Discovering the Moon by BahaiBookstore.com

Discovering the Moon “Verily, the religion of God is like unto heaven; fasting is its sun, and obligatory prayer is its moon.” —Bahá’u’lláh

by Jacqueline Mehrabi illustrated by Susan Reed

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mehrabi, Jacqueline. Discovering the moon / by Jacqueline Mehrabi ; illustrated by Susan Reed. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61851-072-3 (alk. paper) 1. Prayer—Bahai Faith. 2. Spiritual life—Bahai Faith. 3. Bahá’u’lláh, 1817–1892. Works. Selections. I. Bahá’u’lláh, 1817–1892. Works. Selections. English. II. Title. BP380.M44 2014 297.9’3432—dc23 2014024015

Cover and book design by Patrick Falso Illustrations by Susan Reed

Contents Note to the Reader............................................................ vi Preface............................................................................ vii 1. Home...................................................................... 1 2. Why Fifteen?............................................................ 5 3. Why Obligatory?....................................................... 9 4. Hidden Treasure..................................................... 11 5. Beyond Computation.............................................. 17 6. Magnus................................................................. 21 7. Pebbles and Problems............................................ 27 8. Which One?........................................................... 33 9. Before the Beginning.............................................. 37 10. Ablutions............................................................... 43 11. Genuflections......................................................... 47 12. Evanescence......................................................... 49 13. The Cord................................................................ 55 14. Veils...................................................................... 59 15. Visiting Miss Rose.................................................. 63 16. Idle Fancies............................................................ 67 17. “Simple” Bits.......................................................... 73 18. Moira..................................................................... 77 19. Things Unseen....................................................... 81 20. “To the Glory of God”.............................................. 87 21. Testifying with the Concourse on High...................... 93 22. The Treasured Symbol............................................ 99 23. “B and E”............................................................. 103 24. The Birthday........................................................ 107 25. The Hill................................................................ 115 *** Drawings of Genuflections............................................. 118 The Long Obligatory Prayer............................................ 119 Questions and Answers................................................. 127 Selected Quotations...................................................... 135 Glossary....................................................................... 139 References................................................................... 143 Bibliography.................................................................. 147

Note to the Reader Discovering the Moon is a work of fiction inspired by the Bahá’í Faith, an independent world religion that began in 1844 in Persia (present-day Iran). Since its inception, the Bahá’í Faith has spread to 235 nations and territories and has been accepted by more than five million people. Bahá’ís believe that there is only one God, that all the major world religions come from God, and that all the members of the human race are essentially members of one family. A brief glossary is included on p. 139 for readers who might be unfamiliar with some of the terms used.

Preface Discovering the Moon is the story of an island girl called Fern as she discovers the gems in the Long Obligatory Prayer. The story is set in Orkney in the north of Scotland, where my husband, Daryoush, and I lived for nineteen years and raised our children. There have been several changes in the islands in recent years, including the introduction of modern ferries, which have replaced the older passenger boats mentioned in this story, but the general character of the people and the place is much the same. All the characters portrayed are imaginary and any resemblance to anyone is coincidental. Some of the names used are common in the islands but should not be associated with any particular people. The island where Fern and her family live is imaginary only in that it combines features taken from several of the islands in the group. This book owes its life to the input of many friends who generously gave of their time and skills, and I am grateful to them all. Fern is now a character in her own right and I wish her well! The sequels to this book are Discovering the Sun, which tells the continuing story of Fern as she discovers the Fast, and Discovering the Sea, which is about the Covenant and completes the trilogy.

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Home

ern glanced back along the country road. There was no traffic and no one was in sight except her younger brother Magnus, aged twelve, and Moira, her ten-yearold sister, who were dawdling in the distance, their heads close together as they laughed at a joke one of them was telling. With Magnus, Fern had just gotten off the boat on her way home from school on a neighboring island. Moira, who was still at the local one-roomed primary school with its eight pupils, had met them at the pier. Fern continued her walk up the road, watching a family of baby rabbits ahead sitting on the warm tarmac. As she approached, they bounced off in a flurry of white tails, and disappeared in the long grass bordering a field. A herd of cows calmly chewed the cud as they watched with milk-chocolate eyes the familiar sight of the children passing by, away from the pier and the boat that took the older ones two hundred times every year to school and back again. The day was very still, the sea a slate-gray calm. Beyond the sea, the hills were mauve with early evening shadows. The low sun lingered in the grass, turning it to gold. The 1

boatman had already left and gone home for his tea. It would soon be dusk, when the sun hid behind the hills, its rays of fiery red stretching across the sky. Soon, thought Fern, would come the velvet blackness and the moon so close you could see its veins, mountains, and valleys; imagine the footprints left by astronauts, yourself looking down upon the oneness of the earth. The island where the children lived was mostly flat, with a hill at one end just beyond their farmhouse. The one road ran for about ten miles round the outside, with farm tracks crisscrossing in the middle. There werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t many trees, and those that did survive the salt-laden westerly gales racing across the Atlantic Ocean all the way from Alaska were stunted and looked as though they had lopsided haircuts, one side lower than the other, all leaning to the east. Fernâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mother had managed to grow a few willows on the sheltered side of their house, where Fern liked to sit and talk to her great-grandpa who lived with them. In the distant past, when the weather had been warmer, there had been forests all over the island. The remains of these were now peat bogs, which covered a good third of the island, and Fern didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to look far to find fossils of roots in the rocks by the seashore. Half a mile away, behind the hill, was a cemetery with many inscriptions dating from as far back as the eighteenth century. There had been people living in the islands long before that, of course. Archaeological sites of settlements had been found dating from about five thousand years before, plus a circle of standing stones from goodness knows when. Some of the tombstones in the cemetery listed whole families who had been wiped out by one epi-

demic or another. It seemed that, in the past, few people lived beyond forty. Life was hard then and people were poor. Fern’s great-grandpa said that some children had to walk barefoot to school, those who were lucky enough to go, even in the snow. Now life was comfortable, although a few of the islanders still had to rely on wells for their water, and farm work was always hard, despite modern machinery. And, like everywhere else, accidents happened, however careful people were. Fern’s little brother Olly had drowned in the shallow stream running through one of the fields near the house when he was two. That had happened five years ago, just before the whole family had become Bahá’ís, two years before the twins were born. Fern came to a spring gushing out of the rocky ground at the edge of a field and glanced back down the road to see how far away Magnus and Moira were. She had been trying to remember to say the Short Obligatory Prayer every day for some time now in preparation for when she reached fifteen. She knew each day she would need to choose one of the obligatory prayers to say then. Apart from which, she enjoyed saying it. It was a brief time out of this world when everything seemed to stand still as she turned to God. Magnus and Moira were still a fair distance away, seemingly absorbed in their conversation, but Magnus looked up and saw Fern dip her hands in the sparkling cold water and splash it on her face. Her brown hair was tinged with golden light from the low rays of the sun and her eyes reflected the soft green of the fields. She gazed into the distance, and Magnus guessed she was saying the prayer.

They all knew it by heart, although the younger children were not in the habit of saying it regularly. As he watched Fern, Magnus silently said the words to himself: “I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth. “There is none other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.” When Fern finished, she stood for a moment thinking about other Bahá’ís turning every day toward Bahá’u’lláh, testifying to their own smallness and to the greatness of God, and to the reason why God had created them. Magnus and Moira caught up with her and the three of them raced each other to the house, where Badí and Nabíl, their three-year-old twin brothers, were making mud pies in a pot in the garden. “For your dinner!” Badí announced, with a grin on his mud-smeared face. “We’ve put worms in!” added Nabíl, enticingly. “You’re both disgusting!” laughed Fern, giving them a wide berth and going into the house. Their mother, who had been watching for them through the kitchen window, smiled. She already had food on the table: hot barley bannocks, dripping with honey, and mugs of milk. Later there would be a cooked meal when their father and greatgrandpa finished working in the fields.

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