Lidia

This quickly proved to be true: Baha'is such as Mfrza Muhammad Labib were soon teaching Esperanto classes in Persia. Martha Root would use Esperanto extensively in her world travels and would be instrumental in introducing the language into China, while Agnes Alexander would be one of its proponents injapan. Many years later, an Esperanto historian commented: 'The active sympathy of the Baha'is greatly helped the spread [of Esperanto] in the Oriental countries. Often a traveling Esperantist is asked if he is a Baha'f.'

The connection between the two movements, Baha'i and Esperanto, would have great meaning to Lidia in years to come. But that day in Bern, while her father was discussing the matter with the interviewer, she was surely more interested in watching the whimsical Zytglogge and the big brown bears, the city's mascots, in their Bear Pit.

On Thursday morning, the streets of Bern were wet with a light rain that had fallen during the night, and light fog hung in the Aare valley. But as two special railway carriages left Bern for an excursion to Interlaken, the fog slowly dissolved and the sun came out.

They went by train to the shore of the Thunersee and from there by steamer to Interlaken. There were so many Esperantists - about 650 - that luncheon had to be held in sixteen different hotels. In the aftemoon, in an open air theater, they watched a performance of Schiller's IVilliam Tell and in the evening enjoyed a concert and fireworks display. 'The color green formed - coincidentally or not,' a correspondent reported, 'a large part of the fireworks, and every time that it could be seen, a cry was wrenched from the throats of the crowd.' The sprays of rockets lit up the soft Alpine night as if it were day, and 'Bengal lights' filled the garden with changing colors. The Esperantists arrived back in Bem around midnight.

At the Esperanto oratory contest that week, a French Esperantist's speech on 'Fatherland' won first prize. Other orators spoke on heroism, courage, universal brotherhood and capital punishment. The Esperantists went home cherishing memories of Bem and wishing each other 'Till the Tenth!' But much would happen before the Esperantists gathered in a congress again. Fatherland, courage, brotherhood and death would soon be more than topics for speech contests, and the Bengal lights and rockets that lit up the sky all over Europe would not be a mere fireworks display.

SIX

Something Is Guiding Us

Soon after the Zamenhofs retumed home from Bem, Lidia entered the first class of the eight-year Modem School for Girls, in the center of Warsaw. She had had to pass an examination in order to be accepted. For the next eight years, Lidia would attend school there six days a week, studying science, mathematics, history, geography, languages, literature and drawing. As a Jew, she was excused from religion classes.

A contemporary remembered Lidia at ten as a bright student, obedient and neat, and lovely 'as an angel', with long blond braids and a big blue silk ribbon tied in a bow, which 'accented her angelic nature even more'. As a child Lidia was apparently interested in art and painting, and seems to have continued to paint and dabble in applied art until her college years, when other activities claimed her interest.

The year 1914 came, and Dr Zamenhof was finishing his Esperanto translation ofthe Old Testament. The worn old typewriter clacked out its monotonous melody. Of those days Lidia later wrote, 'I grew, passed from dolls to fairy tales, from fairy tales to ever more realistic stories, it - the machine - working on unceasingly, recounted in its monotone voice the same old story.

'One wintry night, when after seven years' patient efFort, my father finished some important work, gay laughter rang out in our house, congratulations, chatter. The machine stood quietly, silently, in its little comer. And in my childish brain came the thought that if I were the machine I should feel offended by such neglect during that ceremonious evening which I myself had helped to bring about. But the lifeless machine was above human anger and jealousy, and the next day it sang, in its usual melody, a new song of work.

'Thus it worked tirelessly for many years - but the happy time passed. Ever more often it stood silent, motionless against its will and against the will of the man whose heart was pained by the occurrences of the outside world.'

The Tenth Universal Congress of Esperanto was to take place in Paris in August 1914. It promised to be the largest gathering of Esperantistsyet: 3,739peoplehadregistered. ButthisyearonlyDrand

Mrs Zamenhof intended to go. Adam and Zofia had come home from Switzerland at last so Lidia would stay in Warsaw with her brother and sister.