Laura Barney's Questions in 'Akká

*A retelling based on the Foreword and the Author's Preface to **Some Answered Questions**, the table talks of 'Abdu'l-Bahá collected and translated by Laura Clifford Barney. Words in quotation marks are from that book.*

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Laura Clifford Barney came from a well-known family of scholars and artists in Washington, D.C. She learned of the Bahá'í Faith from May Bolles Maxwell in Paris around 1900, and soon afterwards made the first of many visits to 'Akká.

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'Abdu'l-Bahá was then a prisoner in 'Akká, confined within the city walls by the Ottoman authorities and watched constantly. It was dangerous for Him to receive visitors, and more so prominent Western guests. Even so, between 1904 and 1906 Miss Barney made several long visits, sometimes of weeks or months, and was able to put questions to Him on a wide range of subjects: God and the Prophets, passages of the Bible, the nature of man and the soul, life after death, free will, good and evil.

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Many of the conversations took place at the lunch table. One of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's sons-in-law, or one of His three secretaries, wrote down His replies in Persian as He spoke. Miss Barney recalled the day He rose from the table after answering one of her questions and said: "I have given to you my tired moments." It went on that way.

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Sometimes He could speak at length; often He was called away after a few minutes; days or even weeks might pass with no chance to teach her. "But I could well be patient," she wrote, "for I had always before me the greater lesson—the lesson of His personal life."

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She had the answers written down "not with a view to publication, but simply that I might have them for future study." At first He had to fit His words to what her interpreter could translate, and later to her own small Persian vocabulary. "In these lessons," she wrote, "He is the teacher adapting Himself to His pupil, and not the orator or poet."

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Believing that what had helped her might help others, she asked 'Abdu'l-Bahá's permission to publish the talks. A selection was made, and He corrected the notes twice in His own hand, sometimes revising them substantially. In 1908 the book appeared in three editions: the Persian text in Holland, Miss Barney's English translation in London, and a French translation in Paris by Hippolyte Dreyfus, whom she later married.

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*This is a retelling. For the full account, see the Foreword and the Author's Preface to **Some Answered Questions**.*

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