Lidia and her uncle Dr Feliks Zamenhof were the only Zamenhof family members attending the congress in Budapest. At the opening session, the congress president greeted them and asked them to sit at the table with the officials on the platform. The audience affirmed the invitation with vigorous applause.
At the first working session, Lidia spoke up during a discussion of pronunciation. Amold Behrendt, a postal official from Berlin, said he felt the matter had been discussed enough. Not so, said Lidia. For there were always new Esperantists, and especially for them such discussion would be useful and instructive. Later, again Lidia spoke up in disagreement with Mr Behrendt on another subject.
During the congress the German representatives proposed that a delegation place a wreath in the name of the congress at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Lidia described the event:
'There, where Andrassy Street ends, near the beautiful city park, a tall monument stretches toward the sky. A heap of flowers lies there, a mounted soldier stands guard . . .
'Tomb of the unknown soldier! How many similar tombs, how many monuments of bronze or marble does one see in postwar Europe!' Long after the war's end, she observed, 'the monuments remain - unknown Abels accuse unknown Cains'. Those who saw such monuments as tributes to military glory were wrong, Lidia wrote. 'They do not see the tears, mingling with the flowers, do not feel the silent prayer of thousands of hearts that never again should unknown soldiers perish in bloody battles; they do not understand that such a monument, though outwardly glorifying the specter of war, is in its profoundest sense a powerful cry for peace.'
No eloquent speeches rang out that day. The Esperantists bowed their heads in silence. Lidia watched the group of people there, among them Frenchmen and Germans 'who have not yet forgotten the turbulent times when, lying in wait in the trenches, they pointed their guns at the enemy' - each other. '. . . And only God knows', she observed, 'whether the bullet that pierced the body of the unknown soldier had not been discharged by the hand of one of those present.'
Two Baha'f meetings were held during the congress. Lidia spoke at both, and served as honorary president. Her lecture on the Baha'{ Faith was drawn from Esslemont's book, which she had been translating. Her speech was 'excellent', said Professor Paul Christaller, a Stuttgart Baha'f. During the discussion, people in the audience raised questions which, as Dr Christaller noted, Lidia answered directly and well. Her talk was reprinted in the Baha'i Esperanto magazine La Nova Tago ('The New Day'), published in Germany, as well as in the international Esperanto newspaper Heroldo de Esperanto. It was the same lecture that the club in Warsaw had turned down.
Lidia and Martha parted at the train station in Budapest, Lidia going to Poland, Martha to the Orient. At home in Warsaw, Lidia feared she would not seeher dear Martha again soon. 'I loveher very much', Lidia told Agnes Alexander, a Baha'i Esperantist with whom she had begun to correspond. The descendant of Christian missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands, Agnes Alexander had been a Baha'i teacher in Japan since 1914. She had been an Esperantist since the days of Ludwik Zamenhof. 'I heard about you from our dear Martha Root and recognized your name in Baha'f books,' Lidia wrote to Agnes. 'It was a great honor and pleasure to receive your letter.'
Lidia included a special message for a Japanese Esperanto group called the Klara Rondo (Klara Circle): 'With joy I hear of the spread of Esperanto in Japan', she told them. 'The Japanese have great understanding of the practical utility of international language. I would be glad if I knew also that they understood as well the high ideal of humanity of this language.
'Baha'u'llah, the great Prophet ofthe last century, said some decades ago that international language is necessary to attain eternal peace. That was also the motive of the Author of Esperanto, and that is the star, which not only through green but through all colors of the rainbow enlightens and brightens our horizon.'
ELEVEN
Pilgrim
Lidia still longed to make a pilgrimage to Haifa. During Martha Root's visit to Warsaw in 1929, Lidia had written to Shoghi Effendi asking permission to visit him in the autumn. But it was not until almost a year later that she received permission to go. Although Lidia had been disappointed when the Guardian asked her (apparently more than once) to postpone her journey, she later called his instructions 'fortunate'. 'I came to realize', she explained, 'that had I come too early, I could not have withstood the assailing force of tests that must needs try every soul.'
Lidia made plans to sail from Trieste to Haifa in the middle of April 1930. She wrote the Guardian to tell him that she had been continuing her studies of the Baha'i writings and that she hoped to gain a fuller understanding of her Faith while in the Holy Land.
That understanding came in an unexpected way as a severe spiritual test. But out of the test emerged a profound insight which Lidia Zamenhof would carry with her the rest ofher life. It came to her in the form of an allegory, a chance occurrence, which she perceived as a powerful symbol of a spiritual truth. Years later, she described her experiences in Haifa:
'The steamer did not arrive at the pier. It stopped in a certain distance from which passengers were transported to the shore by means of small motorboats. As I was leaving the steamer to step into the motorboat, a strong wave pushed the motorboat. For a moment I lost my equilibrium. Had not someone sustained me, I would have fallen into the water. I often recalled this episode during my stay in Haifa.
'At that time I had no idea that Haifa was to be a testing ground for me as it is for many. I wondered why, almost as soon as I put my feet on the soil of the Holy Land, a strange depression, for which there was no apparent reason, seized my soul. I wondered why my faith, which I considered already firmly rooted, was shaken as a reed by wind and, even as the reed, was almost bent to the ground. Where was the Light of which I already had some glimpses? Why this darkness, this sadness, this depression and these doubts, trying to uproot all I had acquired? I was fighting a desperate battle - a battle for spiritual life or spiritual death. I had already understood the value of this life enough to feel that were I to lose in this battle, it would be ten thousand times more terrible than to lose my physical life. And as there were moments when defeat seemed to be inevitable, I wished I were never born. How often did I recall then the episode ofthe motorboat, wishing I were drowned in the sea before I drowned in despair!
'In that battle, however, I still had a weapon, a weapon to which I clung to the utmost of my forces. This was prayer. It was in fact only in Haifa that I learned how to pray.'
The object of pilgrimage to the Holy Land for a Baha'f was to pray at the holy shrines in 'Akka and Haifa. The most important ofthe Baha'f holy places was the Shrine of Baha'u'llah in Bahji, near 'Akka. On Mount Carmel, in Haifa, was the Shrine of the Bab. After 'Alf- Muhammad, known as the Bab ('Gate'), was martyred in 1850 in Tabriz, Iran, His remains had been hidden to prevent their desecration at the hands of fanatical Muslims, and eventually transported to the Holy Land. In 1909 they had finally been interred in the mausoleum 'Abdu'1-Baha had built for the purpose on the mountainside, at a site chosen by Baha'u'llah. When 'Abdu'1-Baha died, he had been laid to rest in an adjoining room of the building. But when Lidia made her pilgrimage, the superstructure and golden dome that crown the Shrine of the Bab today were not yet built. The Shrine was a simple structure of native stone beside a stand of three large cypress trees on the rugged hillside above the Mediterranean.
'Every moming I would go to the Holy Shrines,' Lidia wrote, 'and, forgetting my Occidental stiffness, I would beat my head against the Holy Thresholds. But for a long time there was no answer. The heavens seemed to be closed to my supplications.