Experiencing the Hajj in Mecca

I've always been fascinated with the Islamic tradition of the Hajj, the mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca that all good Muslims must undertake at least once in their lives. I'm still enjoying "In the Land of Invisible Women" and Qanta Ahmed goes into great detail about this most cherished and closed event that turned her from a 'lite' Muslim to a much more devout one.

Her decision to make the trip to Mecca was greeted with delight by her fellow doctors and residents in the Saudi hospital where she works. It was the number of pilgrims that amazed me as I read her exhuberant report of the experience. Joining the march around the cube-shaped Kaaba, seven obligitory rotations, she joins a crowd of hundreds of thousands, swept into a joyous delirium of religious fervor. Here, we realize she is at the apex of Islam, no holier place on earth exists.

Entering the Grand mosque at Mecca called Al-Masjid al-Haram, that holds 750,000 pilgrims on three floors, she describes a sea of white clad bodies, all carefully veiled, no hair showing, segregated by sex. It's hard to imagine a building that holds a crowd seven times as big as most major football arenas, and it is this same torrent of humanity and absolute flood of people throughout the entire two-week experience.

A convoy of hundreds of thousands of buses take pilgrims to the Plains of Mount Arafat, where they will camp in air conditioned tents. One night she's called to help a sick women in a faraway tent; en route she realizes that there are hundreds of thousands more pilgrims who spend the night beneath trucks and on the roadsides. They can't afford to be in the tents, but endure the desert cold with no complaints.

Ahmed's description of her powerful transformation as a result of doing the Hajj left even an athiest like me impressed; jealous of the joy that being a true believer brought her.

A Strange Synchronized Saudi Kissing Geometry

Qanta Ahmed is a doctor who spent a few years practicing medicine in Saudi Arabia. When I heard about her book, entitled "In the Land of Invisible Women," I knew I wanted to read it. In fact I liked the title and the story so much we just published an excerpt of this book on GoNOMAD. The author, a proper British Muslim who has never experienced life behind the abbayah, tells stories of what life is like here in what some call the most repressive and backward 'modern' country on Earth.

Yet she describes wonderful moments when women can take off their black abbayas and have fun behind 20 foot high walls of private homes. Joyously smoking a hookah, dancing to evocative sexy Arab music, and discovering how beauty can be enriched when it's so elusive, Qanta loves this part of her new life.

In one hospital scene, she's waiting for a Saudi surgeon to look at one of her patients, who of course is fully veiled and covered even in a hospital bed. But before any patient care, elaborate greetings must be done. A gaggle of male doctors meets another, and it's time for kissing and lengthy hand holdings. "slowly, methodically, the men were kissing one another on each side of the face: each cheek, twice, thrice, four times, even more, as I lost count. At the same time they shook hands and embraced in endless combinations of two--a strange synchronized kissing geometry. Nothing could proceed until every Saudi scrub suit had greeted every other Saudi scrub suit. Of course, all women were excluded, the veiled phalanx stood wordlessly, as usual to one side"