A Sinner in Mecca

by Parvez Sharma

  In my right hand I clutched a tasbih, the prayer beads Muslims favor. It, too, was made in China. This tasbih had exactly ninety-nine ugly plastic beads. The tasbih that hung on the knob of my mother’s closet had 100 beads. The hundredth, she would say, just reminds you that you are a very good and blessed person when you come full circle after reciting the ninety-nine names of Allah.

  I did not know the ninety-nine names of Allah. On a good day I could muster eight or nine. Today had not been a good day at all. So I decided to go with what I knew best. I mumbled Allahu Akbar with a ferocity I did not know I possessed. It was a whispered, almost inaudible ferocity. It would amplify and even reach screaming level, though that moment had not yet arrived. Sometimes you need to be at your loudest for God to hear your faith.

  I was to perform seven rounds of tawaf as mandated. Because I was performing the Shia Hajj, I knew I would need to get as close as I possibly could within the first few circles, competing with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims jostling for space. I could see women getting molested and I even heard their screams.

  My tasbih beads were soon slick with sweat. So was the rest of me. A dripping line of sweat seemed to have formed around my still-unhealed penis. On my lower back, I felt something dripping, slowly, incessantly, and shamelessly. I hoped it was not blood.

  There could not be blood. It would stain my white ihram, turning it najlis (“impure”). The same ihram that is supposed to be the surest symbol of the ideal democracy of Islam. And then, once again, I would have to carry out the complicated ghusl, or ritual washing and purification. I would somehow need to find my way back to the hotel and re-do all of the many ablutions, each moment prescribed and written down. A prayer for every drop of divinely sanctioned and cleansing water on my body. I had spent weeks memorizing the right Shia prayers for the moment the right hand passes over my navel, for when I wash my arms exactly the right way. I had tried so hard to get this right, to get this just right so that later on, when my having been here became public, I could not possibly be questioned about my intentions or the legitimacy of my journey. But a bloody ihram would be proof of my dirtiness, my sin.

  The ihram was not just two seamless pieces of white cloth. It was a state of mind. As Muslims we had been taught that this simple white clothing was intended to make everyone appear the same in the eyes of God. This teaching, of course, showed the much-vaunted democracy and oneness of the Muslim Ummah, the worldwide brotherhood of believers.

  My mother used to say that the ihram was the kafan—the shroud. That going on this journey was a preparation for death. And if we were lucky enough to die in a state of ihram, then we would find a one-way ticket to heaven by being buried in the holy land. If a person returned alive, she explained, he was required to bring the ihram back with him and keep it safe, to be used only upon death and to be buried in. Blood would be shame greater than I could imagine.

  It was the Allahu Akbars that helped me focus. They each formed a complete and extremely long moment, concentrating only on the immensity of God. That was how I had trained my mind in the last seven months of real preparation. Quietly, hopefully, and unobtrusively, I moved my left hand slowly to my backside. I was soaked with sweat. But there was no blood. The next few Allahu Akbars out of my lips quivered with gratitude.

  My ego, which I was hoping to lose, forget, or leave behind someplace around here, led me to imagine that each pair of these millions of eyes could pierce through my sinning soul and read every twitch of doubt that clouded my carefully arranged face. I did not realize at the time that the business of getting the approval of Allah is busy and all-consuming and not conducive to much else besides a kind of obsession with only oneself. I did not realize that a mere demonstration of faith is never enough and that for many of the worshippers around me, the preoccupation with a lifetime of sin had been a full-time job.

  In a momentary distraction from my focused repetitions, I remembered the feature filed by an intrepid reporter much before September 11, who had visited a US prison and found Muslim inmates being allowed to use their prayer beads for therapeutic effects. In the nineties, the meditative properties of clutching prayer beads had been used for the “successful recovery” of thousands of prison inmates, said the reporter. She added it had become controversial when gang members began carrying their differently colored prayer beads inside the prisons to identify themselves. The idea of Muslim prison inmates and gang members in the US using prayer beads, no doubt purchased from some Walmart in the meth-addled heartland, in some sort of Islamic cleansing ritual, brought a smile to my face.

  My iPhone lit up. In a nation where women cannot even get into the driver’s seat and are pretty much denied any form of voice, the rather talkative Siri would be a revolutionary. The problem was, she had not been talking much lately—she required a Wi-Fi network to work. But now, suddenly, she had found a network: It was called “The Saudi bin Laden Group.” I busied myself trying to log on. I tried variations of passwords. Osama, Jihad, Jihad911, Kafir, Kafir786, Tawhid 1432, and many more, conjuring up all the weird Islamic combinations I could think of. None worked and much still needed to be done on this night. But I found another variation of the bin Laden construction group, which I joined and it was free. I missed talking to Siri, but, allowing more distraction to crowd my mind even as I continued to mumble Allahu Akbar, I wondered if the ever-so-smart Siri knew that that dignified feminine silence was just the way to behave in the holy land.

  I texted my husband, “I am here, my love. It’s strange but the Kaaba is protecting me from now on. You may not hear from me for the next few hours but don’t worry. I will be safe.”

  Keith replied, “I love you. So, so, so much.”

  Perhaps only one New York minute had passed as I stood there with my crowded mind, typing on my phone. Not that a New York minute would ever mean the same to me again. Every second seemed to last a lifetime these days. I would probably, after this longest and perhaps most miraculous night of my entire time on this planet, measure my life in Mecca minutes.

  And then I plunged willfully into this ocean of believers. On this night of magic and torment, I would not be alone after all. I clutched my mother’s hand with my right hand. In my left hand, I held a passport photograph of hers, with her hair defiantly uncovered. Tonight, though, she was wearing a bright red dupatta scarf wrapped tightly around her head. The cancer that had ravaged her once-proud frame had also taken away all of her hair. Even though she had no hair left to hide, the same hair that was deemed dangerously powerful enough to distract the believing men around us from their arduous tasks of faith on this long night, I took a breath and adjusted her scarf. She smiled knowing that I had finally embraced faith. I was the capable son bringing her to this place of faith, poetry, and longing. As she squeezed my hand back, I could feel the pride running through her own frail hand into mine.

  I could see the black burqa, inlaid in gold with Quranic verses, that covers the door of the Kaaba. The unstoppable river of humanity that surrounded me heaved toward it, trying to touch it, to reach and kiss it. This was Islam’s mosh pit. And on that first night, for me it became a space imbued more with violence than with any notion of spirituality. I was going to lose so much on this longest of nights. I tried unsuccessfully to touch the Kaaba. The tears that I did not think I even possessed anymore returned as my breath almost touched the surface of the black stone. A surface made smooth by millions, each hoping for that touch that would cleanse the filth from their sinning hands and souls. The successful pilgrims around me were desperately rubbing their hands and often even prized personal possessions on the surface, hoping also to carry some of the power of this surface back home with them. We had worked very hard to get this close.

  But my group’s Shia Islam of martyrs also dictates many acts of self-deprivation. In the nights and days ahead I would marvel at the amount of pleasure a Shia Muslim could derive from renunciation and denial. Martyrdom seemed so well suited to them. In this mosh pit of Is
lam, Shia jurisprudence seemed clear. We were to get as close as possible and yet, unlike the Sunnis, we were to refrain from touching the stone or even looking at it. My mother, who had always called the Shia “khatmal”—bed bugs, who reproduce prolifically in sinister and secretive ways—was still by my side and touched the black stone for a fleeting second. I couldn’t.

  I simply faced the Kaaba and did my mandated istilam, a flying kiss-like greeting to the cube, as I began each new round of the tawaf. Dawn was breaking as I ended with my two rakats (movements of prayer) at the Maqam Ibrahim, the standing place of the Prophet Ibrahim, marked by a small golden kiosk. Mother and son, we prayed together. This was the only mosque in the world that did not separate its male and female believers. At this moment, bowed down in what should have been introspective prayer, I received an unholy thwack from the cane of a mutawa. I needed to move on.

  In a manic stampede I was pushed toward my next ritual, Saee (ritual walking), at the hills of Safa and Marwah. Just like Hajjar, the desperate mother who centuries ago searched among these hills for water so that she could save her son Ismael’s life, I disobediently walked briskly between the hills, like women were commanded to do for “modesty.” Men were supposed to run in the same area of that section highlighted by green fluorescent lights. As my mother walked with me, I knew she, like Hajjar, was trying to save my life. Two kilometers apart, both hills were now encased in glass cages which pilgrims, especially the Shia among us, may no longer touch.

  I felt her hand slipping away. As I lost my balance and fell a man stopped and helped me up, this time gently pushing me into the mandated jog. He and I jogged the stretch together. But I had lost my mother’s photograph.

  Broken and haunted, I searched for it as I left. In that mass of humanity, I had lost one of my most treasured possessions, one which I had hoped would get to touch the Kaaba with me. Later, I wondered if this really was how it was meant to be. It belonged there and I left her there where she was probably trampled into a million pieces by the feet of the manic pilgrims. Perhaps she would have wanted that image of herself to be left right there, near the Kaaba that had haunted her.

  I looked up at the sky, if only to escape the madness around me for a moment. I was searching for evidence to prove a childhood theory right. Elders used to say that even birds would never dare to fly over the Kaaba. Mecca’s many pigeons were waking up and taking flight. Just as they had predicted, they did not fly over the cube but rather, like us pilgrims, circled it.

  Dawn was breaking, and with it rang out the azaan, the call to prayer, as melodious as I had been promised it would be when I was a child. Music is banned in Saudi Arabia, one of many prohibitions in a long list of what the authorities claim is “Islamically” forbidden. In that moment, I felt that these rather unmusical Saudis had managed to create a perfect song in the call to prayer. The voice of the muezzin was loud, clear, and beautiful, and he drew out each Arabic word into a melody:

  God is the greatest.

  I testify there is no God but God.

  I testify that Muhammad is his messenger.

  Come to prayer. Come to success.

  Prayer is better than sleep.

  The Wahhabis call music un-Islamic. Do they understand that calls to prayer and recitations of the Quran are music to millions of Muslim ears? Did they conveniently forget the rich history of music in these sands? I would kill to see a mutawa do the Harlem Shake at one of Jeddah’s thriving underground music concerts.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE SATANIC VERSES

  Did you make it?” I texted Shahinaz.

  “Barely,” she replied.

  “Adham said there is a Baskin-Robbins in the big mall across from Haram. Meet there at 10 a.m.?” Shahinaz was also in a group chat with me, Keith, and Adham, so she knew him well.

  “I think this King Fahd gate is better.”

  “OK. Let’s get three hours of sleep and meet there!”

  The pitiless sun was already on full throttle at 10 a.m. as Shahinaz and I rendezvoused at the King Fahd gate. Her attempt at not letting one strand of hair escape the hijab was comical, almost.

  I wished her a good morning.

  “Nothing good about it, sweetheart,” she said. “It’s my birthday today and see my state!”

  She was shocked by what I told her next. Wahhabi doctrine had robbed generations of children of the delights of the annual ritual. Celebrating birthdays, they said, was bida, an un-Islamic innovation. Celebrating the Prophet’s birthday, Mawlid al-Nabi, for example, was forbidden, unlike in most parts of the Muslim world.

  This was for me the ultimate example of Wahhabi malevolence: Entire childhoods were robbed of the balloons, cakes, gifts, and mirth of birthdays. The ones who dared to celebrate did so in secret. At the turn of the millennium, posters signed by the “highest authority” surfaced saying birthday or anniversary celebrations were “heresy.”

  We both started walking to the Abraj al-Bait Mall across from the Kaaba. A mutawa approached us. “Mahram?” he asked ominously.

  “She is my cousin,” I said. He asked for IDs. Recklessly, once again we made a great show of looking for them, informing him we had left them in the hotel. We showed him our matching denim messenger bags that had all the information about the Hajj group. He made notes with his mucky fingers and let us go. As if he was ever going to check, we laughed later. Was I no longer afraid of them?

  Inside the mall was a wondrous nouveau-riche Alice’s Wonderland. I realized that what was ugly and in bad taste for us educated pilgrims was novelty and a spiritual experience packaged in luxury for pilgrims from countries like Sudan and Somalia. For many, it was their first-ever flight that had brought them here. For others, an escalator was a novelty they had never seen. Baskin-Robbins, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Hardee’s competed for attention with Chanel and Givenchy stores. Everything that filled Shahinaz and me with distaste was splendorous to many others. And then the ultimate. A Starbucks! I didn’t know then that I would return many times. It was divided into singles and family sections. We went into the family section knowing she could never enter the singles section.

  I launched into a tirade on everything that was wrong with this country. All these malls and cranes constructing multimillion-dollar apartments with views of the Kaaba were built on destroyed history. Dar-al Aqram, the first school where the Prophet taught, lay flattened under marble tiles. The home he was born in, Bayt al-Mawlid, was demolished to build a “library.” The house of one of the greatest Quyrash tyrants opposed to Muhammad was replaced (rightfully, some said) by toilets. The dome covering the original well of Zamzam water was said to have been demolished. Abraj al-Bayt itself sat on the ruins of an Ottoman fortress. Many Ottoman architectural flourishes had been dynamited to smithereens. We had seen it in Medina.

  Shahinaz said that, super-inconveniently, her period had started. There were various opinions on the matter, including denying menstruating women pretty much anything including access to the Kaaba. The influential canon Sahih Bukhari outright forbade it. Was there sectarian unanimity?

  “Misogynist bastards,” she complained. Later on in the pilgrimage she would tell me that women for whom it was that time of month were treated despicably in the tents in Mina, pushed to far corners as if they had Ebola and not allowed to participate in religious activity. Mina was the tent city of indescribable proportions set up on the outskirts of Mecca, used only for Hajj. It was notoriously unsafe. Many fires had started there, killing hundreds of pilgrims.

  We decided together that she would not report her menstrual cycle to her group leader. We were probably playing with fire or utter damnation at the very least. But there was no way either Shahinaz or I wanted her to be confined for several days as if the plague had infected her.

  Shahinaz was angry as we sipped our special birthday Frappuccinos. “Pure? WTF. I am pure. Period or not! It’s part of being a woman.”

  We marveled at the edited Starbucks logo—there was no mermaid. The Saudis
had made sure this giant corporation complied with their silly religious logic on faceless women. Was a mermaid a woman, even? The edited logo was on the coffee mugs they were selling that said “Starbucks Makkah.”

  On another note, I was now clearly bleeding; my ihram needed sanitary pads. We had texted and Shahinaz had carried them in her bag. I hid them in my backpack before going through the very complicated procedure of untying the ihram, properly positioning the pad as she had instructed me, and then putting it all on Burmese-style again. The location for all of this was a Starbucks bathroom cubicle. These sparkling bathrooms had thankfully not been discovered by many pilgrims. I did many pre-prayer ablutions there.

  “How long was I gone?” I asked as I emerged now equipped with my comforting pad.

  “Oh, about half an hour,” she said.

  “Je suis désolé,” I answered using her native French.

  “Don’t worry. With your strange cyst you are now discovering what it means to be a woman bleeding once every month!”

  We ventured out of the mall into a cheaper bazaar selling mostly Chinese-made Islamic tchotchkes. Curiosities abounded. A shop selling colorful women’s abayas called itself “Caribbean Hajj.” Another shop sold “I heart NY” shirts. There were cheap plastic toys like buses and trains to Mecca. The merchants were careful not to display human, and especially female, faces anywhere, and yet we passed a storefront brazenly selling the non–Victoria’s Secret unmentionables for probably the poorer pilgrims. That other franchise probably did exist in the iridescent malls of the Saudis, but this country, like its Hajj, was unequal. Here, purple, red, and pink bras hung openly in what I imagined would be a big, shamelessly brazen anti-Islam display to the Wahhabis. Had a mutawa seen it? Was he bribed to shut up? Shahinaz went into the shop alone.