“‘Abdu’l-Bahá,” writes Dr. J.E. Esslemont, “tells how one
day He was allowed to enter the prison-yard to see His beloved Father when He
came out for His daily exercise. Bahá’u’lláh was terribly altered, so ill He
could hardly walk. His hair and beard unkempt, His neck galled and swollen from
the pressure of a heavy steel collar, His body bent by the weight
of His chains.” “For three days and three nights,” Nabíl has recorded in his
chronicle, “no manner of food or drink was given to Bahá’u’lláh. Rest and sleep
were both impossible to Him. The place was infested with vermin, and the stench
of that gloomy abode was enough to crush the very spirits of those who were
condemned to suffer its horrors.” “Such was the intensity of His suffering that
the marks of that cruelty remained imprinted upon His body all the days of His
life.”
- Shoghi Effendi (from a letter dated 28 March 1941; ‘The Promised Day Is
Come’)
