Elizabeth Stewart's Wartime Letter from Tehran

In Volume 10, No. 3 of the Star of the West, dated April 28, 1919, the editors printed under the heading News from Persia part of a letter from Miss Elizabeth H. Stewart, an American Bahá'í then serving in Tehran. She had written it on November 25, 1918, to Mrs. Isabella D. Brittingham in California.

For many months, she wrote, there had been no post in or out of Persia, and no word had come directly from her friend since August 1917. In September 1918 a few letters had begun to get through, dated the previous March and April. She was sending this one with a traveller returning to America. The friends in Tehran were rejoicing over the news of peace.

She described meetings of men and women, many of them for teaching: one for men every Saturday night, one for women every Tuesday afternoon, and another for men on Monday nights held by Dr. Clock. New sections of the city had opened until there was a teaching meeting every night.

An American Commission had come to Persia to investigate conditions in the country, and Bahman Mirza, a Bahá'í and a Persian prince, gave its members a luncheon at his house. It was made, she wrote, a "freedom meeting" where every Persian man brought his wife. About twenty sat at a long table: Persian Bahá'í men and women, Stewart and three other Americans, the American Minister, the Consul and the members of the Commission. "This was the very first time such a thing had ever occurred," she wrote. Servants could not come into the room, so the host waited on the table himself, and Stewart asked for the privilege of helping him. One of the Persian ladies gave a speech, written by Dr. Moody, recalling that 'Abdu'l-Bahá had said the time would come when many Americans would come to Persia and many Persians would go to America. After lunch many more couples came, and, she wrote, "for the first time in history a photograph was taken of all who were there."

The letter closed with the hardships of the war years. Dr. Moody asked her to report that the schools had received no financial help from America since America entered the war and had dropped many pupils. Everything was very high in price. Butter cost sixty or seventy cents a quarter pound for those who could afford it, and she had had none for a long time:

eggs have been six cents apiece, bread very poor and so high that I have made it for a long time, under very difficult conditions.

A retelling based on the Star of the West, Volume 10, No. 3 (April 28, 1919), "News from Persia," letter of Elizabeth H. Stewart dated November 25, 1918. For the fuller account, see the original.

Editors, S. O. T. W.. (1919). *Star of the West*. Bahai News Service. https://bahai.works/Star_of_the_West/Volume_10/Issue_3/Text