The black silk was cold and soft. The protruding layers of thread that spelt out “Allah” in neat Arabic curls absorbed the tears and prayers sprayed at the cloth’s delicate font, while still reflecting the flood of light that shone from looming construction cranes and endless spurts of cell phone flashes.

I rubbed my hands gently against the Kabah.

Infinite prayers, regrets, wishes, and questions raced inside me, bottling to a head when I had just fractions of a second to solidify a crucial dilemma: do I whip out my phone, conveniently stored in a pocket of my abaya, and snag a quick photo of my family and myself-or not?

This past winter break featured our visit to Saudi Arabia, completed in order to perform Umrah-the minor Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, often described as an abridged version of Hajj able to be completed any time of the year. It consists primarily of seven Tawafs, or “laps” around the Kabah, and couple additional other traditions, like running between two mountains to simulate the same path that Hagar (wife of Abraham) ran in desperation to find water for her and her son when stranded in the Arabian desert some many centuries ago.

So, photo or not?

I paused, for as long as it was physically possible to do so in a sea of a million people vying to stand, more or less, exactly where I was standing. A mosaic of ages, races, cultures, languages, genders, and classes chugged by me in a clunky but common circular rhythm around the very draped black box my two palm reached up against. Bound by similar chants of Qur’anic verse and Arabic prayers, we all made the journey here to Mecca for a reason way beyond this finite moment. And yet, we stood here with a longing to revel in this second, this experience, this feeling forever. And our lives in the 21st century afford those of us with the resources the very option to nourish that craving, perhaps addictively.

Photos, symbolism, and faces have historically maintained a level of controversy in many Islamic societies.

Yet for every one abaya-the most common garb for women in a country where full body coverage is an around-the-clock obligation; plus for every one red-checkered Kufi-the traditional male Saudi headpiece; and plus for every one wheelchair-which carried the dedication and faith of a pilgrim who additionally overcame disability or illness to be in Mecca; yes, for all these iconic, blessed, and admirable traditions of the pilgrimage combined, I counted at least one selfie stick.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a selfie stick-maybe Disney would disagree with me on this one. Sure, I find them tacky, irritating, and dangerous in such crowds (and Mecca is certainly filled with magnitudes more worth of people than Anaheim or Orlando, Paris or Tokyo)-but my shock with the selfie stick phenomenon perhaps only lent a lens into greater trends regarding religion (specifically Islam), technology, and reconciling tradition.

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