Pilgrimage Day 7

Today was a lot more productive than yesterday, mostly because there was nowhere to go but up! We were back together again in our little pilgrimage group for a trip to the House of `Abbud in Akka, the place where Bahá'u'lláh and His family were moved after they were allowed to move out of the Most Great Prison.

Photos of the house don't really do it justice. It's a very large structure, and it was originally split in two. One half belonged to one man and the other half to his uncle (who constructed the whole thing). Bahá'u'lláh and His family originally lived in the smaller half of the house. Although the uncle was suspicious of them in the beginning, he eventually warmed to them. When he determined that the only reason `Abdu'l-Bahá was not marrying the woman he was betrothed to who had come from Persia, the uncle knocked out a portion of the partition separating the two halves of the home and gave one large room to `Abdu'l-Bahá and his wife-to-be so that they could marry.

The house has been restored, of course. The walls are bright white with the characteristic "Bahjí Blue" windows that most of our properties have. There's something I really love about open-air houses. It's one reason I loved the Sabet's home in Dar es Salaam so much - the windows were always open and a breeze was always coming from the Indian Ocean. At the House of `Abbud, the windows were always open and a breeze was always coming from the Mediterranean.

When we returned I visited the grave of Ruhiyyih Khanum, the wife of Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Faith. This was at the top of my list because I've always admired her tenacity and wished on more than one occasion that I could have even a small part of it.

For dinner, I decided to actually go out and treat myself. You can only take so many hummus & lunch meat sandwiches on pita bread before you go out of your mind. In fact, I think I have eaten a lifetime's worth of hummus for a Westerner while I've been here. Hummus in the morning, hummus in the afternoon, hummus in the evening, hummus delivered intravenously while you're sleeping...

The restaurant I went to is called Ramsis (as in the Egyptian pharaoh, although we spell it Ramses). Apparently it was the favorite of one of the Hands of the Cause of God, so I figured it should be all right for me, too. I ordered the lamb kebab. I just expected a plate of kebab to be brought to me but soon enough the waiter showed up with a massive Arab salad! Then the kebab came. All this for something like $13.00 (including a soda & Arab coffee).

In the evening, we celebrated the Declaration of the Bab. It's ordinarily held in May but at the Baha'i World Centre all holy days which originally occurred before 1863 are celebrated on the lunar calendar, which puts the day of celebration roughly 11 days before when everyone else is celebrating. I trust there's a reason for this but it was baffling enough to me without someone trying to explain it. I just showed up!

It was held in the same place as the Ninth Day of Ridvan celebration and followed the same format although it was substantially longer. I walked back to the guesthouse following the circumambulation and called it a night!