In retrospect, I should have given this book a less enigmatic name, and years later in a revised version of this work, I did just that. This is the second of the two books I had originally proposed to the Publishing Committee prior to my pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1972. This was to be a presentation for youth (and interested parents) of the major issues discussed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Some Answered Questions. It was also written as a sequel to Ali’s Dream, and like Ali’s Dream, this is a framed story in which Ali’s younger cousin, Hasan, comes to live with Ali and his family because his parents have been martyred and his grandmother who raised him as a Moslem has recently deceased. Consequently, the troubled and withdrawn youth, having travelled from Iran, now finds himself in the distant village of `Akká and living with relatives he is meeting for the first time.
The book thus narrates conversations Hasan has with his kind and bright cousin Ali, with Ali’s parents, with Ali’s grandfather Moayyed, and with other Bahá’ís in the community. The questions and conversations do not come easily at first. Hasan has some very mixed feelings about the Bahá’í Faith because, in his mind, had his parents not been Bahá’ís, they would not have been killed by the fanatic Moslem villagers. His concerns and dark feelings had been compounded by the fact that his grandmother who raised him after his parents death was a Moslem and thus did not know or care to know anything about the Bahá’í Faith.
Little by little, Hasan learns from the questions he asks, the conversations that arise out of his companionship with Ali, and from the stories he hears from the interesting Bahá’í villagers he meets in the farming area of Adysíyyih, the truth about the Bahá’í Faith and about its teachings. The more he learns, the more begins to understand that his parents were, in fact, heroes who refused to deny their beliefs. Even more importantly, Hasan learns that the Bahá’í teachings make sense and are capable of explaining to him even the most difficult belief and life itself. But most profoundly, Hasan feel nurtured and embraced by the love that the Bahá’ís shower upon him.
In the end, he becomes reconciled about his parents heroic refusal to deny their Faith, and he begins to understand why they had become attracted to the Bahá’í Faith in the first place.