Afifi Alaouie

Just last year in 2019 Madam Afifi Alaouie was invited by me to the 30 year long famous monthly event inaugurated by myself and the Baha’i Community of Pasadena California called “ Sino American Bahai Friendship Dinner”.

This was the 340+ session of our program, the longest monthly event in the history of USA-China positive relations; uninterruped for 30 years, always held consistently at 3330 San Pasqual Street Pasadena California.

It was the first time Madam Afifi was participating in a Baha’i related gathering. There were a Chinese artist painting exhibition on the theme of peace placed in the main hall and the extended fully covered yard platform.

Upon her arrival and brief greetings, Madam Afifi circled in the exhibition room in the hall & extended yard section, and shortly came out with a very special magical scene of a tiny sparrow in her hands. This was the first ever in the thirty years history of the events that a sparrow was somehow found indoors inside the hall.

In my childhood in the northern mountainous country sides of Iran where my father was the only doctor of several hundred villages, I grow up with sparrows, whom I call my family species. The more magical was that I observed how gentle and serene the sparrow was in the hands of Madam Afifi, calm, pleased, un-startled by her or the crowds surrounding her by then!

After my taking quick photos to record the magical moment, Madam Afifi went to the large outdoors yard where the pool and the trees are, and gently released the sparrow, who still gently and smoothly took flight into the nature, as happily as the sparrow had been picked up indoors by Madam Afifi.

Farzam Kamalabadi
Dubai
May 2, 2020