In the Land of Invisible Women

by Qanta Ahmed

  My eyes strained to see something, anything, to explain the phenomenon. The black building reverberated with animal vitality as though a heart pumped within it, or a soul stirred under the black Kiswah. The Ka'aba actually seemed to throb. My eyes were liars. While I could see nothing, I knew what I felt: palpable Divinity, proximal Grace. God was very near.

  Before Islam was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), when he was about 35 years of age, the Ka'aba had fallen into terrible disrepair, losing a roof, and the wealthy Quraish tribe set about restoring the former House of God to house their symbols of pagan worship.13 Their efforts were thwarted by infestation. Symbolically, a snake had come to dwell in the walls of the Ka'aba. Eventually an eagle soaring overhead descended, snatching away at the frightening serpent which had a habit of emerging in the sunlight, scaring away the Quraish who wanted to rebuild the shrine to their idols.14

  During this time, four of the most powerful tribal leaders of Central Arabia disagreed on who should be allowed to place the revered Black Stone into its proper eastern corner in the Ka'aba after the building's renovation. Each leader believed himself the most worthy of this rare honor. Even though the Prophet was repelled by their pagan beliefs, he still mediated with dignity and kindness as the invited arbiter. Muhammad (PBUH), who by now earned the name “al-Amin” (most trusted), displayed his famed diplomacy, memorialized in a famous parable.

  Rather than choose one leader over the others and so engender the perpetual enmity of the remainder, he sought to appease all. He asked each leader to grasp the corner of a four-sided robe or cloak, himself placing the Black Stone upon it. Together the leaders lifted the stone in the makeshift hammock, carrying it to the correct site in the building. The Prophet then lifted it from the cloth, returning it to its resting place, where it remains today. The leaders accepted the solution because of its perfect equality. So the stone has remained at the corner of the Ka'aba. Some choose to believe the Black Stone has been blackened by the absolution of human sin over the centuries.

  I looked at the pilgrims kissing the Black Stone. I was disturbed by the paganistic and ritualistic qualities of the scene. But I knew this was an ancient rite utterly distinct from the stone worshipers of centuries earlier.

  Muslims are very clear that only God is worthy of worship. The stone is only honored because Muhammad (PBUH) demonstrated his reverence for it by kissing it, but never worshipped it, worshiping only his Maker. The second Calipha of Islam, Umar ibn al-Khattab (580–644), came to kiss the Stone, and made the critical distinction once more.

  “No doubt, I know that you are a stone and can neither harm anyone nor benefit anyone. Had I not seen Allah's Messenger kissing you, I would not have kissed you.”

  Even from this remote distance, hundreds of meters away, I could see pilgrims struggling to touch the Black Stone, emulating this reverence stretching into lost centuries.9 Some fortunates were close enough to kiss it as they revolved around the Ka'aba in ever-decreasing circles. Seized with fervor, others had stepped partway onto surrounding men in a quest to reach the stone which lay encased in silver housing about five feet from ground level.

  So I found, as I would time and again in the days ahead, that in this holiest of Islamic rites, deeply pagan rituals had survived the passage of time, persisting even after the dawn of Islam.

  The crowds ahead had eased enough for us to see that the congestion would be too great for us to make circuits on the lower levels. We headed for the immense roof to begin our Tawaf.

  We hurried to find the green marble demarcation in the floor which specified the site of the Black Stone far below us, the marker for each one of the seven counterclockwise circuits we would perform. In these circuits, we were following in the footsteps of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) who had circumambulated the Ka'aba in the same way.

  I looked upward into the night sky. Above us in the heavens, angels were similarly revolving around the Baitul Mamoor, the heavenly home to the Throne of God said to be directly above the Ka'aba. When we identified our starting point, we made the Takbir. Lifting our right hands up to the Ka'aba, facing it with our palms, we hailed God, “Allah hu Akbar! Allah hu Akbar!”

  Randa and Sherief led the way at a brisk pace, counting our first Tawaf.

  It would be hours before we could finish. My pilgrimage had begun.

  ___________________

  8 Originates from the phrase “Zomë Zomë” meaning “Stop flowing,” a command repeated by Hagar in her efforts to contain the spring water when she found it. Saudi Geological Survey ZamZam Research and Studies Center.

  9 Centuries earlier, ancient tribes had guarded the Black Stone, revered as a magical talisman, even as an object of worship. They kept it inside the Ka'aba. This stone is said to have fallen from heaven during the time of Adam and Eve to this site. Non-Islamic scholars suggest it may have been a meteorite, since stone worship was then prevalent in pre-Islamic Arabia. Others believe it was handed to Abraham by the angel Gabriel himself or that Abraham found the stone and recognized its special worth, using it as a key cornerstone in the foundations of the Ka'aba.

  THE MILLION-MAN WHEEL

  WE MILLED, ALONG WITH A million others, on the first Tawaf, or walk, around the Ka'aba, which would take forty minutes and span three-quarters of a kilometer. My eye was invariably drawn to the black cube at the center of a million supplications. Each pilgrim circulated facing the Ka'aba. Its magnetism was palpable. Here, from the roof, the vantage was God-like. Above the Ka'aba, birds fluttered, also in circular formation, as though on their own Tawaf. My overwhelming relief was replaced now by joy. As I counted my circuits, I found my mouth curving into smiles frequently, inexplicably.

  Below, the million-man wheel continued its massive revolutions. Studying the incredible crowds, a memory of Shea Stadium full to the brim returned to me. I recalled a ripple on the floor of the stadium. A hooded figure slowly worked through the masses of fans. A small phalanx moved ahead through the giant seaweed of waving arms, until at last, leaping boxer-like onto the stage, Bono revealed himself. In a moment, I had understood stardom, fifty thousand focused on one. The small figure connected with each fan and that night, in his music, we touched celebrity.

  Now looking down onto the five hundred thousand below me and the three hundred thousand around me, I understood Divinity. I watched the endless cycle of pilgrims below and began to understand worship, reminded of the last crowd I had joined. No human could move others to this extent; no force could direct worshipers other than the holy.

  We were partway through our third Tawaf when again the Muezzin's soprano voice announced the time for Isha prayers. We would offer them here around the Ka'aba. Again the revolving wheel of worship halted and we formed lines ready for the beginning of prayer. Smoothing our clothes, we stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to pray.

  The Azaan was magical. (Azaan means “inform” or “announce,” and must be called five times each day, at the hours prescribed for compulsory prayer.) The muezzin's crystalline voice called out as though from the sky itself, speakers on the nine minarets which towered over the entire Mosque complex, ricocheting the Azaan throughout Mecca. The tallest minarets, over the giant Fahad gates, propelled the sound beyond the mountain ranges surrounding the city. Throughout Mecca and at Hajj, on hearing the Azaan, every pilgrim stopped their own private prayer, readying himself or herself for prayer in congregation. Somewhere in this mosque the muezzin was standing at a microphone, unseen, and after touching his thumbs to his earlobes with his palms facing forward (a symbolic gesture of cutting himself from worldly distraction) he called to everyone everywhere, literally, to gather, both from the East and the West.

  I too lifted my hands to my ears, yet still found it difficult to focus my thoughts on my prayer. Ahead and slightly below, the Ka'aba tugged me magnetically toward it. It was very difficult to bow my head to my Maker when I constantly wanted to meet His supernatural gaze which sought my eyes wherever I turned. I directed my smiling face
downward toward my unvarnished toes. Muslim women at Hajj must be devoid of any adornment including nail polish, perfume, or jewelry, as a sign of purification.

  I was surrounded by diversity. Two rows behind, strong American accents gave away Muslims as Southerners. To my right, a gray-eyed man from Kosovo prayed. Ahead, Ghanese men, ebony faces gleaming against their white Hajj robes, responded to the muezzin in their beautiful African-accented Arabic. Everywhere, pug-nosed Malaysian women could be seen, identified by the neat flags sewn onto the back of their headdresses.

  On my left was a half-English, half-Egyptian woman, Randa. Nearby, nervous Saudi women were distinguished by their face coverings, which they found so difficult to relinquish especially in dense crowds. I could hear a Pakistani mother soothing a child in Urdu and another pair of pilgrims noisily chatting in uncultivated Punjabi until others nearby shushed them silent.

  As I looked up and surveyed the multistranded circle of humanity adorning the Ka'aba, a giant, rich choker of pilgrim pearls, I found myself among them. In this diversity, finally I belonged. Islam was many-faceted and I was simply one. Our diversity had obliterated the Wahabiism of the Najd, save for a few sentries at the periphery or the odd patrolling Muttawa cleric too forbidding for most pilgrims to approach. This was Islam: Hajj! Not the Muttawa with their nightsticks and nihilism. Equality in the eyes of our Maker, whether we be men or women, rich or poor, able-bodied or deformed, black or white, was all that mattered. The frenzied, fascist supremacy of Wahabiism had simply been washed away by a torrent of truth: the multiracial, spiritually hybrid Muslims now flooding Mecca.

  As our prayers ended, again after the customary funeral prayer for the dead, we resumed our Tawafs. We could easily keep a brisk pace, as the crowds had begun thinning on the roof-top level, but below the vortex churned on. On the marbled floor, my feet were beginning to ache in new ways, unused to so much walking without shoes, but I was amazed to see the cleanliness. My feet weren't even dusty. With so much humanity here, somehow the mosque remained pristine. Below, I watched a blue ballet of boiler suits hard at work.

  Teams of barefooted cleaners, all men from Southeast Asia (most often Bengali), were dressed in royal blue boiler suits, hard at work inside the mosque on every level. In a perfectly synchronized choreography, they cleaned and polished, barely disturbing the perpetually moving pilgrims. My eyes followed the bright blue figures and their complex theatre in the sea of white. Ahead of others, one man threw whole bucketfuls of water countercurrent to the revolving vortex, spilling water onto swathes of white marble flooring. Immediately, a single file, a dozen strong, pushed the water into broad brushstrokes, swiping perpendicular to the wet stream with wide, bristled brushes.

  They worked fast and simultaneously. The men were universally thin, many underweight. Running full-tilt towards the streams of water, their brooms gathered speed on the moving aquaplane and their momentum lifted their lithe lean bodies upward, briefly airborne on the broom handles. With trouser legs and sleeves inflated in the night breeze, buoyant, blue-flagged yachts, they sailed forward on their bristled boats. Behind them, a third crew followed, mopping every trace of water dry with wide chamois mops. The joyful dancers moved on, leaving a fragrant wake of warm, dry marble. Without missing a beat, the pilgrim wheel ratcheted forward in the steps of Muhammad (PBUH) and Abraham, most unaware the floor below them was newly cleaned.

  The Ka'aba's mystery only grew with time as evening turned to night. The blackness of the Kisweh veil, draping the cube on all sides, seemed almost to billow in the night wind. At the bottom of the Ka'aba, demurely, the Kisweh had been pulled up, like the hems of a dress, gathered to avoid a rising tide of worship swirling below. Though the Ka'aba is forty-nine feet square, its walls seemed to tower over us. Surreal from every angle, seeing it in each new gaze was like seeing it for the first time. I was continually enthralled, yet uncomfortable at the effect the building exerted upon me. As a Muslim I worship only God, not his House, but the building called to me magnetically.

  Revolving around the Ka'aba, while intensely pleasurable, was also deeply disturbing. Even without understanding the symbolism of my actions while I performed them, a palpable primordial connection was pulling me inward, deeper into Islam.

  The Kisweh drapes veiling the Ka'aba barely stirred, despite the night breeze and the revolving maelstrom around it. I knew the billowing of the cloth, which weighed more than a ton, was likely my imagination. So like everything relating to Hajj, it was a monumental feat of construction.

  In the night light the golden Thuluth Arabic calligraphy glittered on the Kisweh, its brilliance enhanced by the velvet blackness of the surrounding silk. I was bewitched by its beauty. With the distortions of Wahabi extremism, beautification of any object was considered an offense, resulting in a Kingdom without ornate decoration, other than repetitive geometry which peppered public walls and even highway underpasses. Anything else was considered futile vanity by Wahabis, but at least the Wahabis had not eroded what seemed the final remaining evidence of Islamic craftsmanship: unparalleled calligraphy. For the first time in the Kingdom, I appreciated beautiful Saudi craftsmanship.

  At last, some five hours after we had started, our seventh Tawaf was complete. We terminated with a two-rakat prayer of thanks and made our way back to the wedding hall. Unrolling my bedding to a snoring orchestra of Saudi women, I drifted into a deep sleep. I couldn't wait for tomorrow, when I would truly begin my trek as a pilgrim.

  COMMITTING HARAM

  SOON WE BEGAN PACKING OUR personal items, leaving the bedding behind. Today we would move to Mina, the pilgrims' camp, a station several miles outside of Mecca where we were to spend a day in supplication until we prepared to move onward to the plain of Arafat, the most critical day of Hajj. It was at Arafat that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) delivered his final sermon, in the same valley where Abraham too had stood in front of God centuries earlier.

  The congregation of pilgrims at Hajj at Arafat represents the gathering of Muslims who listened to his last sermon just months before his death when the final verses of the Quran were revealed during the Prophet's Farewell Pilgrimage. All two and a half million would assemble on this plain, standing from noon until sunset. Many would crowd around the Mount of Mercy, from where the Prophet actually delivered the sermon. Some would actually climb the Mount of Mercy, believing prayers offered here to be the closest to God. “Arafat is Hajj” was repeated many times, because this, the Day of Standing, was the most important day of Hajj.

  Rising with difficulty, I performed a stiff rendition of Fajr (the morning prayer), eternally grateful it was so short. We hurried to prepare for the journey to Mina, where we would stay with millions of others in the Tent City. After hours of traffic jams and mayhem, the bus finally entered the Tent City, a settlement consisting of hundreds of thousands of tents and, for the brief days of Hajj, a population of two and a half million. (A week from now the entire city would be vacant for the rest of the year.) I checked the leaflets and found I would be staying in tent 50007. Printed in Arabic, I memorized the number; this would be my home until the end of Hajj.

  Looking at the Tent City through the dirty pane, I could see it would be easy to get lost here. Awkwardly the bus negotiated the narrow tarmacked roads between terraces of tents. Like a searching sea monster, the huge vehicle prowled through acres of fiberglassed canvas. Eventually we found our section.

  As I stepped into the large and airy tent, sixty pairs of scanning eyes turned to assess me. None smiled in greeting. I ignored the cool scrutiny, accustomed to it after months of living in the Kingdom where I was always watched both by men and by women. I moved quickly to find a relatively unoccupied place in which to settle. The hours of cramped proximity since Riyadh left me craving space.

  I began to disrobe. It was a relief to unwrap myself from the noisy rustling prison of my abbayah. As I released myself from the tangle, the familiar freedom of discarding it still rushed back to me. Wearing it continuously since I h
ad left Riyadh, the longest period of contiguous veiling I had experienced, still was not making the adjustment to veiling any easier. As I shook my head free of the veil, I found I could hear again.

  I looked at the women around me in various states of dishabille. Some continued to wear their abbayahs fastened closed and, retaining most of their headdresses in place, they pushed back the facial veiling to the top of their heads, securing it back with a small ribbon under the chin or a deft twist of cloth. While their faces were exposed, their hair remained fully covered, reminding me of Holbein's Elizabethans who dressed in coifs. Literally, these Saudi women covered their hair indoors around women much like the Tudors did in the 1500s. Already the medieval flavor of Wahabi Islam was intensifying. Others had decided to take off their head coverings entirely. Against the far wall of the tent, a row of women sat on the floor leaning against the tent wall, their fleshy backs sagging into the curve of the canvas. Unmanicured fingers combed their long tresses intently, a row of strange mermaids unexpectedly washed ashore.

  I was glad to be uncovered, even behind the scenes. I wondered why all the women didn't immediately disrobe their outer garments entirely. Surely, they were just as hot and irritated from the long journey. Yet still they were compelled to maintain a forbidding boundary, even from women, distinguishing themselves as ultra-orthodox. Overhead industrial-size air conditioners suspended from aluminum beams blew gales of icy air. For the first time since landing in Jeddah, it was actually cool. Elsewhere, a row of women were dressed in their daytime clothes, having discarded their external clothing, and sat together, in various states of repose, one massaging her meaty foot, her ankle edema giving away a heart condition. Next to her, a Caucasian woman with short, wavy hair, almost ginger in color, was rubbing the nape of her neck, easing a knot of pain. These women were not orthodox Saudis; if I could guess they seemed Lebanese or Jordanian.