childhood

In London in September 1911, a painter came to ask 'Abdu'l-Bahá whether art was a worthy vocation. The Master answered in three words. Then an actor asked about drama, and the conversation widened into a memory of a Mystery Play that, as a child, had kept Him sleepless for nights.

Shoghi Effendi's tribute to Bahíyyih Khánum preserves a single small image from her childhood in Tihrán: when Bahá'u'lláh was thrown into the Síyáh-Chál and the family's wealth was seized within the space of a single day, Navváb — the mother — placed a handful of dry flour into the hand of her young daughter as the substitute for daily bread.

In *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*, Esslemont preserves 'Abdu'l-Bahá's recollection of His Father's boyhood: by the age of thirteen or fourteen, the young Mírzá Ḥusayn-'Alí had already become known across the scholarly circles of the Núrí district for being able to converse on any subject and resolve any problem put to Him.

In *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*, J. E. Esslemont introduces the Western reader to the Báb as He was before His Declaration: a young merchant of Shíráz, raised by a maternal uncle after His father's early death, known across His district for piety, gentleness, and the scrupulous honesty of His business dealings.

In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum describes a small ritual at the family table in 'Akká: Bahíyyih Khánum, the Greatest Holy Leaf, would spoon a small bite from her own plate — *the mouthful of Khánum* — to one of the grandchildren, and the grandchildren would watch for whose turn it was.

In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum recounts the years the young Shoghi Effendi spent at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut — later the American University of Beirut — where the grandson of 'Abdu'l-Bahá met the West for the first time inside a Western classroom, and was prepared, without knowing it, for the office that lay ahead.

Rúḥíyyih Khánum's *The Priceless Pearl* preserves a moment from Shoghi Effendi's boyhood in 'Akká: a small barefoot figure in a doorway, eyes on his grandfather, and 'Abdu'l-Bahá's slow nod of recognition that the bond between them was not only physical, but something else.

In *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* the Hand of the Cause Mr. 'Alí-Akbar Furútan preserves two early memories of the Blessed Beauty's childhood: His unusual composure as an infant, who almost never cried, and a prophetic dream He described at age five or six in which He stood unharmed amid attacking sea creatures and birds — interpreted by a noted dream-reader as a foreshadowing of His future Cause.

Among the childhood stories Hand of the Cause Furutan gathered into his *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* is the recollection of how the young Mírzá Ḥusayn -‘Alí — long before His Declaration — would refuse to settle a quarrel among His playmates without first hearing both sides, and how the household began to recognize a quiet authority in the boy.

Among the recollections of Bahá'u'lláh's boyhood Mr. Furutan preserves in *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* is the dream the child once had of a great moving spectacle in the sky — birds, fish, a green sea — that He told to His father the next morning, and whose meaning the household began only later to suspect.