Waiting in the Dark in Ṭihrán

Bahíyyih Khánum, the daughter of Bahá’u’lláh, remembered the days in Ṭihrán in 1852 when her Father lay in prison and the Bábís were being hunted down. Crowds gathered to watch the executions, and, as she recalled, “all through the fiendish work, a drum was loudly beaten.”

These horrible sounds I well remember, as we three children clung to our mother, she not knowing whether the victim was her own adored husband. She could not find out whether he was still alive or not until late at night, or very early in the morning, when she determined to venture out, in defiance of the danger to herself and to us, for neither women or children were spared. How well I remember cowering in the dark, with my little brother, Mirza Mihdi, the Purest Branch, at that time two years old, in my arms, which were not very strong, as I was only six. I was shivering with terror, for I knew of some of the horrible things that were happening, and was aware that they might have seized even my mother. So I waited and waited until she should come back. Then Mirza Musa, my uncle, who was in hiding, would venture in to hear what tidings my mother had been able to gather. My brother 'Abbas usually went with her on these sorrowful errands.

Source: Lady Blomfield, The Chosen Highway, Part II, “A Spoken Chronicle” (the recollections of Bahíyyih Khánum).

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: bullying).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/bullying