In the Land of Invisible Women (17 page)

THE MILLION-MAN WHEEL

W
E 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

S
OON 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 had 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.

In time, I began to unpack a few essential items. I glanced up, meeting a hard stare. A woman, perhaps forty-five years of age, was watching me intently.

She was already settled in a spot just across from me. Her thin daughter cowered just behind her left shoulder, flinching from attention. The mother assessed my attire, revealed now that the abbayah lay crumpled on the ground. Across my chest, a snug Guess T-shirt gave away its American origins and my Calvin Klein trousers, secured at the waist with a shiny Italian belt, divided my legs, identifying me as an unmistakably Western woman.

She visibly grimaced. Physically, I offended her. I tried to ignore her disapproval, wondering if I had somehow made a faux pas of some kind. As I was reaching for an item deep in the back of my case, stretching my torso and arms bared by short sleeves, I looked up at her and smiled casually, trying to be friendly.

“Hi,” I said, rummaging around in the case.

“You say ‘Hi’ to me? Hi?” she snapped, immediately, as if primed for an angry response. Her English was precisely enunciated. Her face flashed. She was Saudi for sure, probably also Najdi and maybe even from Riyadh but obviously, by her English, she had studied overseas. “As a Muslim at Hajj greeting another Muslim, you say Hi!” she went on, practically spitting with fury.

I looked at her nonplussed. There was such latent energy in her rage.

“You say to me: ‘Salaam alaikum,’ as a proper Muslim deserves!” she hissed, exhaling in annoyance. By now, I had completely abandoned the search in my bag and was staring at this woman who, while absolutely correct, was surprisingly angry for one performing Hajj herself. I decided to hold my tongue, partly because that was my job as pilgrim, and partly because she was correct. I should have greeted her as a Muslim deserves. I met her flashing eyes with a cool stare and held it, feeling guilty even for this defiance, but she had infuriated me. Her mute teenage daughter remained behind her mother, voiceless, irrelevant.

Again it was time for food. Rashida and her crew of maids arrived, bearing trays of food for the tent. As they shyly offered the rice and lamb, the young ladies barely met my eyes. Some of them watched me askance, giggling with their scarf-endings held up over their mouths, muffling the offending sounds of laughter.

Rashida's bustling bonhomie diffused the tension that had spilled from the angry woman opposite me. Rashida didn't seem offended by my person even now that she could see my Western clothing. I was silently grateful to Rashida for her acceptance. I found myself more confident when she was in the room. I thanked her for the tray of food, “Shukran, Rashida.”

“Afwan, Qanta. Maalish.” (You're welcome, no problem.) She responded, revealing a perfect set of strong, white teeth framed in her huge booming laugh. Even though she was raised in Mecca, and veiled life-long, never traveled, and married at an early age, her spirit remained indomitable, confident, down-right brassy!

Touching nothing of the main meal, I peeled and ate an orange. My appetite was already waning; by week's end, it would be gone. The late lunch ended in time for Asr (late afternoon) prayer. Women began readying themselves for worship. It was time to make a trek to the bathroom facilities. Before I could step out, I had to put the abbayah back on again. Haneefa and Rashida waited for me patiently, until at last I was ready. I took my toiletries and a small towel with me in a plastic bag. Like a visor, Rashida pulled her veil back down over her face, peeped out of the canvas door, and signaled to us to follow. I stepped into the incredible heat of a Hijazi afternoon.

I began to sweat almost immediately, especially at the surprisingly brisk pace that Rashida was keeping. She moved swiftly, her veil inflating behind her like cape. Haneefa followed behind me, a thin bundle of nerves. We walked between rows and rows of tents, making several turns in sequence. I was utterly disoriented because at every turn the tented tarmac avenues repeated themselves endlessly in a kaleidoscopic confusion of symmetry.

Completing my ablutions quickly, I returned to my veiling. This time we positively rushed back to the tent in time for prayer. Rashida moved like a motorized mannequin. Boy could she move! I stumbled to keep up to the best of my ability and was already dying to get out of the hideous veil.

Flinging back the canvas door, we again entered Tent 50007. Most women were relaxing after prayer, some folding up their prayer mats having just finished. I went to my corner, removing my shoes and hurriedly oriented my prayer mat to Mecca based on the direction of the women praying around me. Disrobing my abbayah but keeping my head covered, I began the short afternoon prayer.

“Allah hu Akbar,” I began softly, speaking the words just under my breath. I bowed my head, folding my arms, and tried to block out the surrounding chatter, surprised that the pilgrims were not more respectful to the few of us who were still praying. They were chatting noisily.

I bent forward at the hip, immediately before descending into my first prostration. As I kneeled, the ground was hard and stony underneath the thin durries. It was distinctly uncomfortable. As I sat at the end of the first rakat, I prepared to rise to complete the second. I began to hear some clucking from behind me, the sound of pursed lips snapped in disapproval.

I frowned trying to concentrate, reminding myself that I stood in front of God while in prayer, yet even here in this holy land I was still so distracted. I descended again, flexing first at the hip, then standing, then descending into my second set of prostrations. As I held my forehead flat to the ground, my palms either side to my ears, supporting my weight as I kneeled in front of my Maker, I heard a rising chorus gain momentum.

“Haram! Haram!”

“Wa Allah, Haram! Haram!”

I was increasingly alarmed. In Islam, Haram indicates the most heinous, disallowed substances or behaviors for Muslims: alcohol, swine flesh, sinful actions like murder, blasphemy, or suicide, among many others. What could be going on behind me? It was a monumental effort to stop myself turning to see what was unfolding in the tent. Something atrocious must be happening to trigger such an outcry. I couldn't imagine what it was. I rushed through the rest of my prayers at breakneck speed. Then I remained seated this time gabbling the requisite one hundred chants, a combination of Allah hu Akbar (God is Great), Subhan'allah (all Grace belongs to God), and Alhumdullilah (all thanks be to God). Bowing my head as I marked off my chants with the creases of my fingers, I was breathless but I had to know what was going on. The sounds of “Haram” were coming from somewhere near me in the tent.

At last I finished. Before I could completely straighten myself, a Saudi woman came straight up to me. Her Holbein hat framed her fury. I shrank from her.

“Haram!” she said, touching my exposed ear, which was peeping out of my head scarf.

“Haram!” she repeated defiantly, her chin upturned, scanning the room for any who could have been unsure of my disgraceful ways. I colored with shame, though only the puce tips of my Haram ears could indicate it. I had deliberately pushed the headscarf behind my freshly washed ears immediately after entering the tent. The exposed ears allowed me to listen more clearly and formed a useful anchor for my slippery headscarf, which could stretch tightly behind my ears to keep the whole scarf secure during my various movements in prayer. Because I was surrounded by women, I was sure this was acceptable.