Bread for the Bowery: 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Visit to the Poor of New York

Mahmúd's Diary records that on the evening of April 19, 1912 — during the first week of the American tour — 'Abdu'l-Bahá set aside the program His American hosts had arranged and asked to be taken to the Bowery Mission.

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The Bowery, in the New York of 1912, was the city's principal gathering place for the homeless, the unemployed, and the men broken by drink. The Mission served them food and held simple religious services. The Master had heard of it. He wished to see it.

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The diary records that He went in the evening, after His other engagements were complete. Some four hundred men had gathered for the night. Maḥmúd records the room as crowded, smelling of coal smoke and of the bodies of men who had not had the means to wash, and lit by the bare bulbs of a charity hall.

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The Master spoke to them briefly. He addressed them, the diary records, as His brothers — the same word, in Persian, that He used for the most distinguished gathering of the tour. He spoke of the equality of all souls before God, of the dignity that poverty cannot diminish, of the hidden eye of God that watches the poor with a particular tenderness.

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When He had finished speaking, He stood at the door of the Mission and asked that each of the four hundred men file past. Maḥmúd records that He had His pockets filled with silver coins. He pressed a coin into the palm of each man as he passed. He spoke a word — sometimes a blessing, sometimes a question about where the man slept, sometimes only the man's name said back to him.

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The line was long. The diary records that the procession of four hundred took above an hour. The Master stood at the door the whole hour. He did not sit. When the last man had passed He blessed the room as a whole and asked that the doors be opened so the night air could enter.

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The party returned to the hotel near midnight. Mahmúd records that the Master was tired but that He spoke quietly, in the carriage, of the great kindness in those broken faces. He had come to America to teach the unity of humankind. The Bowery visit was, in the diary's plain telling, one of the things He was doing while He taught it.

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*Paraphrased from Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), entry for April 19, 1912; see original for full text.*

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