The city’s real name is Makkah, but like all places of extraordinary spiritual importance, it has an impressive list of eulogistic names: ‘Mother of Cities’, ‘The Noble One’ and ‘The Place of the Faithful’ are among the more straightforward ones. If mentioned in speech or writing, it is considered proper to supersede it with dhadaha allahu ‘azmatan wa kerama as a sign of respect – may God the Almighty exalt it.
The bus drew up in front of a mu’allim’s office, also called a mutawwif, or local guide – a figure essential to every group. As we waited in the bus, a young man got in and without saying a word distributed drinks and snacks as part of the organised care programme we would experience at every stage of the pilgrimage whenever we took a break, stopped, or arrived anywhere. This was to be the first constant, the second – the screaming Saudi Arabian – we would witness when our bus driver took a wrong turn, misinformed perhaps by our travel guide. Stuck in a tunnel where pilgrims were being dropped off, the bus driver vented his anger in a hysterical outburst, a high-octane tirade of swear words. There was no diminuendo as he manoeuvred the bus out of the underpass, nor did he calm down when he had turned, yelping like a tyke until we arrived at last. It was with some relief when we got out, and one look was enough to appease us: There, less than 200 metres from where we stood, was the Grand Mosque. Moreover, our guesthouse looked directly onto the Haram al-Sharif – which houses the Kaaba.
‘We couldn’t have hoped for anything better,’ a pilgrim behind me said.
Shouldering our green bags, we gathered in the reception lobby and were sorted into groups – men without female companions slept eight to a small room, four beds up against the walls with four mattresses between them like a scout camp. I lay down on the mattress closest to the bathroom, and the door, and exhaled deeply.
The First Prayer
When I made my way outside, following the call to prayer, albeit rather tardily, I noticed that a very wide, steep road separated the first row of buildings – of which our guesthouse was one – from the Grand Mosque. As far as the eye could see – down the street and across to the impressive forecourt – every cubic metre was packed with pilgrims who had spread their rugs and mats in preparation for the afternoon prayer. There was hardly any place left for latecomers. And thus my first prayer was spoken between a gutter and a Sudanese street hawker who seemed to be the only person not taking the slightest notice of the ritual. It was the first of many prayers to be spoken in apparently incongruous places: in the shadow cast by police jeeps, from behind shop windows, at highway junctions, in shopping centres, in front of barber shops and next to street drains. On the Hajj you learn to pray anywhere and everywhere, and as prayer penetrates the nooks and crannies of the everyday, the stuff of banality, one’s own perspective on prayer, changes as it steps beyond the mosque to become omnipresent.
Having embarked on my prayer a little late, I would need slightly longer than the others to complete it. I was just uttering the concluding tashahhud when the quiet unified mass around me broke into a seething tumult. There was no regard shown to my prayer, as I was used to in Mumbai. People didn’t mind stepping on my prayer mat, usually regarded as an intimate space, and disturbing me; knees barged into me, feet trod on my mat, cloth brushed against my head and face. When I did stand up it was to find myself in the middle of an African street market, replete with determined hawkers with voices like lassoes – rolls of cloth, strings of prayer beads, caps and sandals were laid-out on squares of material, and throngs of pilgrims from all over the world pressed in.
Indians and Pakistanis in kurta pyjamas, the Anatolian fez, Afghans in sharwanis and heavy waistcoats, embroidered black caps from Tashkent, Arabs from the Gulf region in the long white jellabah, the red- and white-checked head-covering of the Bedouins, Swahilis in kanzus, topis both of the soft and stiff variety, Central Asian women in matronly dresses, the hijab their only concession to the place and occasion, Iranian holy men in billowing robes, white and coloured topis, mysterious figures in burq’o, simple and elaborate head coverings, Moroccans in richly embroidered jellabahs at the hem, the laboured turbans of the ayatollahs, West Africans in vivid colours and loose boubous, caps perched like crests, Turks in heavy greenish-grey uniforms and fellahin in kaftan and gubba. Even within the scarves there existed a wide range and variety, plain and festive, wrapped around heads or drawn-up over them. The diversity was without comparison; it refuted the claim that Islam had washed away all cultural differences in the countries where it had taken root. While united by a mutual ritual of prayer (bar the odd difference in the position of a hand or finishing of a movement in the four traditional Islamic schools), anyone not in ihram, having performed the first sequence of rites, was wearing traditional dress. Never before have I seen so few trousers or shirts in such a crowd of people.
It was evident that traditional, local dress was still worn in Islamic cultural circles, not in a folkloric manner, but rather on a daily basis. In Christian societies however, a uniform European fashion has taken over, as in the Philippines, for example. The western dress of the Filipinos would have looked awfully dull next to the elegant Indonesians in their exuberant, bright batik shirts with their abstract patterns, or floral prints and birds, worn over their sarong. Their jackets a festive colour, reflected in the headscarves, and echoed in other scarves worn by the women.
Rituals
There’s not a pilgrim who can forget his first glimpse of the Kaaba.
It was less than a two-minute walk from our hotel to one of the 99 entrances to the Haram; the holiest of refuges. If it hadn’t been for the teeming crowds, that is. Instead, it took us quarter of an hour – of jostling and being brushed against by the throng – until we were eventually allowed through to reach the interior of the Grand Mosque. Hamidbhai, whom I’d met on the pavement after prayers, had offered to guide me through the first of the obligatory rituals. Two other Indian pilgrims joined us, and together we cut a path through the dense crowds. A hand on the shoulder of the man in front was our only navigational aid. Women often tied their veils together to prevent getting lost, or held hands so tightly that it was impossible to pass through. We clung to each other, too, repeating the call of the pilgrim intoned by Hamidbhai: Labbeik, Allahumma, Labbeik; Labbeik, La Sharika Laka, Labbeik, until we were chanting the staccato-like eulogy in harmony.
By the entrance, Hamidbhai drew me to him and spoke earnestly:
‘The wish you express when you first lay eyes on the Kaaba will come true. For now keep your eyes downcast. Don’t look up until I tell you.’
I left my sandals at the entrance where thousands of other pairs were piled, and stepped barefoot through the Abdul-Aziz Gate, my eyes fixed on the marble floor. Pummelled by the crowd, reciting the talbiyah to myself, nervous as a schoolboy, I edged my way forward, retreating deeper and deeper into prayer. The chorus all around me was a symphony of individual voices and others in perfect unison.
In front of the mosque we’d had to elbow a little, and push a bit so as not to be shoved out the way – inside was a veritable struggle. Apparently hardly any pilgrims were heeding the pleas of the guides to tread carefully, not to push, nor to behave coarsely, rudely, or egotistically, in short: not to sin. The sheer mass of people forced one to determinedly hold one’s own and disrespect spread like a rash. Part of me was consumed by aggressive panic, another part was afloat.
‘Pray,’ Hamidbhai said as we descended the steps, ‘pray that you will always only pray for the right things. Pray for the appropriateness of your prayers.’
And then, a few Labbeik cycles later, he said: ‘Look up now.’
It was a moving sight. Immediate. Free of analysis or reflection. The simple form of the Kaaba, the black brocade – the kiswah, as beautiful as a bridal veil – the inner court awash with pilgrims swarming around the immovable cube. The atmosphere was one of excitement and happiness, crackling with the dreams of a lifetime being fulfilled at that moment. And without thinking, without having prepar
ed myself for it, a sharp, powerful wish welled up in me, and my eyes filled with tears. We carefully ploughed our way through the multitudes who were sitting at the edge of the inner court, blocking the way to the Kaaba, and abandoned ourselves to the tawaf, the ritualistic circumambulation of the Kaaba seven times.
We were almost submerged by the masses, but the Kaaba, which we were not meant to look at during the tawaf, became a reliable focal point nonetheless, its corners pointing to the four directions of the sky. In days gone by they had been named after the great caravan routes: Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. The small golden door in the grey cube was locked (once a year it is opened for the ceremonial cleansing in rosewater, a ritual undertaken in the presence of the Saudi king), and the surface remained unadorned apart from the black kiswah cloth, its ends folded back to signify Hajj-time, but perhaps also to protect it from the eager fingers of many pilgrims.
On the outskirts of the overflowing crowd, it was unthinkable to perform the first three circles at a gentle run as prescribed, ‘chest thrust out like a brave soldier’, right shoulder bared. The tawaf begins at the Black Stone, a mysterious relic from ancient times – a meteorite perhaps, according to legend once white as limestone, but turned black over time by all the sinful lips and hands that have touched it. A line the width of a foot leads eastwards from the Black Stone, marking the beginning and end of the tawaf; each time we completed a circle, we paused, and with the palms of our hands held high called Bismillah Allahu Akbar, then, to receive the blessing emanating from the stone, held our hands to our lips.
The people’s excitement interrupted the flow of my prayers; there was pushing and shoving, someone clutched my shoulder, someone else almost tore the cloth from my upper body, and collectively we fought for air. Nearby men were gesticulating desperately: a woman had fainted and was lying on the ground, she was surrounded by pilgrims trying to attract the attention of some medical staff.
We had just laboriously completed two circles when the call to night prayer came. A miracle took place: The wild throng of hectic circling stopped and suddenly everyone found their place and position in respect to the brothers and sisters around them; a stillness crystallised, and out of it rose a well-tuned voice that opened the prayers.
If the whole world could be gazed upon at the time of prayer, the sight would be reminiscent of these concentric circles of praying people facing the Kaaba. At prayers the Ummah itself becomes an Islamic ornament, and we were standing and kneeling a mere dozen steps from the centre of this living pattern.
After prayers we stood up immediately, rather than remaining in personal prayer as is customary, which would have proven dangerous in this tempestuous atmosphere. Soon the number of pilgrims had notably thinned and the tawaf continued without further incident. We squeezed past palanquins on which the frail were transported round the Kaaba at a trot. I bumped into a pilgrim reading prayers from a sheet of paper – some groups were following a prayer leader, whose one-line chants they repeated in unison. I was overtaken by an Arab partaking in a lively conversation on his mobile phone, interrupting his chat only to utter ‘Bismillah Allahu Akbar’. An old man from Northern Pakistan embraced me, and together we completed the final circuit, exhilarated, our prayers and our steps in tandem, and for a short while he was both a grandfather and a brother to me.
After the tawaf you are supposed to recite a short prayer at the Maqam Ibrahim – the place where Ibrahim (the Biblical Abraham) once stood – the impressions of ancient footsteps clearly visible on the stone. In those crowds it would have been thoughtless, not to mention utterly impractical, to lie prostrate there, and certainly not conducive to prayer. Instead, we prayed a little way off beside two men who were racked with sobs, each overwhelmed by the place and the magnitude of the moment. Away from the frenzied warmth of the crowd, they appeared fragile, tender and uncertain.
We didn’t make it to the well of Zamzam, underground nowadays, as the crowd bore us away. But in the mosque there was a collection of tan-coloured containers filled with water and two rows of plastic cups – clean ones to the left; to the right, the used. It was tasty water, rich in minerals, which is perhaps why it had been described by many an earlier pilgrim as brackish and foul – you are to meant to drink as much of it as you can. My ‘ulama brothers had expressed only one wish: that I bring them back some holy water, their favoured fluid for breaking their Ramadan fasting. Zamzam water used to be terribly expensive; today it is free – only the container comes at a cost.
The subsequent sa’ee (the running), the seven shawt, or traversing of the distance, between the hills of Safa and Marwah, had sounded like a endurance test in a parched valley, almost like a kind of self-chastisement and penance of some sacrifice when it was first described to me. In reality, we simply crossed through a side chamber of the mosque and entered a corridor about 200 metres long – it may have sloped a bit and got steeper further along, but in general it was rather like the corridors you might find connecting two halls of a trade fair or in a Las Vegas hotel. Neon strip lights cast a harsh sterile glow over the splendour and colour of the marble – there were even some elaborate chandeliers for beautification. The ‘summits’ of the hills had been left in their natural state. We could feel the black rock beneath our feet as we turned to the Kaaba and spoke the assigned prayer before we set off along the polished walkway. The two narrow lanes in the middle of the corridor were intended for wheelchair users, but were used instead by the swifter of foot. As I walked at a moderate pace with my Indian brothers, from the corner of my eye I saw elegant African figures gliding by in long proud strides, their arms swinging like scythes, and I thought I could read a certain disapproval in their faces for those performing the sa’ee with less physical vigour.
The legend which forms the basis of this rite goes way back to the ancient story of the family that all three of the monotheistic religions regard as their forefathers: the family of Ibrahim. The mother of his first son Ismail (Ishmael), the spurned Hagar, was abandoned in the desert with her infant son, armed only with the power of prayer. She climbed the hill of Safa to look for water, then ran to the hill of Marwah, back and forth, driven more by desperation than reason. She was close to giving up, when she noticed her child strike his foot against the earth in play, and at that very place the water started to flow.
There, where Hagar had once crossed a stony, drained riverbed, every Hajji was now to pick up pace in remembrance of her tribulation – the 30-metre-long stretch is marked by two green neon lights. Women are not required to run, but a group of Nigerian women ignored such unnecessary regard to their gender, and raced, whooping, from one boundary of light to the other.
Just a generation back, Hamidbhai told me, the sa’ee had not been roofed, and shops had lined the path. His parents had walked through sand and had bought presents on the way. In general, the Hajj had become much more comfortable as those who had completed theirs 10 or 20 years earlier confirmed. Almost too easy, in fact, for surely some toil was required to cleanse yourself of sins? He who seeks greatness must endure great sacrifice, Ibn Jubayr wrote in the 12th century.
Since it is permissible to insert breaks into the sa’ee – hours or even several days – we rested after completing three sections, perching on the steps of a row of barbers next to one of the side entrances. A barber stood in every doorway, dramatically wielding a razor blade and noisily courting the favour of those who had just completed their rituals. The shaving of the head is the final duty, but there were few distinguishing features between the booths and, as is often the case at a bazaar, choices by those new to the place were determined by the persistence or charm of the individual barbers. Hamidbhai warned us about botchers who in their haste (a million heads to be shorn) often bloodied scalps, and recommended instead that we use a barber near our hotel, a compatriot of course, who had gained a fine reputation over time as one who did not spill blood. I could have chosen an easier alternative – the cutting of a mere lock of hair, as is requisite for w
omen – but such omissions mean a decrease in blessings and respect.
Our Umrah, a mini-Hajj, was concluded an hour later with a cleanly shaved head (the barber praised me for choosing the blade over the electric razor), many a lengthy exchange of well-wishes and embraces, and a midnight snack in Hamidbhai’s room. He presented me with a new pair of sandals, as he felt responsible for the disappearance of the footwear that I had left at the Abdul-Aziz Gate. With the Umrah we had fulfilled the rituals which visitors to Mecca perform whatever the season; we could remove our ihram, and were now ready for the main part of the Hajj, that strict appointment with God and the community of believers.
Preparation
The preparation for my Hajj had begun in a small room off Crawford Market, a densely populated, lively, predominantly Muslim quarter of Mumbai. It was December and the travelling hawkers on the street that leads to the Friday Mosque were plying their wares – plastic Christmas trees from China. At the entrance to the building I’d been looking for was a chaiwallah, a seller of tea, whom I was to get to know well in the course of the next 12 months. He would bring tea up to us on the first floor in a wire holder, the tea in slender glasses and tin beakers of water, and wait for us to finish, which we did sitting down, in three gulps, first the water, then the tea. He boiled the tea with milk, sugar and spices in a large pot by the front door, and was there at all hours, a surly fellow who took his time to acknowledge me. The stairs creaked with age, the building, as is often the case in Mumbai, a ruin beyond the inhabited flats and offices. There was a doctor’s practice on the first floor, and next to it the office of the Markazul Maarif Organisation, an NGO that aims to educate Muslims. I knocked on the door, and it was opened by a young man dressed simply in a white kurta pyjama, as all the young men would be with whom I’d spend the coming year, as well as sporting unruly beards.
Mumbai to Mecca Page 2