I was aware that each pilgrim, on their first evening in
Haifa, would enter the dining room first - and alone - to be greeted by the
Guardian. I was well prepared for this but, when the time came, felt a ‘rush'
of anxiety and trepidation – unsure, I guess, of how I would feel, being alone
with the one person whom all Bahá'ís longed to meet. As I entered the dining
room and saw, for the first time, the short but stocky figure of the Guardian,
standing beside the dining table, dressed in a camel-coloured overcoat (it was
mid-winter and he has just come in from the cold), with the Turkish fez which
he habitually wore at an angle on his head. But it was the smile and the eyes
that entranced me – and as he embraced me, Persian style, which I was still
unaccustomed to, I found I had to reach down to respond to his embrace and I
realized how short in stature the Guardian was. I knew from my reading at that
time that Bahá'u'lláh was small in stature – and all pilgrims became aware of that
when viewing the couches He slept on in the various rooms He occupied in 'Akká
and Bahji, but had not been aware that the Guardian was also so short. I
learned later that ‘Abdu'l-Bahá was the tallest of the three, that Bahá'u'lláh
was very short in stature, and the Guardian was only a little taller – between
the two in height. Initially it was quite a shock but, after that first moment,
the Guardian always seemed so tall, whether standing or sitting (which was how
the Western pilgrims usually saw him) – the impact of his person was such that
physical height did not matter, did not even register, as one was overwhelmed
by his spiritual stature which seemed to tower above all else.
- Bill Washington (‘Recollections of Pilgrimage: Nine Days with the Guardian in 1957’)
