FOR quite some time Shoghi Effendi had desired to acquire more land adjacent to the Sepulchre of Bahá'u'lláh and the Mansion, in order to beautify the grounds of the true Qiblih of the Faith - the most majestic and dignified centre for all the followers of Bahá'u'lláh, as he personally related to me - but this had been impossible because of the interference of some ill-willed meddlers, until the opportunity came again right after the creation of the new State of Israel. The reader may remember the difficulties experienced in his efforts to restore the Mansion to its original condition, after the utter neglect into which it had fallen after the ascension of Bahá'u'lláh, and to obtain from the Mandate authorities the custodianship of this historic building, which for many decades had been the stronghold of an ignoble band of the breakers of His Covenant, who were entrenched in the precincts of the Most Holy Shrine of the Bahá'í world. This situation had grieved 'Abdu'l-Bahá beyond any capacity of endurance. On that particular night, previously mentioned [see page 17], during which the beloved Guardian spoke to me alone for many hours, he related all the suffering and the anguish of so many years of evil plotting first against 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and after His passing, against himself. He went into the details of the provocations, the fiendish machinations, the defiant and open hostility, backed at times by, and in alliance with, sworn external enemies of the Cause for the express purpose of destroying the Divine Covenant, a spiritual madness which had contaminated almost all the surviving members of the family of Bahá'u'lláh. Once the evacuation of the occupants of the Mansion and its restoration had been achieved, Shoghi Effendi immediately began to direct his efforts to beautification of the little land available and particularly of the small plot to the north and west of the Shrine, and of the strip enclosed between the wall of the Mansion's garden and the east side of the Shrine and the building used as an early pilgrim house. Araucaria and tangerine trees were first planted there, with a few cypress and orange trees in front of the Shrine. It was in this small garden that the commemoration I have mentioned in the previous chapter took place. The rest of the grounds, a few metres away and all around the building, was a sea of sand, in some places actually dunes, while at about one hundred and thirty metres' distance, opposite the door of the Sepulchre, there was a large deep pit, possibly excavated a long time before to obtain sand for building purposes. On the west side, and at the rear of the Shrine, there were some olive trees, a few eucalyptus trees, and some ancient pines, which at the time of Bahá'u'lláh's residence in the Mansion were the only source of shade and coolness, during the torrid heat of the long Palestinian summers. This was the condition of the grounds around that Blessed Spot when I first saw it.
On the occasion of my first pilgrimage, Shoghi Effendi spoke to me at length of the plans he had for expansion of the gardens and beautification of the Shrine - one of the goals he had already set for the Ten Year Crusade. He commissioned me to secure, on my return to Italy, drawings and estimates of costs. Of this I shall give more details later on.
Towards the end of 1950, Shoghi Effendi had initiated negotiations with the government of the State of Israel for the acquisition of additional land around the Shrine and the Mansion. The opportunity to obtain such land came when that government, having decided that no alien could reside in the vicinity of the borders of the new nation, became willing to exchange some farm land belonging to Bahá'ís of Persian nationality, [The two brothers Hasan and Farid and their sister, children of
Dhikru'llah and grandchildren of Mirza Muhammad Quli, the faithful
half-brother of Bahá'u'lláh and His companion in exile, spontaneously
offered their farms for the exchange, and the Guardian compensated them
for their loss to enable them to purchase other workable land in another
location. The brothers were expert agriculturists and enjoyed a great
reputation in the Jordan Valley.] located near the border of Jordan, for the same acreage around the Qiblih of our Faith. When the door of pilgrimage was opened again at the end of 1951, one of the first Western pilgrims was an American believer from Wisconsin, Mr. Lawrence Hautz, who made himself useful in carrying on the preliminary negotiations for the exchange of this land. They were difficult and protracted negotiations which, when completed, had lasted two years. The efforts made by Mr. Hautz and by Mr. Leroy Ioas, who, in March 1952, had assumed the General Secretariat of the International Bahá'í Council and taken over the negotiations, were acknowledged publicly by Shoghi Effendi in a message sent to the Bahá'í world the following November, after signature of the agreement had taken place.[See MBW pp.45-6] In the spring of that year definite assurance of the exchange had been given, with the perfecting of the legal instruments of ownership to follow, an intelligence which highly encouraged the Guardian to proceed with his plans.
At about the same time, a great victory over the Covenant-breakers, who had instituted legal proceedings against the Guardian to prevent him from starting his beautification programme, resulted with a decision by the Israeli Government, who granted to the Guardian, as the sole Custodian of the Bahá'í Holy Sites, authorization to demolish the dilapidated buildings cluttering the Sacred Precincts. On more than one occasion Shoghi Effendi had spoken to me of the condition into which the surroundings of the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh had deteriorated for decades, even to the indignity of allowing a blacksmith shop near the entrance to the Shrine - an incredible effrontery to the sacredness of the Most Holy Shrine of the Bahá'í world. His words of condemnation, broken by the emotion of his repressed deep sorrow and contempt, are still ringing in my ears, as the desecration of the Holy of Holies, for such a long time, had filled his heart with an anguish that those who were close to him felt he could no longer bear. I was utterly disconsolate, particularly during the period of the above-mentioned legal proceedings against him, when he passed through one of the most desolate periods of his life, with his health considerably impaired by the heart-felt grief.
On the occasion of this legal trial, he had summoned me to Haifa to assist him as much as possible and I was therefore an eyewitness to the shameful behaviour of the Covenant-breakers, the agonizing sufferings of the Guardian, and the ultimate victory of the cause of justice.
After my arrival in Haifa, Shoghi Effendi had often spoken of another task he would entrust to me, a task which he defined as 'spiritual'. It concerned the erection of the Most Holy Shrine of the Bahá'í world: 'The Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh, the One Who had sent down the Prophets'.
Because of the enthusiasm and the vigour with which he spoke of this subject, there was no doubt that he had a tentative plan for the beautification of the precincts of the Holy Shrine. He had a unique manner of asking questions, that at times could appear unrelated, but the answers he received were in his brilliant mind put in the proper place and sequence, to construct by his power of visualization the reality of things to come. For several nights he inquired about types of statuary marble - his preference was white Carrara, about methods of producing columns of very large dimensions, about triumphal monuments erected in ancient and in modern times to honour individuals or which were dedicated to faiths, cults or the arts, and the possibility of having an architectural plan and then of the project itself being carried out in the shortest possible time.
These conversations took place a little more than five years before his passing, and although the idea of his death, even at some time in the distant future, never crossed my mind, I was constantly under the apprehension that there was an impelling force that urged him to accomplish as much as he could while he was on earth. His manifold and far-sighted plans, which embraced a multitude of activities at the World Centre and throughout all the continents of the globe, bore eloquent testimony to this. Later on I shall give a brief description of his idea for the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh, 'only an embellishment', he would say, 'as the great Shrine, of untold magnificence, would be erected in future decades.' After he verbally revealed to me the project he had in mind, and charged me with securing drawings and estimates of cost, the opportunity, for which he had long waited, to beautify the grounds around the existing Shrine, arrived in the late days of April 1952.
http://bahairesearch.com/english/Baha%27i/Baha%27i_Studies/Ugo_Giachery/Shoghi_Effendi_-_Recollections.aspx
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