A Sinner in Mecca
Page 19
Shahinaz had grown up in this Paris version of the projects. Like most immigrants anywhere in the world, her family in France had arrived in waves, with already-settled family members helping the newer ones. Some of her younger male cousins had been able to develop significant running skills sharpened by the French cops intent on chasing them.
Shahinaz was enterprising, though. She was able to capitalize on her intellect, surprising to so many of the elite in a woman from her background. Her racaille-ness therefore became a strength. In addition, being an articulate non-hijabi Muslim in a country that had just banned the Islamic headscarf made her the perfect Muslim who could be molded into a crusader. She did not speak like the racaille or even dress like their women, and therefore she was easier to understand and it was safer to allow her into conference rooms and human-rights cocktail events.
“Ha!” she laughed, as we sat in Mecca. “Look what you have turned me into now. Your very own ninja!”
In 2006, Shahinaz had told me that she was horrendously circumcised as a child, soon after her parents returned from Hajj, transformed by the puritanical, Wahhabi Islam they experienced. They seemed to have a renewed Islamic purpose as they migrated to France, soon after her circumcision.
“They distributed sweets when I told them I was going on Hajj,” she said that evening in Mecca.
I had admired her since way back then, I told her.
This young woman possessed remarkable powers of articulation and an ability to place the story of her own life into complicated historical contexts.
Months after our first meeting, she would, with just one simple sentence in Arabic, get to the very heart of my film and the intractable question I was attempting to answer in trying to figure out if Islam and homosexuality could peacefully coexist. To my camera then, she said, “Ya Allah. Ya Wahad. Ya Ahad. Ana Habit Bas.”
“Oh, God,” she was saying. “My only God. I only loved.”
The turn of phrase was remarkable. She was responding to my rather convoluted question about the conversation she might want to have with God on Judgment Day. Central to Islam is the concept of Tawhid, the “oneness of God.” The Shahadah, the testament of faith that makes one a Muslim, reiterates the concept: “I testify that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is his messenger.” Nothing in Islam is more sacred than this tenet of a single divine entity who cannot be replicated into any other form.
Shahinaz, in that breathtaking sentence, took this sacred and central concept of “only” not just to affirm her faith as a Muslim but also to grant affirmation to her forbidden love. Surely the usually not-merciful Allah present in both of our childhoods would find it hard to turn this beautiful and articulate woman away from the doors of heaven. “My only God.” “I only loved.” During salat, namaz, or prayer, whatever you choose to call it, there is always a moment given to Tawhid, and it is when the supplicant raises his or her right index finger while whispering, “La ilaha Illallah.” There is no god but God.
With her own inimitable wisdom, Shahinaz looked back at her genital mutilation with a political acuity that placed it right in the middle of a still-unresolved debate. She described it as an act of rape, not just of her body but also of her innocence. She added that it was certainly not consensual and was a very visible and enduring symbol of an oppressive patriarchy that did not want women to have a sexual being.
My own genital mutilation, years away at the time we were filming Jihad in 2005–06, would, unlike hers and that of most others, be a voluntary act. It would be the most visible, entirely self-inflicted marker of my complete, very-conscious submission to all of the tenets of my faith. It was also the most radical step I would ever take to tame the primary tool of my sinning self. Islam was surrender. And surrender, I did.
I told her how blessed I felt that she was on the pilgrimage with me. She already knew about Adham, my text companion, and Keith, whose atheism she admired.
I then came out to her about the recent circumcision. She said my piety was “remarkable” and she just could not imagine an adult doing something so drastic to prove it. I told her I had no choice. She held my hand. An intimidating mutawa approached. We had our IDs ready. He skulked away like a dog with its tail between its legs. No mutawa could touch the hand-holding Parvez Hussein and Shahinaz Mousaoui! They were married!
Later, Shahinaz said the Prophet would definitely have been much kinder to women, their bodies, and their lives than his male biographers.
She said her faith was always either on or off. If she decided to become “religious all the time,” she would crave a time she believed was most emblematic of the religion, that the Prophet Muhammad would have most recognized, which was the time within his own life when he was able to be the much-tormented vessel of divine dictation and to move on to creating an egalitarian faith, far ahead of its time.
Her idea of this Prophet was unlike any other I had ever heard. I admired her because I had never really dared to say the things she would so easily say. He, she said, would never have allowed genital mutilation to happen to her.
“Muhammad was a feminist,” she repeated in Mecca, just as she had once said in France.
I had never heard any Muslim say something so remarkable. I did not know how to react. But I made sure it was on camera and in my film, recording her in Paris years ago.
“You and I need to figure out his feminist credentials one day,” I said. She nodded.
And then, as the call to Maghrib prayers began, we furtively avoided the ritual-heavy wudu. It would have involved a schlep. We prayed right next to each other, of course, directly facing the Kaaba—the real thing. Did God notice? An openly gay (intermittently bleeding) Muslim man was praying right next to a menstruating lesbian, who was his fake wife. Each Muslim was equal here and the spirit of the moment meant that God accepted us here. My homosexuality felt like a smaller burden. Who cared? I needed to come out as a Muslim. And every moment here, I was.
“They are driving me batty,” Shahinaz texted the next night. “And it’s like giggly school cliques. Somehow I am never invited. There is this really hot woman, married of course ;-(. We hang out though. Her husband beats her. Muhammad’s his name, obviously. Let me know if you find him!”
Muhammad is the most-used first name on the planet. Half my group probably comprised Muhammads.
In Islam, God has ninety-nine names even though He can only be one. Many here could rattle them off in less than a breathless minute. I never knew them all.
Muhammad, though, usually just goes by Muhammad.
CHAPTER 8
MECCA VEGAS
From this point on, my time with Shahinaz became increasingly impossible. It was almost as if the women were deliberately being taken further away. Shahinaz sent me frequent dispatches from the women’s group—how they would tell tales on one another and yet be there for each other when things got challenging, like a simple menstrual cycle. She said they regularly held the Shia majlis, and tears were abundant.
On this morning, I was Shahinaz-less—she was taken on a “women only” tour of Mecca’s Saudi destruction; we men were soon to have our own. Pretty soon I would start escaping the male-only tours.
The other woman in my life, Siri, seemed confused. She and I rode on the sometimes password-free Wi-Fi network kindly provided by Osama bin Laden’s family, the biggest construction conglomerate in the holy land. Siri was babbling about not knowing the geography of where we were. I had just finished Facetiming with Keith back in New York, assuring him I was safe. I was still transfixed by an ancient sight—hundreds of thousands of chanting pilgrims from nearly every nation, all circling the Kaaba. From my vantage point, on the second level of the largest mosque in the world, the Masjid al-Haram, the pilgrims seemed to float. Haram, depending on how it is pronounced, could mean both “forbidden” and “sanctuary.”
I was yearning for a nice cup of joe. Asr, the afternoon prayer, was a while away. On the escalator I glided down past an ascending group of ab
aya-wearing women, presumably on their way to get their one-way tickets to heaven, along with extra brownie points from Allah. I didn’t dare tell them that they were defying the Prophet’s edict on behavior in Mecca. Men and women were supposed to be equal here. Women actually have to expose their faces, so that God would see them! But this was Wahhabi-land. As I got off the escalator, I noticed a sign: “WATCH OUT ABAYA.” Some thoughtful engineer must have considered the constant danger that would accompany women on these escalators, their abayas dangerously dangling below the ankles they dare not expose.
I was a bit shaken. Yesterday I had chatted with an older Yemeni man called Mohamed at Al-Baik, the Saudi version of KFC or Popeye’s. I told him how the bin Laden family got worldwide fame only because of one out of more than fifty children. He referred to that Osama as “Sheikh Osama.” Sheikh was often reserved for a learned Muslim. I asked him why. I learned once again that one person’s terrorist could be another’s freedom fighter.
He told me how Osama’s father had been a Yemeni. He rose to become a multibillionaire, BFFs with the ruling Saud.
“What do you think of the new Kingdom Tower?” I had asked him, referring to the monstrosity that dwarfs everything in Mecca. “Isn’t it like King Abdullah’s having an erection?”
Mohamed laughed. “But remember, Parvez—Sheikh Osama destroyed America’s two biggest erections.” I had difficulty sharing his mirth.
“How can you live in that country as a Muslim?” he asked. I changed the subject and we parted company.
On this day as I continued walking out of the mosque, I was in a dystopian, Ayn Randian landscape. Dozens of skyscrapers and innumerable cranes leapt into the heavens. Crowds of pilgrims, transformed now into eager shoppers, seemed to be oblivious to the obliteration of Muslim history that predicated the new construction. Chinese workers, hastily converted to Islam, were among the burgeoning armies of builders. More indentured servants from India, robbed of their passports and hope, also toiled here. In the past five decades, Saudi authorities had allegedly destroyed more than 90 percent of Mecca’s Islamic history in the form of buildings, graves, and artifacts. They built a row of toilets over the home the Prophet shared with his first wife, Khadija. In the nineties, Saudi architect Sami Angawi fought to save this home. He made other attempts at conservation, even directly appealing to the king. But the clout of the bulldozer-happy bin Laden family was no match for one man’s protest.
As a young man, Osama bin Laden was briefly his family’s executive assigned to Mecca. He oversaw the early stages of the demolition his family was carrying out. Years later, when he finally gathered the courage to speak openly against the Saudi-sponsored erasure of Islam’s history, he omitted this major detail. As Osama’s list of grievances against the Al Saud grew exponentially, he never referred to that time in Mecca.
The Saudi king insists upon the title, “The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.” This is his only way to reinforce his authority throughout the Muslim world. The Al Saud, and their builders, the bin Ladens, exert a sense of ownership over these holy places, which should theoretically belong to all Muslims. Change is inevitable, but change at the expense of history is tragic.
The bin Ladens claim they are creating space. Fair enough. I certainly understood the need for more open space, more transportation, and more lodging. But a deliberate government and Wahhabi-sanctioned project to rewrite the history of Islam is egregious. Brand-new trains ferrying pilgrims across the desert, in true Saudi apartheid, were only open to citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council. So much of the new construction was for the rich, since they provide the most tourism dollars. Another example: An enormous Al Saud palace, complete with helipads, hid behind massive concrete walls, just a few hundred meters from the Kaaba. Why do the Al Saud need a palace so close to the Kaaba even though they possess the keys to it—opening it only for their “special” guests?
Till I got to Mecca, I used to think that the excess and hedonism of the Saudi ruling family were reserved for salacious gossip rags. But Saudis love monarchical gossip and much arises from the deeds of King Salman’s son, who shares his father’s name.
Still Shahinaz-less on that day, I went into the singles section of the Starbucks in this crass megaplex. I had to chuckle again at the company’s logo. The voluptuous mermaid was replaced by a star shining over a sea. This total censorship was better than giving the mermaid an abaya, I supposed. Some years later, a Starbucks in Riyadh would temporarily ban women from entry, putting up a sign reading, “PLEASE NO ENTRY FOR LADIES ONLY SEND YOUR DRIVER TO ORDER THANK YOU,” after their literal gender-segregation wall collapsed.
A fellow pilgrim broke my reverie, asking for a light. His name was Abdullah. We bonded over our shared Siri problems. She was refusing to talk to either of us.
Repeating what I already knew, he said how women unaccompanied by men dared not enter any public space here. “Let’s go to the family section. I want you to meet my wife and sister-in-law.”
“But I’m not family,” I protested.
“We are brothers on Hajj,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulder.
Abdullah’s wife Aisha, who was certainly no virgin like her seventh-century counterpart, was visibly pregnant. For all three monotheisms, virginity is a virtue. For most Sunni Muslims, the second-purest woman is the Virgin Mary, whose son Jesus gets more Quranic mention than Muhammad. Beating even the New Testament, Mary, who gets seventy mentions in the Quran, is the only woman directly named in the holy book. Too many Christians have no idea about the high esteem Islam reserves for them.
This Aisha wore a black niqab that sheathed the lower part of her face. I wondered how on earth she could sip her coffee through the veil. Her sister Maryam was similarly clad. The trio had decided to embark on the Hajj when they discovered Aisha’s pregnancy. They described their long car journey from Sharjah to the Fairmont. This was Gulf money in action. The women did not satisfy my curiosity—their cups remained on the table. Not even a sip!
Abdullah told me of his first night at the Masjid al-Haram. The threesome began the sacred tawaf as soon as they entered Mecca. He was separated from Aisha and Maryam early on. I immediately understood his fear.
“My experience was the most violent night of my entire life,” I told them. The mass of believers all heaved toward the Kaaba in attempts to get ever closer, and even to touch it, leaving no room for the weak of will. It was a mosh pit. A survival-of-the-fittest situation. Most of these men had never been in such close proximity to so many women ever in their lives, I’d thought. The screams of women rising above the Quranic chants from that night still haunt me.
Abdullah described his experience in detail. He was unable to find Aisha and Maryam for hours. He prayed their piety would protect them. “Un-Islamic things happen there, brother Parvez,” he says, shaking his head. “Un-Islamic.” Aisha and Maryam were silent. As my chai tea latte arrived, Abdullah was quick to change the subject. “Maryam is an unmarried student,” he told me. “You should talk to her about New York. She is fascinated.”
Was he matchmaking? Pleased with myself, I launched into a description of the five boroughs. The women, if they were fascinated, never uttered a word of response. Abdullah smiled. At any rate, my “Hajj butch” was clearly working.
On cue, the call to afternoon prayer rang out. I assumed the mutaween would soon be running around with their canes to shut down all the shops, but I was wrong. As in India, this mall had its own class system. A mutawa wouldn’t dare enter the Chanel store.
This mall is built squarely on top of the eighteenth-century Ottoman Ajyad Fortress. Turkey was among the few Islamic countries that dared to protest its destruction. The Saudis have successfully bullied most of the Muslim world into silence. The mall is housed inside a 120-story clock tower, the fourth-tallest building in the world. The clock faces are the world’s largest. There are 98 million pieces of glass embedded into the four clock faces. Apart from the mall, the tower complex also houses a
five-star hotel and hyper-luxury apartments costing eight figures, advertised in British newspapers such as the Guardian, as the world’s most-coveted Islamic real estate. A single night in a royal suite in one of these hotels can cost close to $6,000. Mecca contains some of the most expensive land in the world, with ten square feet in some areas selling for well over $100,000.
My educated Shia group considered it particularly obscene. In our group tours of the city, they clucked their tongues at this symbol of unfettered capitalism. In the circular whirl around the cube, at times it almost seemed like people were praying to the looming tower instead of the Kaaba. On the other hand, the clock tower served as a helpful beacon, since it’s visible from anywhere in Mecca and miles around. I was often lost, and the tower, not Siri, guided me back.
I realized that my point of view about the crass consumerism on display was in the minority. I approached Mecca with a critical mindset. The Gucci shops and escalators were quotidian to me, but to a poor pilgrim from Somalia who had just disembarked from his or her first-ever flight, these would be perceived not only as unimaginable luxuries but also as encouraging markers of an ascendant Islam.
Muhammad’s Hajj of equality lay in tatters, at Saudi hands. Clad in white, all were supposed to be one and the same before God. The richest prayed next to the poorest and performed the same rituals. But now brutal dictators from African regimes could rent out entire suites in the Fairmont Mecca Clock Royal Tower. The website advertises:
Fairmont Makkah Clock Royal Tower offers unmatched hospitality throughout the ultimate exclusive hotel experience with Fairmont Gold where our discerning guests have the privilege of choosing their rooms showcasing unrivaled views of either the Kaaba, Haram or to The Holy City of Makkah.