The Vegas of Worship
Getting through customs takes me three hours. The
Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has combed through
my backpack to make sure I am not carrying anything that could jeopardize the
nation's exacting moral sensibilities.
Ramzan has started. A million faithful have
already flocked to the holy city. Over the coming weeks, two million more will
follow. After a few hours of jet-lagged non-slumber, I wrap a white cloth
around my waist, throw another over my shoulders, and then climb into a bus.
The bus is filled with the stale breath of fasting
pilgrims. The women are wearing black. The men are in white, with one shoulder
uncovered. I bare one of mine. The bus zooms through the city and climbs onto
the highway, only to meet an unending herd of vehicles running all the way into
the horizon, reluctantly lulling forward. Desert heat swirls up from the
macadam. Lazy honking, gasoline fumes from idling vehicles, and calls to Allah-
both exasperated and expecting, fill the highway.
The bus arrives at Makkah in the minutes before
sunset. A religious and a construction fervor compete with each other in the
city. Steel skeletal jinns of construction and illuminated exquisite minars
rise up into the pink sky. The faithful have been hungry and thirsty since
dawn, and giddily chant their arrival. Slowly the vehicles crawl their way to
the masjid through steep streets and giant tunnels blown into the hills. Their
passengers have been dulled into a stupor from hunger, thirst and the slow,
swaying traffic.
Getting off the bus, I am suddenly caught in a
stream of a million pilgrims and jolted awake. I smell their sweat, taste their
glee, hear their several excited languages. The mass pulls me towards the
masjid. As soon as I catch sight of the masjid, the azan rings through the air.
The pilgrims quietly break their fasts with dried dates and water drawn from
the holy well near the Kaba.
I enter the cavernous masjid and start walking
towards the center. The air is humid with exhalations and chants.
Twenty-feet-chandeliers hang from a ceiling covered in intricate Thuluth
calligraphy. The sunset prayer starts and the pilgrims arrange themselves into
rows. I join the congregation. I bow, I prostrate, I chant. After the prayer
ends, I resume walking to the center, looking for a glimpse of the cube.
The straight rows of worshippers start slowly curling
up into unfamiliar circles. And abruptly I realize that the rows of
worshippers, required to face the cube, would naturally converge into
concentric circles the closer one gets to the cube. The air clears up, is no
longer stuffy. I feel a cool, dry breeze. I am in the open, and above me is the
nighttime desert sky. Pitch-black and spread with brilliant stars, more than I
remember ever seeing . I look past the worshippers. I catch sight of the
black cube. I am at the center of the Islamic world.
t�.I���ool, dry breeze. I am in the open, and above me is the nighttime desert sky. Pitch-black and spread with brilliant stars, more than I remember ever seeing . I look past the worshippers. I catch sight of the black cube. I am in the center of the Islamic world.
