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Among Many, Many Believers
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Modern Mecca is a bit of a shock. Multistory residential blocks and hotels have replaced the old buildings. When an 18th century Ottoman castle was recently demolished to make way for a hotel and shopping plaza, the Turkish government decried "a cultural massacre." One of the best views of the Grand Mosque is from a Burger King. (Reconstructing Mecca has been good to one family: the bin Laden construction company has built many of the structures.)
Sex is forbidden during the Hajj, but not shopping, and the mosque is surrounded by shops selling gold jewelry, traditional embroidered dresses, prayer beads, Levi's, Givenchy. Shopkeepers wail over demands for discounts, claiming pilgrims take goods home to sell at a profit.
The greatest souvenir from the Hajj, however, is available at the Zamzam well, connected to a 35-m deep spring, which is in a circular, marble-clad room beneath the Kaaba. The water is sacred: everyone wants to bring some home. The well is encased behind a double-fiberglass wall. At the holy taps, the pilgrims become like children playing in a bath: they gulp, splash and gargle, pouring the divine liquid on themselves, wetting prayer mats, filling large plastic bags and jerricans. A tall, young Arab bangs his head against the fiberglass, crying inconsolably. On the other side of the glass, a bored attendant surrounded by pipes, control panels and a gadget marked "water analyzer" walks around with a yellow flyswatter. The water is sweetish and refreshingly cold, having passed through a chilling plant.
Up above, Mohammed Athar Lila, a 22-year-old political science undergrad at the University of Toronto, tells of his journey to Mecca. Lila, the son of an Indian immigrant from East Africa, was once a modern young Canadian. "I was in with the crowd, smoking marijuana, the ladies thought I was handsome and wanted to be with me," he says. But one night after the disco, something came over him. His ears were ringing, his life was wrong. "I went to the mosque to learn about my religion. I told my parents I want to go on Hajj. They were a little disconcerted." He came in 1997. This time he's brought his bride for a Hajj honeymoon. (She came up with the idea, in fact, and that's when he decided to marry her.) The couple was wed five days before the plane left from Toronto. They're staying in separate rooms at their Mecca hotel. Nonetheless, says Lila, "What better way to start your married life than walking around the Kaaba with your wife beside you?"
From Mecca, I go to Mina, where the Saudis have erected 44,000 spacious, fire-retardant, air-cooled, wall-to-wall carpeted tents. Pilgrims sleep packed together on the floor. After prayers the next morning, the 2 million of us set off for the desolate plain of Arafat, where the final verses of the Koran were revealed to Muhammad and where he gave his last sermon. The traffic—buses, beat-up GMC Suburbans, Chevy vans, Toyota Land Cruisers, Lexus 4x4s—is bumper-to-bumper. The air is thick with gas fumes and the rank smell of burning clutches. We are caught in an endless traffic jam. Arafat is only 7 km from Mina, and I've sat on the road for five hours. I try walking in the 35C heat and use part of my garment as a hood. Other pilgrims wave reproachfully at me. (On the Hajj, the head must remain uncovered as a sign of humility.) At Arafat the hardier pilgrims clamber on top of rocky hillocks, much as the Prophet did nearly 14 centuries ago. The rest seek the shade.
The next morning, pilgrims collect pebbles for the ritual stoning of Satan at Jamrat, the most hazardous exercise of the Hajj: people regularly die in stampedes. But this year, with many Saudi soldier shepherds, the crowds are manageable. This entire Hajj, in fact, was one of the most incident-free ever. An Indian was caught at the airport with four pounds of heroin; a 27-member gang of thieves from an unidentified African country were caught stealing from pilgrims at the Grand Mosque. Nothing worse, to the relief of Saudi authorities.
In fact, the Hajj offers worldly relief as much as otherworldly promise. There was a sense among pilgrims of coming home, of being safe, at least temporarily, from the chaos of their countries, their lives, the real world. "Look at this," marvels Enes Clgbijanki, a schoolteacher from Cazin, a town in western Bosnia, gesturing at the pilgrim hordes. "Yellow, white, black, brown all are here, and with one heart they think about the glory of Allah." In the Koran, God is quoted as saying: "I've created you from nationalities and tribes so you may know each other ..." The Hajj is where they meet for a brief 10 days, finding a cramped and crowded but uncomplicated place in the world.
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