The International Secretariat: A Cable Desk in Haifa

In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum gives one of the most intimate portraits in the Bahá’í literature of the working life of the Guardian. He had no secretariat in the modern institutional sense. He had, instead, a small office in the Master’s house in Haifa — a desk, a typewriter, a kerosene lamp in the early years and electric light later, a shelf of dictionaries, a constant supply of paper, and a flow of cables in and out across the world.

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He answered, she records, almost every letter that came to him from the believers — letters from National Spiritual Assemblies about administrative questions, letters from individual Bahá’ís about personal trials, letters from inquirers, letters from hostile governments, letters from new pioneers in faraway cities. Each was read. Each was answered. The answers were sometimes brief; they were never absent.

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The office was bilingual, then trilingual, then more. The incoming correspondence arrived in English, French, Persian, Arabic, German, Spanish; he read in each. The outgoing went mostly in English — that being the language of the worldwide Bahá’í community he was forming — but in Persian to Iran, in Arabic when needed, in French to certain European communities. Cables were composed in his own concise prose; longer letters were typed by him directly or dictated to a small staff that, in the later years, included Rúḥíyyih Khánum herself.

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He worked late. The household routine was ordered around the hours of his correspondence. He often stayed at his desk until two or three in the morning, then rose for an early walk before beginning again. He took no holidays except his European journeys, which were themselves working trips. He kept few papers for himself; he gave the Faith almost everything.

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The institutions of the Bahá’í world arose, very largely, from that small Haifa office. The plans, the cables that named the goals, the appointments of the Hands of the Cause, the guidance to the Auxiliary Boards, the architectural drawings of the Arc — all came out of one room, one desk, one Guardian working past the lamp into the night.

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

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