If you’d ever wondered what Ancient Rome would’ve felt like, Mecca is the answer. Well, I mean ten years back before the appearance of smartphones and the phenomena of self-obsession. You can never find a spot on earth with nationalities from all over the world like Mecca.
As all men are wearing Ehram, the only thing that distinguish them apart is the cacophony of languages surrounding them. When we arrived to Mecca from Madina to perform Umrah, the place was jam packed although it was two o’clock in the morning. In that year, the number of people who’d performed Haj was four million. I guess that quarter of that number were present at the Kaaba that day. Our group had divided and we ended up following a family of three sisters, their old neighbour and her two sons. The eldest of the sisters insisted that we should do the Tawaf on the ground floor, right next to the Kaaba. Mom suggested that we do it on the third floor; it would take longer, but at least it won’t be as congested.
Of course, the woman won the argument and we ended up joining the throng of thousands of people going around the Kaaba. Being the shortest in my family, I ended up being sandwiched between my brother at the back and my mom at front. I’ve always been an agoraphobic and busy place caused me discomfort and dizziness. Once we started the Tawaf, I started feeling breathless and panicky. My brain started devising different impossible escape routes, while my eyes were glued at the doors of the mosque surrounding the Kaaba. If I could just squeeze out and run across to the doors, pushing off all hundreds of people blocking my way! It was mission impossible after all, so I decided to focus on prayers and finish off the seven rounds peacefully.
I realised then that all the prayers I had prepared beforehand (that rhymed and didn’t rhyme) had evaporated from my head. My brother was reading out loud from a prayer book he had in hand and mom was repeating after him. I decided to do the same, but nothing made sense at all as I could barely breath! That was when I heard someone shout out my name and turned my head to see my mom’s cousin walking close by! She shouted asking where my mom was and I pointed at front, but obviously she couldn’t see her. She passed by and vanished in the crowd. I decided to busy myself by focusing on my surrounding.
There were a group of Indonesians walking behind each other in a chain like formation. The women in that group were wearing a headband with a huge plastic flower sticking out like an antenna; a very innovative way to find each other if lost among the giant nations. We ended up alone as the group of Emarati women lagged behind after losing the two young men. We completed the Sa’ai between Al Safa and Al Marwa.
To mark the end of the Umrah rituals, we trimmed our hair while my brother shaved off his hair and looked exactly like Mahatma Gandhi. We prayed the morning prayers and went looking for our bus that was stuck in the tunnel along with other hundred vehicles. We reached home two hours later around six. We showered and slept. We still had a few days before starting Haj. We started getting ready for our travel to Mina
(to be continued...)
Rasha al Raisi is a certified skills trainer and the author of:
The World According to Bahja. rashabooks@yahoo.com
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