State of the Union / When Michel met Sophie
- Details
- Category: Friends, family, community
- Created: Thursday, 23 August 2012 04:47
- Published: Thursday, 23 August 2012 04:39
- Written by Danna Harman, Haaretz
- Hits: 2231

An African Baha'i meets an American faithful who was always drawn by the call of faraway lands.
First sighting
Michel Nkouagas father, an engineer from the Cameroonian village Ebolowa, always liked detective novels. One day, in the library, he spotted a title that looked promising: Thief in the Night. He took it home, not realizing it was about the principles of the Bahai faith, one of the worlds youngest major religions.
And, well, as his son, sitting at the Bahai World Headquarters in Haifa several decades later, puts it, That turned out to be a good read.
Michel, 33, along with his four brothers and one sister, grew up following the teachings of the Bahá'u'lláh, considered by the faithful to be Gods latest messenger and the one who founded the religion in 1863 in Iran. Michel first came to Israel where both Bahá'u'lláh and the Bab, the accepted forerunner of the faith, are buried for a month-long visit in 2005.
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