A Sinner in Mecca

by Parvez Sharma

  Mina was divided into camps representing every country. “Welcome Russian Pilgrims,” said one. “Caribbean Hajj,” said another. I noticed flags from every corner of the world, from Fiji to the Maldives, and yet there were three glaring omissions: no Stars and Stripes, no Union Jack, and no Star of David. My majority-American group marched under the innocuous maple leaf of a less-controversial neighbor.

  The inescapable call to Zuhr prayers resounded. In order to pray, I would need to perform the wudu, but that would involve a visit to the dreaded Saudi toilets. Imagine a port-a-potty with no seat—just a hole in the ground. In that enclosure, pilgrims are meant to defecate, piss, and then shower. No toilet paper, no flush. When showering, you are standing in a puddle of brownish water. Is it simply dirt and sand from the previous occupant, or something worse? Dirty water from adjacent stalls is flung over your head, and you can only hope that your neighbors are as clean as you imagine yourself to be. These are some of the most unsanitary conditions in the civilized world. Threats of pandemics hang over the Hajj ever year. The soundtrack of the Hajj experience is a cacophony of sneezing, coughing, and retching. Many pilgrims and Saudi guards wear surgical masks. With some shame, I opted sacrilegiously to skip the wudu. I pretended I had already done it by going for a short walk. I may have broken the letter of Islamic law by shirking the cleansing ritual, but in my mind I was all the cleaner for it.

  Shahinaz texted me how she had sneaked an early-morning fag, post-Fajr, in one of those “shower-toilet combos from hell,” as we both called them. At one point during Hajj, I stopped eating just so I would not need to use the bathrooms for anything but urination—they were loathsome.

  While taking a smoke break outside my tent, I was approached by Abdullah Jaffar, the British doctor in my group, with a stern face.

  “Brother Parvez,” he said. “Do you understand the global network of smoking?”

  “Yes,” I said. “There are smokers everywhere.”

  His voice lowered, “Let me show you how it works.” He drew a map of the globe in the air with his fingers, illustrating his conspiracy. “Here is America. And here is Britain. And here is Brazil. They all manufacture tobacco. Do you know where it ends up?” He jerked his hand across his map toward the Middle East and South Asia. “See? Where the majority of Muslims live?”

  I let the kook rant.

  The doctor traced a path between these countries, indicated a conspiratorial flow of tobacco from non-Muslim nations to the heart of Islam. “See?” He smiled, as though his irrefutable logic had fallen gracefully into place. “It’s a conspiracy by the Jews of America.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes.

  “They want the Muslims to die of lung cancer.” His voice rose. “It’s all connected! Be careful, brother. Not just for your health, but also for Islam!”

  I hastily extinguished my cigarette.

  The filthy alleys between the tents of Mina stretch for miles. The tents themselves are identical, and the only way to distinguish one from the other is to check the flag and group names. I lost my way easily before spotting someone from my group. Back in the tent I dared to pray in the Sunni way in front of all my Shia group members. At this point I had lost my desire to blend in, and my stubborn defiance was on full display. People stared and whispered to one another. I tuned them out and focused on the higher purpose that had brought us here in the first place.

  As had happened many times now, women seemed to have disappeared suddenly and without warning. They must have had their own segregated tents apart from their husbands or male “guardians.” I wondered if these women knew about the furor-ridden debates raging in the kingdom regarding women’s rights, segregation, and equality.

  While in Mina, I had seen a tweet from Al-Waleed bin Talal, one of the self-proclaimed reform-minded princes, arguing that women should be allowed to drive in order to abolish illegal work by undocumented immigrants. He claimed that this would lead to 500,000 fewer foreign chauffeurs. Critics, as they always did, screamed with outrage at this tweet. Sheikhs often appeared on Saudi television decrying the female driver: “If women started driving, what would they do if their car breaks down? They will be raped!” This and similar mindsets continue to prevent Saudi Arabia from entering the twenty-first century.

  That night I went for a walk, because I was feeling claustrophobic. The men around me were taking up more than their fair share of space. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. But the streets didn’t bring much comfort. Excrement, trash, sirens wailing, and countless more pilgrims sleeping on the streets. These were another class of pilgrims—those who had come into the kingdom undocumented during the Hajj season. They had come looking for work. Many of them had found work, but many hadn’t. So they whiled away their days, often begging. Many beggars had missing limbs; I assumed they’d been caught stealing. The landscape looked like the day after a bloody battle, with countless bodies, many broken, squirming and stretching across the landscape. There was a parallel Hajj going on.

  I ran into one of my Hajj leaders, by now a regular smoking buddy. I complained to him about my tentmates. “My mother used to tell me that all good Muslims should take up the space of a coffin. You know, not encroaching on the personal space of the people around you,” I said.

  “Unfortunately, not everyone carries that morality,” he replied.

  “And what about these streets? Do they even realize that people like us sleep in air-conditioned tents? This is not the Hajj of equality that the Prophet envisioned.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve been bringing groups here for fifteen years. So much has changed even within that time. These people don’t even have visas. I can’t even tell you the things I’ve seen.”

  “What will happen to them when the Hajj season ends?”

  “They will either find illegal jobs or end up in Saudi prisons to be deported.”

  Stomping out his cigarette, he looked into the distance. “I’m so glad they don’t allow non-Muslims. The West shouldn’t be allowed to see this side of us.”

  Satan’s day had arrived with the next morning. On this day we were meant to confront Satan in a symbolic recreation of Ibrahim’s confrontation with the devil. When Ibrahim left Mina, Satan appeared to him three times. Each time, the angel Jibreel showed up and told Ibrahim to pelt the devil with stones, which made him disappear. These three moments in which Ibrahim successfully confronted the devil are marked by three pillars at Jamrat. According to some traditions, the three pillars stand at the exact spots where Ibrahim threw stones at Satan and thus are representative of the temptations he needed to overcome to get God’s blessings.

  Our group leader corralled us into groups of about twenty. I was assigned to lead my group and given a tiny Canadian flag to wave. We began to chant alongside tens of thousands of other Muslims, Labbaik Allah humma labbaik:

  O my Lord, here I am at Your service, here I am.

  You have no partner.

  Here I am.

  Praise be unto you

  Yours alone is all praise and all bounty

  And Yours is the sovereignty.

  You have no partners.

  We entered a series of tunnels, miles long, that shot through the many hills of Mecca. It never stopped—the shrieking noise of the chants that reverberated through this chaotic claustrophobia. Shahinaz was not with me. She had feigned illness to avoid the barbarity. This was just one example of an entirely Saudi-created Hell.

  “Can’t do it much longer,” she pleaded. I acknowledged her and felt guilty. Thankfully her judgmental women would be gone all day.

  “Take a Xanax and just sleep for a few hours,” I advised.

  “Perfect,” she said.

  For about three hours we trudged through the tunnels and the enormous roar. There were moments when savage behavior was common in the mini-stampedes that happened between tunnels. There were bodies sprawled on the rocks, mostly from dehydration or other medical problems. They tried to avoid the avalanche and ferv
or of the determined stoners.

  “I need water. I will die,” said a woman carrying a baby in a baby bjorn. She clearly lived in a Western country. I had bought many hydration packets of the kind used by sporty types, most of which I had given away. This was the last and I gave it to her, urging her to use it with thrift. “Shouldn’t they have clean water for us?” she said. I nodded, helping her up. She was soon lost. My long walk to Satan was of a dehydration I had never experienced. Ahead a truck threw boxes of water bottles into a riot-like situation. I was going to be a savage like them. I grabbed two and hid them in my backpack.

  We passed kiosks selling all manner of Islamic tchotchkes. But NOT ONE sold water. Was this a deliberate Saudi Satanic creation? Many in my group started yelling for water. It was nowhere to be found after that truck, which I believe was from God.

  A group of clearly poorer pilgrims were wailing around a corpse. “He was my uncle,” a young man cried. “He was pushed down and he had no water. It was too much for him,” explained a youth, “but we lost everyone and his wife.”

  “It’s a blessing to die in the holy city,” said a loudmouth, showing no compassion.

  I searched for a security guard and showed him the body. Cops came to the scene and put the body in their trunk. The nephew was not allowed to go with them. This dead man would forever be forgotten in one of their unmarked corpse holes.

  This was an ideal environment for stampedes, which occurred with reliable frequency every couple of years. In 2015, over 2,000 pilgrims would be trampled to death here. If this particular part of the Hajj experience is intended to feel like a march to Hell, the Saudis have succeeded in constructing the perfect environment. The general vibe of the place evoked in my mind the heavy-metal song “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple. The grinding, malevolent guitar riff had always brought to mind the presence of evil.

  In the mid-nineties, I had the opportunity to see Deep Purple play at the Nehru stadium in Delhi. By this time the band was several generations out of style in the West, but clearly not in the Third World. Clearly the only chance of recreating the fame of their heyday lay in these Third World tours. I fought hard to secure tickets. The massive stadium was sold out. As in the US, Muslim religious leaders in India were participating in “Satanic Panic,” but a few decades later. I felt like a real rebel at this concert. I’ve uncovered a 1995 India Today magazine clipping to give a sense of what these Muslim leaders faced:

  Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice has just rolled into a solo. At New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the band has been blasting full-throttle on adrenalin boosted by 40,000 watts of sound power for close to an hour. Rocked out, soaking in Paice’s pulse, the metal sound filling up the stadium, a wild-eyed university student gushes: “These guys are gods, man.”

  The sounds of heavy metal, the music of my twenties, has always gone hand-in-hand with images of devilry in my imagination. No matter what we get out of this I know, I know we’ll never forget. Smoke on the water, and fire in the sky. I reminded myself I was on a religious mission and tried to shake the lyrics out of my head.

  When we arrived at the pillars, I readied my pebbles. As I threw my first stone, I remembered when Hossein had joked about the pillars’ representing America, Israel, and England for some Iranians. The noise was too deafening for me to make out anything that was being said other than, “Allahu Akbar.” As pilgrims rushed past me in all directions, flinging their stones, I saw a manic look in their eyes, as though it were the end of days. I and many others were pelted by carelessly thrown pebbles, along with slippers, bedrolls, and other “cursed” or “unlucky” personal totems and objects that were poorly aimed at the pillars. There didn’t seem to be anything godly about this place. I noticed that women were being pushed to the ground around me. Their sisters tried to hold them up. When I offered my hand to help pull a woman up, it was slapped away by another woman. Even here in Hell, gender segregation was self-enforced.

  In the mad rush, I myself was pushed down by a phalanx of marching Indonesian pilgrims who inadvertently rammed me to the ground and walked over me ceaselessly and, more important, inhumanely. Was this the part where I die? I was rescued by a kind Nigerian beggar. She had no hands, but offered what little arm she had left. For me, her simple act of kindness, though it flouted the rules of Islamic gender segregation, would have had the Prophet’s approval. As far as I could tell, only this butchered, humble beggar obeyed Muhammad’s deepest calls for compassion.

  In moments like this, I reminded myself that this was my journey of the spirit. I would focus on the Kaaba, the only place in Mecca that gave me spiritual succor. Being able to disassociate myself with the noise, the shoving, the heat, the dirt, the discomfort, and to transport myself to the black cube enabled me to remind myself continually of my purpose and realign my heart with the heart of the Prophet. I knew my reliance on the cube and the Prophet would be interpreted by the Wahhabis as idolatrous, but this secret devotion was the only thing that kept me from falling apart. As I walked, the Prophet always walked with me, with his hand on my shoulder. Blasphemously he took form in my imagination, just as Khala had described him in my childhood.

  I staggered out of Hell and out into the sun. Although I had been tasked with keeping my group together, I had lost all of them. There was no way we could have stuck together in that madness. I headed to our planned meeting place: Gate 17. When I arrived, I was immediately scolded when a fellow pilgrim caught a whiff of my deodorant.

  “Are you wearing perfume?” he said with a judgmental whisper, just loud enough for the whole group to hear. Pilgrims aren’t supposed to wear anything that would constitute an adornment. This self-appointed ulema of Islam had decided this included perfume. I had never understood this commandment. I had been taught the Prophet was said to have loved perfume. So I ignored this stupid stricture. After three days without showering, trudging through the dust, I had allowed myself the tiny luxury of a swipe of deodorant, which barely made a dent in the odor emanating from my body. I ignored this guy’s comment. Haters gonna hate.

  I tried to find some strength and solace by thinking of the spiritual simplicity of my ancestors, and the lengths they went to perform their Hajj without any of the modern conveniences that I now enjoyed.

  Not only did I smell awful, I emerged from Jamrat exhausted, bruised, calloused, dehydrated, and spiritually broken. I wasn’t sure I could go on. The experience of the Hajj had stripped away everything about me that made me a modern civilized man. I felt newly in touch with whatever primal force that lay dormant in me—the caveman brain that thirsted for blood. It is at this point in the Hajj that pilgrims are commanded to sacrifice a goat, just as Ibrahim had done after sparing Isaac. When I was a child, the annual Eid ritual of blood sacrifice had always filled me with inexplicable fear and dread. Sacrifice was normal to me, but still seemed barbaric. In all my years, I’d never attempted to hurt another living being. But now, I yearned to spill blood. I have difficulty putting this feeling into words.

  “Do you think you’re really prepared for this?” said an uncle before I’d embarked on my Hajj.

  “Yes,” I said with confidence. “It’s the right time in my life.”

  “Well, we shall see if you feel the same way when you have to kill an animal with your own hands.”

  For the first time in my life, I understood the cathartic power of the sacrifice. It no longer felt barbaric but essential. By releasing an animal into death, I would also be putting to death a sinful part of me that I desperately wanted to die.

  But it wasn’t meant to be. We trudged to the signs reading, “The Saudi Project for Utilization of Hajj Meat, Managed by the Islamic Development Bank.” The words were accompanied by a little logo: a palm tree with two swords. Like many aspects of the Hajj, the slaughter was totally industrialized and housed inside a massive complex made up of many gates that were assigned to different groups. Pilgrims were corralled through the slaughterhouse, confused about where they were headed.
My group walked forward with the other pilgrims, but officials screamed through bullhorns at us that we were not to continue. One of the guards told us in English, “You cannot come through because you are yellow.” I never figured out why I was classified as “yellow,” or what that color code signified. More Saudi gibberish, I thought to myself.

  We weren’t the only group that had been turned away. The slaughterhouse had run out of goats. The guards shouted, but pilgrims, desperate to complete this, one of the final rituals of the Hajj, were climbing on top of one another to try to get into the slaughterhouse.

  “Leave, pilgrim!” shouted a guard. “No more goats!”

  My group leader tried his best to pull all of us together. He shouted over the din, “For those of you who haven’t been able to participate in the slaughter, write your name and phone number on a piece of paper. I will make sure that a goat is slaughtered in your name and call you to confirm that it has happened so you can shower and celebrate Eid.”

  We weren’t supposed to shower until after our goats had been slaughtered. I had no idea that it was even an option, to have someone else spill the blood in my name. I’d been taught that the pilgrim had to do it with his bare hands. I felt robbed. This was supposed to be my great act of cathartic absolution, and I had been turned away. I had tried so hard to perform every ritual in the mandated way. I was devastated my Hajj felt incomplete.

  I wasn’t the only one who felt a sense of loss. As we walked dissolutely to our tents, riots formed behind us. Pilgrims were throwing punches at one another. The guards were outnumbered by these goat-less and bloodthirsty pilgrims. As we got closer to Mina, I saw men with freshly shaven heads strolling around in colorful thobes (tunics), arm-in-arm with their wives, celebrating the festival of Eid al-Adha (“Festival of the Sacrifice”). Millions of Muslims around the planet were doing the same. I was finally able to join the celebration later that night, when I received the call from my group leader.