An Old Man Walks to 'Akká

Among the short stories Hand of the Cause Mr. ‘Alí-Akbar Furutan gathered into his collection *Stories of Bahá’u’lláh* are a number of accounts from believers in Persia who, in the years of Bahá’u’lláh’s confinement in ‘Akká, set out on foot to attain His presence. The road was long and the dangers were real. The pilgrim might cross several borders; he might be detained, robbed, sickened, turned back. Many never made it.

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One such believer — Furutan’s account names him simply as an old man, a Persian villager — set out on his own. He had no money for caravans. He had a stick, the clothes he stood up in, and a small inner certainty that he had to lay his head, before he died, at the threshold of his Beloved. He walked and walked. The route led across mountains and across deserts. He arrived, eventually, at the gate of ‘Akká, gaunt and footsore, after many months on the road.

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Word reached the household. Bahá’u’lláh, who in those years attended carefully to every newly-arrived pilgrim, had the man brought into His presence. Furutan does not record a long interview. He records the welcome.

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The old man was given food. He was given rest. He was treated, according to the witnesses, *as though no greater guest had been received that year* — although that year, like every year in ‘Akká, had received many guests, including the rich and the learned. The pilgrim wept. Bahá’u’lláh said the kind of thing He said in such cases: that the soul who turns toward God arrives already the moment he sets out, and that the journey of the body is only the slow catching-up of the legs to the heart.

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The old man stayed for some days. He went home, eventually, with nothing material to show for the months of travel. What he carried back to his village, the witnesses said, was visible in his face for the rest of his life.

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The story is, in Furutan’s telling, very small. He lets it stand without a moral. The point, by the time he is finished telling it, does not need to be drawn.

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*Paraphrased from Stories of Bahá'u'lláh (Ali-Akbar Furutan, George Ronald, 1986); see original for full text.*

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