The Crossing on the Cedric

A retelling based on Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (entries for March 25 – April 11, 1912). The narrative is retold in our own words; the lines in quotation marks are from the Diary.

On the morning of 25 March 1912, 'Abdu'l-Bahá left Ramleh and boarded the White Star liner S.S. Cedric at Alexandria, in Egypt, bound for New York by way of Naples. Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, who kept the diary that bears his name, lists the six companions who sailed with Him: Shoghi Effendi, Siyyid Asadu'lláh-i-Qumí, Dr Amínu'lláh Faríd, Mírzá Munír-i-Zayn, Áqá Khusraw, and Maḥmúd himself. The parting was a sad one. One of the Master's daughters, Rúḥá Khánum, was seriously ill, and the friends who had come aboard to say farewell left the ship in tears.

The companions' cabins were in second class, but arrangements were made for them to eat with the Master in the first-class dining room. Maḥmúd records the daily life of the crossing. When the party gathered in the morning, the Master asked Shoghi Effendi to chant a prayer. He went from cabin to cabin to ask after each companion's health. His conversation ranged from the eating habits of European travellers to the hard lives of labourers and coal miners.

Other passengers began to take notice. A lady from New York, a Unitarian, said she had recognized Him from a distance, and asked Him for a message to her congregation. He gave her one that began:

Glad tidings, glad tidings, the Sun of love has dawned.

On 27 March some passengers posted a notice on the ship's bulletin board, and after dinner the Master spoke in the first-class main auditorium to an audience Maḥmúd put at well over five hundred people.

Italy and Turkey were then at war. The ship's Italian doctor, the Master remarked on the first day, took the party for Turks and claimed that Áqá Khusraw's eyes were diseased. At Naples the friends urged Him not to go ashore, since their Eastern dress and fezzes might provoke the local people, and He looked at the city from the deck. Doctors from Naples then came aboard to examine the passengers' eyes, and declared that Shoghi Effendi and Mírzá Munír were infected as well. Even if the three went on to New York, the doctors said, they would not be allowed to land. All efforts to change the decision failed, and the Master asked the three to obey. On 30 March He bade them farewell and they left the ship. The Master's heart, Maḥmúd writes, was broken. He said:

There is a wisdom in this matter which will become known later.

From Naples the Cedric sailed on with three Persians (Siyyid Asadu'lláh, Dr Faríd and Maḥmúd) and six Western believers who had come aboard at Naples to travel with Him: Mr and Mrs Woodcock and their daughter from Canada, Mr and Mrs Austin of Denver, and Miss Louisa Mathew of London. All of them were now in first class near the Master.

On the morning of 11 April one of the companions told the Master that everyone on the ship had remarked that the ocean had never been so calm at that time of year. Telegrams of welcome poured in from the American Bahá'í communities, and the Cedric came into New York harbour past the Statue of Liberty.

A retelling based on Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (entries for March 25 – April 11, 1912). For the fuller account, see the original.

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