The Mouthful of Khánum: A Childhood Privilege at the Family Table

In the household at ‘Akká, Rúḥíyyih Khánum writes in The Priceless Pearl, meals were a quietly ceremonious affair. The grandchildren sat in the long low room, the bread and the rice and whatever the day’s simple stew was set in front of them, and they watched.

What they watched for was Bahíyyih Khánum — the Greatest Holy Leaf, the most beloved sister of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the still-centre of the family. She would eat from her own plate, and then, between her own bites, she would lift a small spoonful and pass it to one of the children.

That spoonful, by household tradition, was the mouthful of Khánum. Whatever it was — rice, a piece of bread, a fragment of meat — it tasted, the children all agreed, better than anything else on the table. It tasted better because it had been given. It carried the flavour of the giver.

The grandchildren used to watch for a mouthful of Khánum's food that she would give to this or that one as it always tasted best.

Shoghi Effendi, Rúḥíyyih Khánum notes — with quiet honesty about her husband’s family life — was a particular favourite of the Greatest Holy Leaf. The Guardian usually got it, as he was a favourite of hers. No one resented this. The household understood that a love which is open, particular, and unhidden can be a blessing without being unfair, because it does not deny love to the others; it only makes the household feel held.

The detail is small. It would be invisible were it not preserved. But in a Faith whose central institutions arose, eventually, from this very household, it is also a record of how a future Guardian was first taught — by the daily kindness of an aunt — that particular care and impartial love are not opposites.

Paraphrased from The Priceless Pearl (Rúḥíyyih Khánum, Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1969); see original for full text.

Khánum, R.. (1969). *The Priceless Pearl*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust.