God, if you’re listening …
My mum, of course, has instructed me to pray for a husband as I make my first hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required of every Muslim. Also: the health of her best friend and the release, from jail in Egypt, of the son of my aunt’s maid.
On the second day of the hajj — this year, Sunday, Sept. 11 — pilgrims will clamber onto Mount Arafat to ask for God’s forgiveness and make specific requests by prayer. Muslims believe that a supplication at that place at that time will be answered.
Along with Mum’s list, I’ll be praying for the health of a friend’s mother who is fighting cancer, and the continued happiness and health of my family and friends. A few friends who are secular Muslims like me asked that I throw in a word for them, and I will. God, if you are listening, peace would be really nice. I’m not so sure about the husband.
I have been asking all the people I meet in Mecca what they’ll be praying for on Mount Arafat:
■ Mervat, a 30-year-old cardiologist from Yemen, said she would ask “to go to paradise with my parents” and that her war-torn country might find peace.
■ Hassan Abbas, a doctor from Nigeria, hopes that his war-torn country might find peace.
■ Sayida Bakri, 68, seeks for terrorism to be defeated and “for Egypt to stand on its feet” after years of instability.
■ Abd Aziz Hj Johari — who is 18 and from Brunei, and who wore a T-shirt proclaiming, “I Love the Prophet” — shrugged at my question. His mother, Siti Hayun Hj Abdul Qadi, patted him affectionately and said she would ask that her son “become a good boy in the future, a good husband, especially, a good son.”
No place for cellphones and sundries
There are no pockets on the ihram that men wear during the hajj — the traditional dress consists of just two white sheets draped around their bodies. And it’s difficult for men and women to carry bulky bags in tight quarters. So the air rights above their heads become valuable personal real estate.
I’ve seen people carrying canteens of Zamzam water on their heads; others balancing their prayer mats like hats; and men from Afghanistan, Sudan, Oman and Egypt top themselves with carefully arranged turbans that seem to delicately float above their heads.
When I was a little girl and we traveled from Australia to Egypt to visit my mum’s family, I remember the enchanting women with large baskets perched on their heads, walking casually down crowded market streets, their empty arms swaying freely. I see some Palestinianwomen doing the same thing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where I work as a correspondent in The Times’s Jerusalem bureau.
A good idea knows no borders.
VideoOne Thing All Humans Can Agree On
Is there anything that brings people together like ice cream?
The hajj is hot and grueling, and pilgrims flock to the Aesra ice cream shop near the Grand Mosque, where there are separate lines for men and women. “After worship, there’s a treat,” said Arar Hafsi, 51, an Algerian pilgrim, giggling.
I met one young woman in a niqab, her face and body covered in heavy black cloth, clutching a plastic cup filled with swirls of mango and strawberry. She said, laughing, that maybe she had one after every prayer — that’s five times a day.
“Is it good?” I asked. “Well,” she said, “it’s all there is.”
I know you want to know, so: A woman wearing a niqab eats ice cream by filling the spoon, then raising her veil just a bit and sticking the spoon in her mouth.
Qasim, 16, a worker I interviewed at the shop, gave free cups to me and Abdul-Rahman, the Saudi minder who follows me everywhere under the government’s rules for journalists covering the hajj. The ice cream tasted good. Also: It’s all there is.
SEPT. 10, 2016
I made it to Mecca; my suitcase didn’t
So as I made my first hajj, joining millions of Muslims from around the world on the annual pilgrimage to our holiest places, I did not have the antibiotics or disinfectant gel my family had insisted I carry to ward off what we call “the hajj flu.” I did not have a proper head scarf or even a prayer mat.
As the call to prayer sounded, I stood in a line of women on the street leading to the Grand Mosque and realized I would have no clean place to put my head during the full prostrations we make in a symbolic act of submission to God. I figured, never mind, this is the hajj, once in a lifetime. Then the woman standing next to me said, “I’ve made space for you.” We had to pray very close together, our heads were touching on that tiny mat.
Afterward, I thanked her. Her name is Samira, and she is a professor in Algeria. She kissed me on the cheek and said that was the way a Muslim should behave, and that I was her sister.
Outside of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, I hoped to do the afternoon prayer. But I didn’t have a…https://www.instagram.com/p/BKExQZGBm5d/
VideoPostcard From the Hajj: The Wildlife
Are these pigeons Muslim?
One of the main hajj rituals is to walk seven times around the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site. My brother and sister, who did the hajj years ago, had told me about the pigeons that circle, seemingly in sync with the pilgrims, overhead. A sign from God? Perhaps, but helped along by the women selling bird feed to people who flung it joyously into the air around the Grand Mosque.
لما حاولت اجهز حالي للحج، العائلة كانت عدهن نصائح كثيرة، منها: سندل وكلسات، وركزي عالروحانيات http://nyti.ms/2bYBWfJ
I sipped holy water (but threw away the cup)
A group of Nigerian teenagers stood in a corner, calling out “Zamzam, Zamzam, Zamzam!” and passing out plastic cups of water. Zamzam is a well located within the Haram, the mosque that surrounds the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site. Muslims believe God made it bubble up as the second wife of Ibrahim (Abraham in the Judeo-Christian bible), tried to soothe her thirsting child. A half-liter bottle sells for $4.95 on the internet.
I was spooked after reading an article saying Zamzam water had high levels of arsenic. But in the heat and exhaustion of the hajj, it tasted refreshing. I even stopped in front of an Egyptian man spraying people’s faces with the water as a small good deed — he said he did the same during the 2011 uprisings in Cairo. But I was worried when I saw pilgrims returning their empty cups to the Nigerians — this is how hajj flu spreads!
A group of Nigerian teenagers stood in a corner, calling out “zamzam, zamzam, zamzam!” and…https://www.instagram.com/p/BKFf1dlh3V4/
‘Malcolm X’ topped my pre-hajj reading list
My favorite passage of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”was when he described the pilgrims being of all races and colors. It’s still like that.
A Chinese woman showed me her Mandarin Quran. I saw women from Uzbekistan who had their national flag sewn onto their head scarves, and men with “Kurdistan” emblazoned on their jackets. There were Pakistanis with beards dyed a cartoonish red, and one guy, who knows from where, in a gold sequined hat. He looked fabulous.
It reminded me of the little mosque of my childhood in multicultural Canberra, Australia. I grew up thinking it was normal to worship next to Muslims from Bosnia and Vietnam, Afghanistan and Jordan.
Walking around the Kaaba was like Canberra, writ large. There was something very incredible and lovely about being a tiny little human among tens of thousands of other humans, saying the same prayers and doing the same rituals.
Categories: Hajj, Hajj, hajj, The Muslim Times