The Cake Made with Love

*A retelling for children, based on **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield (George Ronald), from the memories of Bahíyyih Khánum, who was a little girl at the time.*

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Bahíyyih Khánum was only six years old when her family was sent away from their home in the dead of winter.

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Their enemies had forced them to leave the city of Tihrán and travel all the way to Baghdád — a journey of many weeks through bitter cold and deep snow. The family had once been wealthy, but now almost everything had been taken from them. To pay for the journey, Bahíyyih's mother, Ásíyih Khánum, had to sell the last of her beautiful jewels and fine clothes.

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It was a hard road. Her mother, who had grown up in comfort, now washed the family's clothes with her own hands at cold roadside stops, until her hands grew red and cracked. And all the while she kept the family together, never once complaining.

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There is one little moment the family always remembered. The long imprisonment had left Bahá'u'lláh in poor health, and the rough food of the road was hard for Him to eat. Wanting to make Him something nice, Ásíyih Khánum tried to bake a small sweet cake with what little she had. But in the dark and the cold and the tiredness, she reached for the sugar and used salt by mistake. The cake was spoiled.

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We can imagine how badly she felt — and how gently it would have been received. It was, after all, a cake made entirely of love.

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The family carried so much that winter — cold, hunger, and sorrow — and they carried it without bitterness, because they carried it together. Love does not always look like grand and perfect things. Sometimes it looks like chapped hands, and a ruined cake, and a family staying kind to one another when everything is hard.

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*This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see ["The Winter Road to Baghdád"](/stories/ch-the-winter-road-to-baghdad).*

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