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Mecca: The Sacred Journey
“Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land, the home of Abraham, Muhammad and all the other Prophets of the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed all around me . . .”
Malcolm X
Mecca in the fasting month of Ramadan is like no other place on earth. The city swarms with hundreds of thousands of visitors from every corner of the world, filling the hotels and spilling out onto the sidewalks, setting up camp under flyover bridges and occupying every available inch of public space. An Australian convert to Islam travelling with a group of Indonesian pilgrims, I arrived in the city a half hour ago. Like most visitors to the city, we head to the Mosque as soon as we get here, immediately after checking into our hotel. As I join the stream of pilgrims making their way to the Mosque, I see pale-skinned, blond, blue-eyed Chechens, tall, proud-looking Nigerians, stern Bedouins, Algerian Tauregs with tattooed faces and veiled Albanians mingling together in the street, together with people from hundreds of other cities and nations I have never visited and whose citizens I only vaguely recognize.
Like all other newly arrived visitors, we are wearing the ritual garments of the pilgrim. Women wear plain black or white robes that cover them from head to toe, leaving only their face and hands exposed, while men wear two plain, unstitched pieces of cloth, one wrapped around their waist, the other draped over their shoulders. While wearing these clothes, the pilgrim must maintain a state of ritual purity, refraining from lying, expressions of anger, sexual relations, wearing perfume or makeup, cutting hair or shaving, and a host of other activities.
The ritual of the visit requires the pilgrim to change into these clothes at or before certain designated places outside the city, at which point he or she bathes, prays and formally declares the intention to complete the visit to God’s House. In practice, for those arriving from outside the country, this involves changing in the airplane. I smile as I remember the difficult process of removing my pants, underpants and shirt without exposing myself in the galley of the Garuda plane. A steward, obviously accustomed to the difficulties experienced by passengers, had kindly assisted me to place a belt to prevent my lower cloth from falling to the floor.
Even at three in the morning, in the hour before Subuh, the dawn prayer, the Mosque is full to capacity. The vast temple complex holds more than two million people in a single building, but even so, in the final days of Ramadan, latecomers are forced to offer their prayers in the courtyards and streets that surround it. It takes more than fifteen minutes to make our way from the entrance of the temple to its center and focal point, the Ka’abah, a stone edifice almost entirely covered with black cloth.
At first glance, I am almost disappointed at the simplicity of its structure and its modest size, barely twelve meters long, ten meters wide, and sixteen meters tall. As an Australian convert to Islam, I have not been brought up to revere the Ka’abah from my earliest years, and until now it has been more a symbol that I accept with my mind rather than a living entity I love with my heart and soul. Despite my initial impression, it is impossible to remain unaffected by the more emotional responses of those around me. Anisah, my wife, is round-eyed with awe, and many of the travelers in our group weep openly. All Muslims face the Ka’abah when offering their daily prayers, whether they live on a volcanic peak in Java, in the deserts of the Sahara, or in downtown New York. As such, the Ka’abah is the physical point on this earth that links a Muslim to his or her religion and to the ummat, the broader community of believers. For Muslims, visiting the Ka’abah is the fulfillment of both a binding religious obligation and a lifelong ambition, so strong emotions are hardly surprising.
In the pre-dawn darkness, Anisah and I, together with our group, prepare ourselves for the second major part of the visitation ritual after entering the state of ritual purity, the Tawaf, or Circling. By performing seven counter-clockwise circuits of the Ka’abah, pilgrims reverse the process of the Fall and cleanse themselves of the accumulated sins of a lifetime, returning to the state of purity of a newborn baby.
We make our way through the thousands of people circling the Ka’abah to a point as near as possible to the Hajar e-Aswad, the Black Stone, and declare our intention to perform the Tawaf. The Black Stone is a meteorite, and therefore of celestial origin. It is said to have descended from Heaven as a symbol of the covenant made between Allah and Adam on behalf of humanity, and was brought to Mecca and implanted in the Ka’abah by Abraham. If circumstances permit, a pilgrim is expected to kiss the Stone; otherwise, he or she should touch it or at least hold his or her hands to face it and feel the energy it emits. Anisah and I look at the Stone, then at each other, and shrug our shoulders. Even getting within fifty meters requires an enormous effort.
While sage religious experts counsel visitors that it is by no means obligatory to kiss the Stone, and that it is in fact forbidden to attempt to do so if the attempt involves risking your own life or that of others, many pilgrims find themselves unable to resist the temptation to follow in the footsteps of the Prophets. While some queue patiently, others push and shove to force their way through the crowd to the tiny space where the Stone is embedded. In Ramadan and the Haj season, accidents here are by no means uncommon, sometime claiming several lives each day. Anisah tells me that on her previous visit, she saw a visitor’s head crushed against the Stone, with fatal consequences – policemen removed the corpse within seconds, the cleaners mopped up, and the young bloods resumed pushing as though nothing had happened. Everyday, after communal prayers, special prayers are offered for those who have died in the course of the pilgrimage.
Despite the incredible numbers of people in the Mosque and gruesome incidents of this nature, however, the overall atmosphere is of consideration and care. During my first Circling, I feel a lump in my throat as I see a woman with no arms or legs dragging herself around the Ka’abah through the crowds, who make way to let her pass. Similarly, great care is taken by everyone to let the old and the sick pray near the Ka’abah. Usually, I am claustrophobic in crowded spaces, but here there is a unity of purpose, a feeling that everyone is together and in God’s hands, that eliminates any comparison with any other large gathering I have ever experienced. Small acts of kindness between total strangers are common – an old Indian with a salt-and-pepper beard gives me a set of seven beads to count my circuits, and smiles at my surprise. An Egyptian woman sees that Anisah is thirsty and hands her a bottle of water. And so on.
Anisah and I become separated from our group on our first Circling, but continue by ourselves. With each circuit, we make our way closer and closer to the wall of the Ka’abah. Anisah is smaller and more nimble than I, and squeezes through a gap to prostrate herself against the wall. She presses her face against the black cloth that covers it, and weeps and weeps, oblivious to the crowds around her. I follow and try to lean over her to protect her from being pushed or trampled. Eventually, we move away and complete our seven circuits. After offering a prayer as near as possible to the Maqam Ibrahim, where Abraham’s footprints are protected by a glass case, we move to the Zamzam Well.
The Zamzam Well is a spring that was provided by Allah for the sustenance of Ishmael and his mother, Hajra, in the wilderness of Mecca. Thus, its water is considered a symbol of divine mercy. Despite providing water to quench the thirst of the residents of Mecca and the countless millions of pilgrims that pass through the city, it has never been known to run dry. Around the world, Muslims consider Zamzam water to have miraculous healing properties, and a small bottle is the most precious gift that a pilgrim can give to friends and family at home. To reach the source of the spring, we go down separate staircases to the men and women’s section of the pumping station, where pilgrims line up around hundreds of basins and drinking fountains in the cool, underground cavern. It is nearing the time for the dawn prayer, so I drink to bursting point. It is Ramadan, so after the prayer, when the Fast begins, we will have to refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, swearing, or having sex until dusk. A young Syrian with shining eyes and a scruffy beard laughs at my attempts to hold open the tap with one hand to perform the purification ritual, and holds the tap for me. My Arabic is slightly worse than his English, but we manage to exchange names and tell each other where we come from. Friendships seem to blossom easily here.
It is now time for the Dawn prayer. In most mosques, men and women are segregated at prayer time. Here, in the crowds and confusion, that is not always possible, although modesty prevents most women from praying directly in front of a group of men or next to a man other than a relative or her husband. Different women from different countries seem to have a different strength of feeling on this issue. I see a bearded Pakistani patriarch, a self-appointed guardian of morality, harangue a group of Indonesian and Malaysian women for finding a place to pray in front of a section set aside for men. One or two seem inclined to resist being ushered away. I hear one mutter: “Stop thinking about women, Old Man! Think about God instead!” although eventually she yields with the rest.
However, when the final call to prayer comes, everyone is expected to stop moving and talking and to stand and face the Ka’abah, wherever he or she may be. It is awesome to participate in a communal prayer with two million other congregants. Imagine every citizen of a small country facing the same direction and dropping to their knees and prostrating themselves at the same time. With so many people falling to the floor at the same time, the noise of it echoes like thunder on the marble floors. According to the tradition of the Prophet, a single prayer offered in congregation in front of the Ka’abah has the same value as 100,000 prayers performed elsewhere. When I first heard that, I thought to myself: Surely it is what is in your heart that is important, not where you offer your prayer. But standing in front of the Ka’abah, I realize that this place affects everyone’s heart, no matter who we are, where we come from, or how we came to Islam.
After the prayer, I meet Anisah at a pre-arranged point, where we set off to perform the third ritual of the Visit, the Sa’ey, or Run between the hills of Safa and Marwah. The Sa’ey is conducted in imitation of Hajra, Abraham’s wife. Hajra, left alone without food or drink with her infant son Ishmael in the wilderness of Mecca, ran frantically between these hills in search of water. Suddenly, the water of the Zamzam spring burst forth miraculously in front of them. The hills, located to the South and North of the Ka’abah respectively, are perhaps a little more than a half-kilometer away from each other. They are now connected by a long, air-conditioned corridor. We sit and rest and look at the endlessly changing yet timeless spectacle of pilgrims shuffling back and forth between these hills, completing seven circuits, before beginning ourselves.
Exhausted after a sleepless night on the plane and by the excitement of arriving, Anisah and I take our time, with frequent rests by the wayside. As we sit propped against a wall or on the rocks on the hills, people frequently approach us to start a conversation. As a mixed couple, a Czech-Australian and an Indonesian together, we attract more than the usual amount of attention. People are fascinated to know how and where we met, and how I became a Muslim. Even so, the questions are polite and respectful, not intrusive. More than once, people smile at Anisah and congratulate her on bringing a new Muslim into the fold. A Pakistani slaps me on the shoulder and points at Anisah and says in a faintly cockney accent: “She’s a good luck woman! I love you both!” It is hard to resist his enthusiasm, and delightful to have so many people bless our marriage and our relationship together.
We stagger towards the end of the seventh lap. After reaching the Marwah hill, it is time for the final ritual of the Visit, in which the pilgrim leaves the state of purity. According to some schools of jurisprudence, this involves completely shaving one’s head, at least for men, although others say that cutting a mere three hairs fulfills the legal requirement. For a moment, I am tempted to have my head shaved by one of the many barbers who have set up shop in the neighborhood, but Anisah insists, with a strength of feeling that surprises me, that this would be a grave aesthetic error. Instead, I borrow a pair of scissors from a group of Bosnians, pray briefly, lift up Anisah’s veil and snip off one of her many curls. She then cuts off a lock of my hair. We squeeze each other’s hands tightly, and stare into each other’s eyes. The ritual of the Visit is complete.
Exhausted beyond description but happy and excited, we struggle out through the gates of the Mosque and make our way back to our hotel to rest and recuperate at least until the midday prayer. With a chaste kiss on the cheek – it is still the daylight hours of Ramadan – we fall into separate beds and into a dreamless sleep. It has been an amazingly full five hours since we arrived.
After I returned from my journey to Mecca with Anisah in 2001 in Ramadhan, the Islamic fasting month, many of my non-Muslim friends and family were curious about my experiences. I sat down to write to explain the pilgrimage in a way that I thought my make it comprehensible to people who knew little about Islam. Later, I refined what I’d written for publication in Latitudes Magazine, in which the following article appeared in May 2002. I later again visited Mecca and Medina while serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the Garuda Inflight Magazine, in order to write another article about Garuda Indonesia’s haj and umroh operations.