[Baha'u’llah left Baghdad to travel alone in the mountains
of Kurdistan for two years. He did not tell anyone there who He was. There were
others in Baghdad who wanted people to believe that they were the Promised One.
Baha'u’llah left so that He would not hurt even the ones who wanted to be His
enemies. You can read about His journey in ‘God Passes By’, by Shoghi Effendi,
pp. 120-126, or in Baha’u’llah: The King of Glory, by H. M. Balyuzi, pp.
115-122. Here is a story from that time.]
Story:
The boy was sitting on the hillside crying bitterly. He
could see the mountain village below which was his home. He wanted to go home
but was afraid. He had been punished at school and would be punished again at
home. So instead, he ran to the hills and cried.
A stranger, who did not live in the village, heard his
crying. Coming closer the stranger asked the boy why he was crying. The boy
looked up. There, coming toward him, was a dervish, a man without a home who
spent his days wandering the countryside praying and thinking about God.
The boy answered, "Oh, sir, my teacher has punished me
for writing so badly. I can't write nicely and now I've lost the lesson he gave
me to copy. I can't go back to school without it or I will be punished even
more. And I can't go home for my parents will be ashamed."
Then the boy began to cry some more. The stranger gently
asked him to stop crying. He then offered to write a lesson and to teach the
boy to copy it so that his teacher would be proud of him.
From his clothes the stranger took out a pen and paper and
wrote beautiful letters. Then he showed the boy how to copy them. The boy
copied the writing again and again. After a time he could do it so well you
could hardly tell the difference between one writing and the other.
