A Visit to the Shrine at Bahjí

Most of Julia Grundy's *Ten Days in the Light of 'Akká* is made up of notes of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's words. One of its two descriptive chapters is her account of her party's visit to the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh at Bahjí, a short drive from 'Akká, where Bahá'u'lláh spent the last years of His life and where He is buried.

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The pilgrims drove out in the afternoon, through a village of low mud houses and then across a level plain carpeted with red anemones, which Grundy calls the Bahá'í flower. At Bahjí they saw the large white mansion in which Bahá'u'lláh had lived and from which His Spirit had passed. The room was pointed out to them, but they looked at it only from outside.

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They entered the Tomb, which adjoins the mansion. Flowers grew all around it, and at the centre of the building was a court planted with orange trees and rare plants. The party removed their shoes at the entrance. The passageways surrounding the court were covered with soft and costly Persian rugs.

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At the Tomb itself, lamps and beautiful vases stood about the room, gifts from believers in many parts of the world, and a great slab in the floor marked the place of burial. Grundy writes simply:

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> Here we knelt and prayed in solemn silence, communing with the > great and glorified Spirit which had ascended from earth to > the Supreme Horizon.

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Then the pilgrims withdrew, silently, to a small side room at the opposite end of the building, where some ladies served tea and told them of the experiences of other pilgrims and believers who had visited the Tomb. The ladies gave the visitors flowers, and the party drove home across the flower-covered plain. Ahead of them, riding on donkeys, were elderly believers returning from their own visit to the Tomb, among them Haydar-'Alí and Mírzá Asadu'lláh.

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*A retelling based on **Ten Days in the Light of Akka** by Julia M. Grundy (chapter "Visit to the Tomb"). For the fuller account, see the original.*

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