, faithful tasks — studying, praying, paying attention — and trust that nothing good we learn is ever wasted.

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*This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see ["The Schoolboy in Beirut: Shoghi Effendi's Studies at the AUB"](/stories/pp-shoghi-at-school-in-beirut).*

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