At the Master's Table: Domestic Hours of the American Tour

Mahmúd's Diary records the public events of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's 1912 American tour with great care. It also preserves, in quieter entries, the domestic hours that surrounded the public ones. The Master at table is one of the recurring images.

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The household took most meals in His suite at whichever hotel the party was staying — the Ansonia in New York, the Hôtel Plaza in Chicago, the Sacramento Hotel in California. The companions who travelled with Him — Mahmúd, Dr. Faríd, Aḥmad Sohrab, the cook — would sit at the table with Him. Whichever local Bahá'ís had been invited that day would join them.

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The diary records that the Master typically served the friends with His own hand. He would lift the rice from the dish and place it on the plates of the others before His own. He would press a particular dish on a guest who had not yet tasted it. He would refill the water glasses Himself when the steward was out of the room. The friends, accustomed in their own homes to be served by their hosts, often experienced the reversal as itself a teaching.

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He laughed easily at table. The diary records, more often than the formal record of the tour might suggest, the laughter that filled His suite. He would tell stories of the household at 'Akká, of the cats that had been kept there, of the comic manners of certain Persian visitors of His youth. The friends laughed with Him. Mahmúd records, more than once, the particular freedom of those domestic hours.

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When the meal was done, the diary records that the Master would often rise and clear the plates Himself. He would carry them to the sideboard. He would refuse, with a quiet firmness, the protests of the friends who tried to take the dishes from His hands. *He served the friends from His own hand and cleared the dishes when the meal was done.*

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He would walk after the meal — the diary records walks taken in the gardens of the hotels, in the side streets of the cities, sometimes simply up and down the corridor of the suite when the weather was bad. The friends accompanied Him. The walks were quiet. They were one of the times when, the diary records, He could be seen most clearly to be at rest.

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The American tour is remembered for the great talks — at the Free Religious Association, at Howard, at Stanford, at the Lake Mohonk Peace Conference. Maḥmúd's diary records those. It also records the meal that came after each talk, the laughter that filled the suite, and the table the Master cleared with His own hands when the friends had gone.

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*Paraphrased from Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), recurring entries throughout the American tour, April-December 1912; see original for full text.*

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