The Bahá’í World
Volume 2 : 1926-1928
134THE BAHÁ’Í WORLD 
but coming in summer when the sun sets late and rises early it works a real hardship on the devout.
All the year through the Muḥammadans must pray five times a day, and wash before each of these required periods for the commemoration of God. The Prophet advises those sojourning in the desert where water is inaccessible, to wash with sand. The skin can be quite thoroughly cleansed in this way.
Nothing could be more embarrassing to the average Occidental than to be seen praying; except in the cold and meaningless conformity of the average public meeting. To fling himself on his knees, lift his hands to heaven, bend prostrate on his face before any and every passer-by, is incompatible with our egotism and our self-consciousness. Our approach to the Almighty must, whatever its ardor or intensity, be well within the confines of good-form. But the Arab, unconstrained and naif in his appeal to God, kneels by the road-side.
It is interesting to note the reason that we so often see the Arabs at prayer at this particular spot. One of the awful horrors that greeted the family of Bahá’u’lláh when they arrived in ‘Akká was the evidences of strange and disfiguring diseases on all sides. It was said that “a bird could not fly over ‘Akká and live”—so foul was the water, so stagnant the marshes, so prevalent malaria, so damp and hot the atmosphere, so primitive the sanitation.
We see enacted again and again in the drama of life the same recurring episode: a Being arises who utters the Call of the Kingdom of God, and releases in the potency of His Word that irresistible might that draws man back to his spiritual origin. Not only with no prestige (often forcibly shorn of it), no human assist- ance, but against the malicious opposition of organized society, He establishes His authority and revivifies the dead hearts of men.
So when Bahá’u’lláh came to ‘Akká as a prisoner, it was a shift on the part of His persecutors to do away with Him and His followers without actual physical execution. Those in authority had been warned against Him as a most dangerous heretic and traitor; for church and state being one, any act of infidelity to Islám is not only heretical but a political crime as well.
Now behold one of those mysterious miracles that follows in the path of these mighty Beings! In a short time the Governor of ‘Akká is seeking to know what favor he can do for Bahá’u’lláh! “Repair the old Roman aqueduct, and bring an abundant supply of clear fresh water to ‘Akká,” is the reply. Then the moats were drained, and so one by one the malignant things disappear and good things succeed them. And now the opening here in front of Bahjí, in the aqueduct restored to usefulness by the kind jailer, is a favorite place for the Arabs to pray because here they can perform their required ablutions.
Weare sitting under the great oaks between the old Mansion of Bahjí and the sea. The Arabs carry on their devotions as if they were absolutely alone in the middle of a desert impervious to our glances and conversation. A darling old woman from a garden near-by has appeared with a huge clean kerchief full of salted sun-flower seeds. The Oriental ladies lay bare the small white flake of a kernel with perfect ease. For an Occidental to succeed in opening one is not an achievement; it is a career. Farúd brings out bowls of orange juice in which crisp tender leaves of romaine lettuce are rolled and dipped; while the conversation turns on the relative place of Byron and Wordsworth in English literature.
This is the kaleidoscopic East that exercises an ineffaceable spell over the soul of the Westerner. “When you hear the East a-callin’ you won't never ’eed naught else.”
Here comes a troupe of young boys, handsome, care-free fellows, out for a holiday. Nothing could be more depressing than the part played by women in the public life of the Orient. The costume