Total Moral Victory Today in the World's Worst Prison
Dearest Family and Friends:
The following is a vivid testimony to the ultimate moral, mental, and spiritual integrity, dignity, and destiny of the Baha'is and indeed of the entire human race:
Ever since the most unjust and indignified imprisonment some three years ago, without a single crime, of the most innocent, the pure, and the saintly Baha'i Leaders in Iran called Yaran, and their subsequent transfer from the Evin Prison to the most backward and unusually harsh prison of Rajaei Shahr where some 5000 topmost killers, drug dealers, and others are kept in clusters under sub-human conditions, despite the lack of food, toilet, sanitation, and basic subsistence conditions, despite the dirt, filth, and illness, in pitiful conditions themselves, the two saint ladies Mahvash and Fariba, as with the other five in the men's quarters, have managed to support and uplift the minds and hearts of their fellow pitiful prisoners by giving them their relentless and genuine loving support to the poorer, the more needy, and the more frail fellow prisoners, seeing no evil in any soul, finding and nurturing dignity even in such a man-forsaken hell, and by such genuine constant manifestations of loving kindness have now won, as a manifestation of human moral triumph, the hearts and minds and the respect of these same so-called "criminal" fellow prisoners despite the initially existing dangers to their own very lives!
Over the months, whenever by the only good modern day miracle of cell phone in the prison yard it was made possible for me to hear several times from Fariba herself, and on the one occasion when I got the chance and was so blessed to visit the two most precious ladies via Divine Destiny for one hour myself, as well as from other family members and even directly from prison guard, I heard myself how miraculously the dangerous killers and criminals had been overwhelmingly moved and transformed by the vivifying souls of these two saintly Ladies.
One can recall the moving poem by Mahvash which shook the world, who, amidst the extreme pains of her own, backed against the withered single pomegranate tree in the prison yard, contemplates how the entire burden of these soul-and-body tortured fellow prisoners and indeed all the down-trodden suffering women of the World are now on her shoulder.
I am still amazed how for the entire three years during the rare occasions she could talk on the phone at various times, I never heard Fariba's voice even once tremble slightly except for joy, with full faith, complete optimism, and total jubilation, as if walking in the highest Paradise all these long suffering days and months and years.
I still recall the moving sharing lessons of Fariba relaying to me how she had found the single remaining spot of beauty and purity in each and all of these worldly despised and abandoned souls. I remember when she described to me the miracle account of how the most feared gang leader of the prison mafia, despite the huge body, knife-cut and broken face and other fearsome features, shun by all other killers and criminals, had been so moved by our twin spiritual heronies over time that she had on one occasions when Fariba had to pass a toilet dirt mud which had become watery sludge after rain, with their prison-customary slippers, she saw Fariba from far and told her from the distance "Please wait, please wait, may your holy feet not be touched and smeared by these dirts", then, throwing her own slippers bode and insisted Fariba to kindly step on her slippers and pass by the place lest she be mired. No such things happen in any deadly criminal prison anywhere in the world in any way similar to this Rajaei Shahar, where only for the mere sake of prolonging an already issued death sentence with formalities paperwork procedures, often the killer kills one more unfortunate and helpless person often at random in the prison, days prior to the execution.
I remember how once Fariba was so overjoyed to tell me how one of her friends, where a few had died mercilessly by swine flu and cast and treated like swines by prison authorities, had first completely given up strong drug addiction, only to replace it with super heavy cigarette addiction, then, by their loving care of our two Baha'i Ladies, day by day she had been reducing to the last one cigarette per day. Fariba told me how that day, just a month ago, Fariba hugged that lady, and rather than insisting or requesting her to give up the final cigarette, only told here gently how much she loved her and was proud of her that despite her years of bad luck in life turning her into a despised criminal, she had obtained the positive hope, the will power, and the supreme determination to accomplish what so many others in the free world had failed despite all facilities and support. Fariba told me how the lady, now a close friend, threw to the ground immediately the last final cigarette, crushed it with her heels, and, cried and said: Today I finally give up this addiction for the sake of love of you, as I feel and know that some day I shall visit you in your home and tell you and show you the effect of the loving transformation you have created in me and our other fellow prison mates!
This is how a candle can shine like the torch, nay as the mid-day Sun, in the darkness of desolation, pessimism and hopelessness, and selfishness that has overshadowed the human society.
Now, I just spoke to Fariba few hours ago on the phone who called from the Rajaei Shahr Prison.
For your information, as the latest news, by tomorrow the two most precious ladies, and the crowning pride of future human civilization will be transferred to the worst section of the Prison entitled "The Under-Ground Dungeon for the Worst of the Villains and Criminals".
This latest panic move by a remorsely helpless oppressor signifies an entirely unparalled scenario in the World History ever even to the present date; that is, for the holy and saintly riligious prisoners of conscience to be one more tier exiled from the already terrible exiled Prison allocated for the worst of criminals, killers, and drug addicts to the lower degree underground dungeon for the most dangerous criminals amongst them, just becasue these two already grossly-wronged innocent Saint Lady Prisoners, while in the prison under sub-human conditions, have by their most pure love and consistent un-conditional
Fariba said today on the phone that despite the repeated public prison loudspeaker announcements and stern warnings for all prisoners to stay and shun away and do not associate with the Baha'i prisoners, groups and groups of prison ladies thronged and gathered around their cell these past three days, with tearful eyes and warm hugging arms and in a unified supreme show of moral support and expressions of reciprocal love and as spontaneous sign of total unified allegience of all prisoners to the Two Saint Ladies whom they have grown to know as Angels from Heaven stationed in this human hell of a notoriously fanatic and repressive unhumane Regime.
Just hours ago, Fariba in most happy tone of voice told me that one of the miracles of the Supreme Manifestation of God, Baha'u'llah, is that to the degree He gives His loved ones sufferings for the sake of the mental and moral and spiritual education and upliftment of humanity in this dark age of the transition to the collective maturity of the entire human race, to a multiple degree of that He also bestows upon them true felicity, joy, and jubilation; and that how truly happy she is that she is going down to the underground dungeon, with no fear nor a bit concern for imminent interrogations and torture.
This, reminded me vividly of her hand-written letter to me some thirty years back, in 1982 or 1983, posted from Babolsar to Boston, when our dearly beloved martyrs had just ascended to the Abha Kingdom, how she wished to be like the example of the root of the Cause of God, that Divine Tree which is neither of the East nor of the West, whose roots are firm in the earth (dark, cold, wet, lowly soil of the earth as she described), so that its branches and fruits, us, the Baha'is and all the people of good will in the outside world, can overshadow and benefit the entire human kind.
What a sublime drama in the human history.
Speechless in awe and admiration, I remain.
Ya Baha'u'l - Abha!
(Oh Thou The Most Glorious Glory!)
Farzam
