Freedom Is Not a Matter of Place

A retelling based on 'Abdu'l-Bahá in London, which includes an interview with 'Abdu'l-Bahá written by the journalist Isabel Fraser during His visit to London in 1911. Words in quotation marks are His, as she recorded them.

During His visit to London in 1911, 'Abdu'l-Bahá stayed in an apartment in Cadogan Gardens. Isabel Fraser was told to come early for her interview, and she arrived at nine o'clock. By then, she learned, He had been up since four and had seen eighteen people before His breakfast at half past six. Visitors of many languages and nationalities were waiting in the drawing room, and they sat in a circle facing Him. She told Him that her editor had sent her to learn something of His life in prison.

He began: "At nine years of age, I accompanied my father, Bahá'u'lláh, in his journey of exile to Baghdád, seventy of his disciples going with us." He described the later exiles, to Constantinople and Adrianople, and at last, under a guard of soldiers, to the fortress city of 'Akká. He described the first summer there, when a hundred and fifty prisoners were held in two rooms and fever spread until all of them, men, women and children, were ill at the same time, with no doctors and no medicines. "I used to make broth for the people," He said, laughing, "and as I had much practice, I make good broth."

He told how conditions eased or tightened with each governor, and how, a year before Sultán 'Abdu'l-Ḥamíd was deposed, the chairman of a committee of investigation sent by the Sultán had tried to find grounds for sending Him to Fizán, a caravan station with no houses and no water, and had declared he would bring back an order to have Him hanged at the gate of 'Akká. Then the Young Turks came to power and set free all the political prisoners of the Ottoman Empire. "Events took the chains from my neck and placed them about Hamíd's," He said; "'Abdu'l-Bahá came out of prison and 'Abdu'l-Hamíd went in!"

Fraser then asked: "Will you tell us how you felt while in prison and how you regard your freedom?"

He answered:

"Freedom is not a matter of place. It is a condition. I was thankful for the prison, and the lack of liberty was very pleasing to me, for those days were passed in the path of service, under the utmost difficulties and trials, bearing fruits and results.

"Unless one accepts dire vicissitudes, he will not attain. To me prison is freedom, troubles rest me, death is life, and to be despised is honour. Therefore, I was happy all that time in prison. When one is released from the prison of self, that is indeed release, for that is the greater prison. When this release takes place, then one cannot be outwardly imprisoned. When they put my feet in stocks, I would say to the guard, 'You cannot imprison me, for here I have light and air and bread and water. There will come a time when my body will be in the ground, and I shall have neither light nor air nor food nor water, but even then I shall not be imprisoned.' The afflictions which come to humanity sometimes tend to centre the consciousness upon the limitations, and this is a veritable prison. Release comes by making of the will a Door through which the confirmations of the Spirit come."

Fraser asked what He meant by the confirmations of the Spirit. He said they are the powers and gifts that some are born with, and which men sometimes call genius, but for which others "have to strive with infinite pains." "They come to that man or woman who accepts his life with radiant acquiescence."

She ended her account: "Radiant acquiescence--that was the quality with which we all suddenly seemed inspired as 'Abdu'l-Bahá bade us good-bye."

This is a retelling. For the full interview, see 'Abdu'l-Bahá in London.

'Abdu'l-Bahá. (1912). *'Abdu'l-Bahá in London*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19250