by Qanta Ahmed
“Now at Hajj, if you find yourself surrounded in a crowd of men and you feel uncomfortable, you may use the end of your scarf and veil your face. But otherwise covering your face inside the Holy Mosque during Hajj is forbidden, even for women who normally cover their faces in Riyadh or wherever else they may live. Do it only if you feel exposed or afraid or uncomfortable, otherwise this arrangement with the hair pins and scarf will be fine.” She glanced over at my knotted brows, sensing my concern. “Don't worry, Qanta, I assure you, your niyyat is pure.”
Back in my apartment, Zubaidah scrutinized the back of my head intensely as I fixed my hair in front of the mirror. We put the silk veil over an ugly scaffolding of hairpins and headbands. Zubaidah tucked the material tightly around my face with an expert dexterity borne of decades of veiling. A couple of rotations of her slim, braceleted wrists and my hair was hidden.
I glanced at my new reflection.
Gazing back was a pilgrim.
* * *
It was now Friday morning, the day before Hajj. The week had flown by in a blur. Ye t even at the ninth hour, still no sign either of my plane tickets or of details of the group to whom I had been assigned. I called the Hajj office impatiently.
“I am waiting for the man to bring the tickets, Doctora.” A woman responded, “He promised me that they would be here today.” Her voice trailed off under a burden of anxiety. She mustered some empty assurances.
“I can't make any calls now because the agents are closed for Zuhr prayer. I will try after four when they reopen.” She hung up.
I was incredulous. I was due to fly at 9:30 the next morning! How maddening that everything was always closed for prayer, especially at a time like this! Dejected, I replaced the receiver and asked myself of my real intent. Perhaps I only wanted to go on Hajj to feel included. Maybe my niyyat was impure, or worse, maybe the invitation hadn't ever come. It seemed time for my humiliation. I cowered into the long shadows of my shame, knowing I ill-deserved to go to Hajj, aware of how much I had neglected Islam in my life.
Early the next morning, the day of my now-fictional departure, Leila, the woman from the travel center, rang and informed me the agent would be hand-delivering my plane ticket at 8:30 a.m. I was to be at her office to receive the ticket and be driven on to King Khalid Airport for my flight to Jeddah, departing at 9:30 a.m. She told me to hurry. Incredulous that there still seemed hope at this, the eleventh hour, I began making my ablutions to enter the state of Ihram. My Hajj had most certainly begun.
A furry kiss goodbye to Souhaa, my flummoxed cat, and I was on my way. I stepped out into harsh morning light, slipping on sunglasses as I scurried down cement stairs and rushed towards the compound center.
The compound was deserted. Everyone was already away for the Hajj holiday. An eerie silence magnified my staccato steps ringing echoes across the precinct. It was almost time to leave for the airport. I was beginning to grow nervous, when the sound of tires on gravel punctuated the silence. A cloud of dust delivered a perspiring man. Rushing forward, he thrust two slivers of paper toward me. I had my ticket to God!
Folding them into my needy fist, he urged me into the waiting car. Inside, another single woman, an African American nurse from Newark, would also be traveling with me. Her name was Qudsia. The driver raced to get us to the King Khalid International on time.
Soon, we entered the airport grounds. For once I was thankful for the crazy, fast driving in Riyadh as our small car hurtled into the chaos. The terminal was submerged in a biblical scene; no movie set could have been more authentic. Millions were locked in the same force field. We were being magnetically drawn to Mecca. I could feel the gravitational pull of God.
The terminal was besieged by pilgrims who were unloading luggage, carrying children, wheeling the disabled, counting money, prostrate in prayer, swirling rosaries; all the while announcing aloud their intentions to make Hajj in the special prayers of the pilgrim. These Labbaik prayers, distinctive to Hajj, echoed in unison, a single powerful voice of the giant pilgrim vortex. I was reminded of my favorite childhood movie, Close Encounters. The unity of voices felt almost supernatural. Even Spielberg couldn't imagine this scene.
Throwing money at the driver who would accept none, seeing his duty to help two unescorted pilgrims by transporting us for free, we spilled into the oceanic current of believers. We met with a sea of whiteness, all male pilgrims draped in the Hajj clothing of white unseamed cloth. Many women too had adopted the ubiquitous white veils preferred by many pilgrimaging Muslims. In the melee, we merged instantly and our voices joined the low-grade hum of a colossal swarm. I looked around from within the pandemonium. Pilgrims were carrying giant baskets and enormous bags (some large enough to hold a man). Everyone was carrying some form of bedding.
After a rapid check in, it was time to start believing Hajj was really going to happen. Stunned as my pilgrimage began to materialize into reality, I headed to the plane.
Inhaling the familiar smell of octane and hot asphalt with which all journeys begin, I mounted the staircase. The warm whispering Shamaal wind of Riyadh billowed around me, urging me on, my sole murmuring witness. With a final backward glance at Riyadh, I boarded the plane that would take me to the Ka'aba, the House of God. I wondered what I would learn of the millions of Muslims who would soon engulf me, and even more so, of the Muslim within me.
My transformation had begun.
THE EPICENTER OF ISLAM
THE SHORT FLIGHT PASSED QUICKLY. The seat belt sign came on and the 350 pilgrims prepared for landing. Internally, I braced. In a few minutes, I would be delivered into a Niagara of humanity. A squeak of rubber on burning hot runway and we landed in Jeddah. Minutes later the door of the plane opened, admitting a torrent of noise. Sounds of a million men swarmed into the cabin.
Hajj was here.
We disembarked the plane in a tumbling mass, slamming into a sweltering wall of moist heat. The humidity from the Red Sea was staggering. Like a live beast, it traveled insidiously under my abbayah, entering at the wrists, snaking over my body, leaving a sticky trail of perspiration in its wake. I peered for Qudsia. Spying her a few steps behind me, I went to join her, and abreast we walked from the runway into the terminal ahead.
Pilgrims from our plane disappeared into dank darkness, scurrying to baggage claim. We hurried to follow, soon noticing all signs were in Arabic which neither of us could understand. We would have to rely on our fellow passengers to take us to the right carousel. Overhead, announcements in guttural and precise Saudi Arabic peppered a hubbub of whirring air conditioners and asynchronous praying.
The male pilgrims were surprisingly adept at handling their robes and carrying luggage, all the while moving at a rapid pace. They were possessed with an urgency which I now noticed I lacked. I felt more fearful of being lost than concerned about rushing toward Mecca. These men were anxious with an urgent joy to meet their Maker. Even clumsy Hajj garments seemed not the least encumbrance. I continued my customary staccato forward rushing and periodic arrests backward, tripping on the rear hemline of my abbayah, and made considerably slower progress, but already I was glad of my low-heeled moccasins. I would be doing a lot of walking and already, even mid-morning, the tarmac was heating underfoot.
Inside, the terminal at the King Abdul Aziz airport was surprisingly small given the fifty thousand pilgrims who had been arriving here daily throughout the weeks leading up to Hajj. Many of these pilgrims were likely to be from Southeast Asia—450 flights arrive each day from Indonesia and from Pakistan another 376.10 But today I was arriving with the final influx of domestic pilgrims, traveling from within the Kingdom.
A year before my arrival in the Kingdom, the Saudi authorities had placed a quota on domestic residents, to ease pressure on Hajj. Now Saudi citizens were required to apply to local pilgrimage boards to seek a permit for Hajj, granted only to those who had not performed Hajj within at least a five-year period. This prevented Saudi residents from arriving annually for Hajj, magni
fying the congestion. Though controversial at the time, these sensible restrictions had been effective and reduced domestic pilgrims from fifty percent of all pilgrims to under thirty percent and, because of the specific restriction to those who had been on Hajj within a five-year window, most of the thirty percent now traveling to Hajj from within the Kingdom were non-Saudi expatriates.11
Amazingly, our bags were waiting neatly alongside the moving belt, already loaded with luggage from a subsequent flight. I turned, glancing backward. Behind, I could see more pilgrim passengers disembarking just as we had done moments before. In the window of white light at the end of the terminal, I counted scores of Saudi planes lined up, waiting to deplane. This was an operation of extraordinary magnitude and remarkable efficiency. Wheeling my suitcase behind me, I stepped outside.
We were deafened by the growl of a thousand diesel engines. As far as the eye could see giant buses lined the airport. They stretched in lines across the horizon and towards the vanishing point. Dragging our suitcases awkwardly behind us, Qudsia and I struggled to find our ride. We began walking through the diesel forest, spluttering, eyes stinging from gritty exhaust fumes, heavy and hot in the humid heat. Nose to bumper, the trucks barely allowed passage between them.
After about thirty minutes of searching, we spied a sign which looked like our group. We rushed to join the passengers embarking on this bus. They formed a neat line. A bald pilgrim with a thick beard reaching mid-chest checked passengers off on a clipboard. This was the pilgrim tour Imam. He would lead our Hajj, take us to the correct places at the correct times, and pray at the head of our group so that we all could follow.
“Salaam alaikum,” I offered, my Urdu-influenced Arabic stretching out the words.
“Wa alaikum Salaam!” barked the tour leader, responding in chiseled Najdi Arabic. He glanced toward us, never making eye contact, and we showed him our leaflet confirming our place in his bus. Tossing his white sheet over his left shoulder with what can only be described as panache, he began scribbling on the clipboard. In short moments he had cross-referenced us on the clipboard and, miraculous to us, he waived us into the bus. We had found our place in this chaos.
As we entered, climbing the tall steps inside, I could see no other women, even though I had asked to be sent to Hajj with a group for single women. Most of the bus was filled with men. As I moved to the back, my eye fell on the final windows in the bus, covered in orange pleated curtains. So this was where the female pilgrims in the group must be. I climbed the steep steel steps, my first steps to Hajj.
Settling into an empty seat, I pulled the orange curtain slightly to one side and peered into the daylight. We were surrounded by rows and rows of buses and motor coaches and pilgrims rushing to join them. A family tried to stay together in strange human-chain formation, linked by hands gripping stretches of thin rope. Some women carried babies, some children trailed afoot behind their mothers, and others were in wheelchairs, being pushed by younger pilgrims.
While many buses were motor coaches, some were less grand. A clutch of bright yellow buses (exactly like American school buses) carried rows of pilgrims (all male) on the roof. They sat in neat lines, some squatting, some cross legged, all of them bareheaded under the relentless sun. Underneath, inside, heavily veiled women peered out, just like me, from behind the makeshift curtains. Not every pilgrim could afford to be inside an air-conditioned Mercedes Benz like this one, the one that would take me to Hajj.
Minutes turned into hours, and the hours became afternoon. I had brought nothing with me to eat or drink. I was unprepared in every sense for the rigors of Hajj. Everyone on the bus spent the time engaged in repetitive prayer, and for some time the Hajj leader led us in various prayers, which all of us, men and women, started to follow to pass the time. All the while the engine idled in an attempt to power the feeble air conditioning. In the distance, rows of buses peeled away, moving at the slow speed of Hajj. At last, just before two, our bus creaked away from the curb, and we were leaving the terminal. Heaving like a tired old man, the bus lurched forward, stiff with its hours of waiting. We were moving to the first stage of Hajj. Beyond the battalion of buses, Mecca was waiting, and at its center, the Ka'aba.
Next stop, the House of God.
***
It would take us the better part of half a day to reach Mecca, normally a forty-minute journey from Jeddah. We creaked forward in suspended animation, the scenery barely changing, the angle of the sun descending imperceptibly, and around us a cacophony of buses, trucks, and vans, an interminable growling, which even thick plate glass could not obliterate. As the day lengthened, the bus grew no cooler even with the air vents fully open. My fellow passengers passed time engaged in prayer, some reading the Qurans they had brought with them, and others following the Hajj Imam in loud prayers. Eventually I could see the mountain ranges circling Mecca; dull brown, baking in the intense heat, remote and impassive to monumental traffic trickling by.
We were approaching a subterranean tunnel, hewn out of a mountain. Instantly, at its threshold, we joined a turbine of noise spinning on the cumulative growl of thousands of engines. Drawing the curtains back, I saw we were now pitched into darkness. Arabic letters on the license plate of the vehicle ahead of us were all we could see. The pallid light of our headlights cast a feeble beam in smog thick enough to bite. Tailgating, we made a giant articulated caterpillar; our bus a tiny segment of the gigantic mechanical centipede oozing its way deeper and deeper into the center of Mecca.
Already I was losing track of time. As I approached my Maker, all dimensions were magnified. His vastness was beginning to overshadow man-made measures of reality. I was entering a new universe where all human landmarks, whether of time or place, began to fail, pushed away by the spinning vortex of force that lay only a few miles way. We were in the central rip currents surging towards the Ka'aba. I could feel a tide pulling us forward.
Our driver, already fragile from his ordeal, sweated silently at the wheel, all the while the Hajj Imam standing at his side praying for Allah to open a route forward. We entered an eight-lane underpass and still we ploughed ahead. A couple of male pilgrims hurried to the driver and after several minutes of discussion, the bus stopped in the tunnel, alongside the curb. Parallel to our bus I could see the mouths of four escalators swallowing pilgrims whole and sucking them upward. All escalators were going up, none descending. Further along the tunnel I could make out other escalator entrances, peppered along the roadside, each surrounded by a static knot of white-clad male Hajjis enclosing their female folk. This seemed an impossible place to stop, rather like getting out in the Midtown Tunnel in rush hour. I turned to ask the woman next to me, Randa, for an explanation.
“Oh Qanta, they want to stop here to go immediately to the Ka'aba. They can't wait to go to the hotel first and then come here; they want to go now. Those escalators led directly to the Masjid al-Haram Mosque (the Grand Mosque). The Mosque is directly above. We are passing underneath the House of God!” She stopped, smiling at me. “We are underneath Hajj!”
I watched the men leave our bus and vanish into the maelstrom of worship outside. Soon they were disappeared from view. We continued onward through the traffic toward our hotel for the night. Without sense of time, direction, or perspective, I hadn't realized I was already in the epicenter of Islam; surrounded by it, in fact. I watched the escalators aspirating more and more pilgrims as though an organism with an insatiable appetite; dumbfounded by the volume of humanity which seemingly vanished into an infinite oblivion. Everywhere was in motion, nothing was static.
We were at the vortex-edge.
***
A couple of hours later, the bus stopped outside a building in the center of Mecca. We quickly disembarked for refreshments and a brief respite. Men and women entered separate quarters. It was not the “hotel” I had expected. Instead it was clearly a wedding hall, opened up for traveling pilgrims during Hajj season. Along the floor were rolls of bedding and small cylindrical pil
lows. Quickly, women corralled various areas.
Most of all, I wanted to be in a space alone, already tiring of the crowds so soon into Hajj, but this was not possible. There was no privacy. I arranged my suitcase and leaned against it. Some alpha-female Bedouin pilgrims gathered on the stage, leaning against the lone wedding sofa devoid now of bride or groom. The rest of us congregated on the floor. Randa waved to me to move closer. Food was being served. Hijazi women, their dark skin revealing a Sudanese ancestry, began to move among us, proffering trays of food and cold sodas to drink. I hadn't seen them on our bus, so they must have been from Mecca, assigned to cater and serve the women in our group. A stainless steel tray was pushed toward me by one of the maids. I thanked her in Arabic, “Shukran.”
“You are welcome,” she responded, beaming with pride at her English. This was Rashida, supervisor of the other maids. She recognized I was not Saudi. Perhaps she had heard Randa and me speaking English earlier. Rashida had sparkling brown eyes made large with joy, and her scarf framed a substantial, defiant double chin. I liked her immediately. Though she was big, she moved quickly and tirelessly, bending down to serve food on the floor where we ate (there was no furniture in the hall) and rising again to serve others. Then she returned with an ice box full of sodas, dragging the entire box alone. I looked at my Coca-Cola. “The Real Thing” had reached even Mecca.
Along with other markers of time I found even appetite was lost. Forcing myself to eat, I took a small portion of rice, unable to face the meat. By the end of Hajj I would lose ten percent of my body weight. Randa had finished eating already. She came to me with an invitation. “Qanta, my husband Sherief and I are going to make our Tawafs at the Ka'aba. Perhaps you would like to accompany us? If we hurry, we can be there to pray Isha.”
I leapt to my feet and followed Randa into the evening. We were going to the Ka'aba!