Bismillah
Rahman aRahim
Preparations before I left Algeria
I can’t honestly say, with hand on heart,
that I made going on Hajj a priority in my life – it was something that I knew
I had to do, one day in the future when I was ready and had the money. By ‘ready’
I mean spoke Arabic fluently, had memorized large chunks of the Qur’an, had
worked on my Iman (faith), had learnt a load of duas (supplications), and had read a lot of Islamic
books. What I learnt is that Allah
decides when you’re ready, and it isn’t always when YOU think it will be. It became a little more urgent when I realized
that if my eldest child got married I would have nobody to mind my other
children while my husband and I were gone, at least not without inconveniencing
people and disrupting the children’s lives.
So 2 years ago I began to ask Allah to make it possible for us, but we
had left it all a bit too late to organize that year. Then a year ago I asked more earnestly and my
husband broke his knee so that was most definitely the end of that. So this year I prayed again and it was a case
of trying our best and seeing how far we could get. My husband went back to UK for Ramadan on the
invitation of the Islamic community to which we had belonged, and with the
intention of trying to apply to a Hajj agency there. At the time I was under the misconception that, as I am not an Algerian citizen it was not
possible for me to apply for a Hajj visa from here. He had sought out several avenues and all to
no avail. After Ramadan, just before he
returned home and when he had all but given up, a friend took him to a Somali
run agency in the East of London and he applied and paid a deposit. He had my passport with him, but took his own
back to Algiers just in case he might need it on the journey. So began the first of many hurdles along the
way and the many ways that Allah helped us over them mashaAllah – he needed to
get his passport back to UK within 10 days so I asked on Facebook and,
mashaAllah, received several replies, and my husband was able to meet up with a
friend’s brother-in-law who was returning to England and would bring it back
for us, whereas another friend of my husband would collect it and bring it to
the agency for us. I really can’t count
the number of people who, in so many ways, helped to make it possible for us to
go on Hajj – may Allah reward each and every one of them.
So the next really big obstacle was getting
our passports stamped with a Hajj visa from the Saudi embassy in London, in
time for us to get our passports back here, in order to travel to the UK. I knew that the embassy was notoriously slow
in delivering visas sometimes, and had heard stories where people only received
them a few days before traveling. So we
beseeched Allah in our prayers and, Subhanallah, we received news that the
agency had received our passports with the visa stamped, on a Wednesday about 2
½ weeks before the date of traveling, and a brother who was coming to Algeria
on the following Friday, collected them and brought them with him. So it looked as if, by the mercy of Allah, we
were, at last going on Hajj!!! It was
only then that we started to tell people, and I wrote to just about everyone I
could think of to ask them for their forgiveness for anything I might have said
or done to upset or hurt them, knowingly or unknowingly.
At this point I was really happy that I was
going, at last, to fulfill my last pillar of Islam, and to be a guest of Allah,
a thought that always got me emotional as it reminded me that I got to go
because Allah chose me, and not by anything I had done myself – a truly
humbling thought. But I had also, deep
inside, if truth be told, a slight dread – of the unknown. It is true that there are endless TV programmes
about Hajj especially coming up to Hajj time, countless articles and websites
online, not to mention books, some of which I had on my bookshelves but had
never looked at, and then there were the experiences of those I knew who had
already been, especially my husband and my eldest daughter. So the ‘unknown’ I mean, is that of how I
would be able to cope in such a totally different situation that was so
completely out of my ‘comfort zone’.
Hajj is performed only once a year….. amongst millions of people who are
all in the same place at the same time doing the same thing which can make for
a fairly uncomfortable time physically and mentally. But I was also worried about the spiritual
side of things – would I be able to concentrate on what I was doing and why I
was doing it, amongst a number of people, the amount of which my poor brain
couldn’t even comprehend? After all,
this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I really didn’t want to blow it,
especially as it had repercussions in the next life.
I read and re-read the books I had in my
possession and asked countless questions (some of them repeatedly!) of my
husband and daughter, trying to get the words like ‘Jamarat’ and ‘Muzdalifa’ to
trip off my tongue easily and familiarize myself with what they meant. There was so much to do in way of preparation
– figuring out what to pack for 2 climates, UK in November and Saudi, what I needed to have
and what was allowed, under the restrictions of Hajj, in my hotel room and then
in Mina, and after that on Arafat and Muzdalifa. Trying to get the house in order and put
everything in its place so that the children would be able to find anything they
needed. Shopping for food and other
essential items, especially buying a large quantity of heavy non-perishable
goods, and filling up the freezer. Getting the required vaccines. Shopping for material for two hijabs and
jilbab tops in the lightest material I could find and having them made up. Not to mention reading up on Hajj, figuring
out which duas to learn and learning them, asking as many people as possible
about their experiences, writing to everyone and paying a farewell visit to my
husband’s family.
A few days in England before traveling
to Saudi Arabia
Finally on Tuesday, 2 November 2010 we left
the security and comfort of our home and the company of our children for the
first leg of our journey to Allah’s House, the Kaaba, in Mecca. I had been dreading leaving the children, but
again, Allah smoothed the way for me – it was 7.00 am and the children were off
school due to a holiday, and were bleary-eyed and almost eager for us to go so
they could go back to bed!!!! We had
left them to their own devices before for 2 weeks and this made it so much
easier all round this time. Except for
my little 9 year old, whose sadness even cuddles couldn’t dissipate. I forgot my overcoat and when I came rushing
back to get it I was greeted with ‘aren’t you gone YET!!!!?’ from my
ever-loving daughters, and so I left with a lot of laughter ringing in my ears! I don’t know if I could have left them alone
if we were still living in England. In
Algeria I had the support of all the neighbours, my husband’s family and my
very good friends, all whom I knew would be there for my children in a flash if
necessary and this really put my mind at rest and stopped me from worrying
about them… at least not too much anyway!
I would have preferred not to go to the UK until just the day
before we traveled to Saudi so that I would be away from the kids as little
time as possible, but the agency said we had to travel at least 3 days
beforehand. This turned out to be
another blessing from Allah as it gave me the opportunity to repack our bags
for Saudi, buy things such as non-perfumed toiletries etc., finish a couple of
the shorter booklets I had on Hajj, and I also got to see two other good
friends who made up part of my Muslim family in London. My husband stayed with
his niece and I stayed with a very good friend, S, who gave me one of the most
invaluable pieces of advice based on her own Hajj journey – ask Allah to give
you really good sisters with whom to share your room because you will spend a
lot of time with them, and it will become really important that you get on with
them inshallah.
Travelling to Jeddah
We were told to be at the airport at 3.00 pm
on Saturday 6th November, for our flight at 8.40 pm but we decided
not to leave my husband’s niece’s home until 2.30 pm which was just as well as
the Etihad airline desk, with whom we were traveling, didn’t open until
4.30 pm! When we finally got the gate
number at which to wait, I made sure that I smiled at any sister that caught my
eye – after all I didn’t know with which of these sisters I was going to be
spending the best part of the next 3 weeks!
There was a mix-up during the booking in and we ended up on seats
together but with an aisle between us! As
we got on the plane my husband spoke with the air stewardess about our seating
problem. She asked him if he spoke
Arabic and, when he said he did she then explained that he could ask the
stewardess near his seat number to see if she could change our seating, but
that she, herself, would come by and ensure that the problem had been solved
inshallah. She turned out to be Algerian
– I swear my husband could go up a mountain in Siberia and meet an
Algerian!!! The stewardess did change
our seat for us and we ended up sitting together alhamdulilah. Later the Algerian stewardess (who turned out
to be the head of the cabin crew) came around to make sure we got our seats and
then later again with 2 colouring sets for our children. It just goes to show
that when you are Algerian you do manage to have friends in ‘high’ places! The flight was about 7 hours long and was
very comfortable – we were given snacks, a main meal and breakfast along with a
pillow, blanket and earphones with which to watch a choice of the latest
movies, TV programmes or documentaries.
We then had a stop-over in Abu Dhabi for
about 5 hours and we waited in the large waiting lounge, prayed in the small
prayer room and checked our emails on the free internet screens provided. My husband and all the rest of the men
changed into their white Ihram robes in preparation for Umrah. A word of warning here – it’s best for the
men to change into the bottom half and leave a t-shirt on with it until the
cabin announcement is given that you are approaching the meeqat – one of the
places around Mecca designated for getting into Ihram. I say this because it is difficult to eat a
meal in a confined space such as an airplane seat with the top of your Ihram
flapping around! AND red tomato sauce is
difficult to get out of an Ihram in the confines of an airplane bathroom! Take it from me… or rather my husband! I can’t say that I really enjoyed this part
of the journey which was relatively short at only 3 hours, even though we were
given a delicious meal and the same choice of entertainment. By this time we had been traveling all night,
I was tired and my feet were still swollen from the previous flight, all of
which was not very conducive to feeling very adventurous or excited about
whatever lay ahead, especially as I had been warned that there was a lot of
hanging about in Jeddah airport before you were able to leave to go on to Mecca.
Here I would like to make a quick mention of time changes and how many we had –
when we flew to London, the UK had just gone back to GMT and was one hour
behind Algeria, and just as I was getting used to that time change we arrived
in Abu Dhabi, to find them 4 hours ahead of UK. I had no sooner got that fact
into my exhausted and drained brain when we arrived in Jeddah to find them 1
hour behind Abu Dhabi, 3 hours ahead of UK and 2 hours ahead of Algeria!! Are
you still with me…because… I’m not! I
was feeling decidedly very nervous about the unknown ahead and whether I would
‘do’ Hajj properly and not make a total hash of it! We started chanting ‘Labaik
Allahuma Labaik’ which nearly had me in floods of tears – the meaning is so
significant – Ibrahim (AS) only made one call to prayer all those years ago
when he rebuilt the Kaaba with his son Ismail (AS) – ‘O, Servants of
Allah! Come to the House of Allah. Come from every corner of earth, either on
foot or by transport.’ And in
response all those centuries and millions of pilgrims later, was little old me
chanting ‘Here, I am, O Allah! Here I am at Your service!......’ And again, I was reminded so forcefully of
how I was here, not by any of my own doing, but by invitation of Allah – I was
His guest. Mind blowing! No wonder I was an emotional and physical
wreck by the time we arrived in Jeddah airport!
And again, Allah came to the rescue.
I felt emotional again on the bus from the airplane to the terminal when
I heard all the pilgrims chanting, and could see bus load after bus load doing
the same. But I had got a grip of myself
by the time I got to the Hajj terminal, and I ended up sitting separated from our
group with a group of complete strangers. While my husband ran around sorting out
paperwork, I sat there calmly reading one of my Hajj books which I hadn’t
finished, when I saw an official in a medical uniform coming around to check up
on our vaccine information. I showed him
my small yellow book with the vaccines clearly stated and dated from
the Algerian clinic, and have to admit to feeling a teensy weensy bit smug when
he just handed it back to me and went on to the next person: Most people only
seemed to have pieces of paper to which he looked quizzically and he handed out
medication to quite a lot of people.
Obviously the Algerian clinic knew what it was doing!!! I was dragged out of my comfortable smugness
by my husband calling me urgently to go join the rest of our group who were
going through the passport control.
It wasn’t that bad going through passport
control – I’m sure they must have recruited the policemen from kindergarten
they looked so young. Depressing really
when you realize you are old enough to have a policeman as a son! The men had their pictures and fingerprints
taken at the passport control desk and it was all done in a very calm and
friendly manner alhamdulilah.
I then decided to venture into the world of
Saudi Public Toilets – not bad actually as it happens. They were all Arab style, but coming from
Algeria was good preparation for that. I
really recommend that you ‘train’ yourself to use one – there are European ones
in most places but usually about 2 to about 10 of the others and the queues are
very long. Many is the time I walked
past the queue and went into the Arab-style type which had nobody waiting outside. It’s not as difficult as it looks, and in my
opinion is a lot healthier than using the European type one – at least
everything is underneath your feet and you don’t have to twist yourself into a
knot trying to avoid touching any part of it.
The main thing was that they were clean and there was somewhere to hang
up your bag and any piece of clothing you might care to remove, in my case, it
was my jilbab top. Some toilets may not
have hooks but you can usually hang your clothing over the door and your bag on
the door latch, and I was so impressed with the toilets near the Haram in
Madina – they had a little alcove within the cubicle with 2 hooks to hang
whatever you wanted on it! On the other
hand the worst one was at a service stop on the road from Madina to
Jeddah. The toilet itself was clean, but
there was absolutely nowhere to hang anything – not a hook, a screw or a knob,
and the door lentil was too high and didn’t look too clean! I did manage with some creative thinking with
my jilbab top on and my bag around my neck!
But it wasn’t only me who remarked on how difficult it was – the friend
I traveled with had the same problem!
Anyway….. back to the toilet in Jeddah
airport: I did wudu and then an Arab
lady next to me corrected me - I normally wet my hands and wipe over my head,
my ears AND my feet in one go – she told me to stop after I had done my ears,
wet my hands and THEN wipe over my feet, which I obligingly did and thanked her
with a ‘Barakallahufiki’ (with a mental note to check up on it at some future
point, which I did and found that the way I had been doing it was correct). I cannot remember if this ‘conversation’ was
in Arabic (of which mine is not great, but I can manage to communicate if it’s
in Fousha and on a topic I’m familiar with), English or ‘Gesture-ish’ the last
of which I became really very fluent in, because it was the first of quite a
few ‘conversations’ with sisters with whom I had no common language!
We retrieved our baggage and then went
through a tent within the airport itself, with a desk running along either
side, and it seems that this is where your passports are taken from you and you
are assigned your ‘mutawaf’. Saudi
Arabia doesn’t like people to overstay their welcome and have measures in place
to ensure this, during Hajj time. Each
group is assigned a Saudi official who takes control of your passports but is
also available for any problems, such as getting lost. Not long after you arrive in Jeddah you are
given a wrist band with the name and phone number of your mutawaf, and if you
get lost you can go to any policeman, show him your band and he should be able
to contact the mutawaf on your behalf.
Your passport is returned to you just before you leave the country.
The first thing my husband did as soon as
were through all the official paperwork, was to buy a sim card for each of our
phones and then we swapped phone numbers.
This ability to keep in contact by phone became invaluable every time we
were separated – while staying in the hotel, going into a mosque, praying in
the Haram, or while we were in the tents in Mina and on Arafat. It also meant
that I was able to keep in contact with my children on a daily basis which was
a real comfort to me. There are two main companies – Mobily and Zain and we
went with Mobily and were given a string-pull bag containing an umbrella –
presumably for the sun! The bags were
very useful as they became our ‘shoe-bags’ and were light enough to be folded
up and carried in my handbag when not in use.
When they contained my shoes they also made a very useful ‘sutra’.
And then we waited… and we waited… and we
waited… and we dozed….. and waited.
Nobody knew for sure why, but we guessed it must have been for our bus
to Mecca which finally arrived at 10.30 pm (bearing in mind we had arrived at
the airport 03.35 pm local time). A large
part of the delay was because one of the senior women in our group who was
partially blind and deaf and had traveled without a maharam, had lost her bag
with all her money in it. So there was a
lot of going back and forth on that issue.
We then had to wait another half hour or so while they loaded our
baggage on top of the bus. Please be
careful when you pack any breakables – make sure they’re well cushioned in the
centre of the bag, because I saw them load another bus and bags fell on the ground….
from the top of the bus while they were loading them on.
And then we were on the road to Mecca! The journey which normally takes only 45 minutes
to an hour took 3 ½ hours. Apart from
normal traffic there were all the other buses carrying pilgrims and there were
police checkpoints on the road – I think they were there to facilitate the
progress of the pilgrims. Then we came
to a Pilgrim’s Welcome Centre where we were given a gift box of snacks – a
small bottle of water, a carton of juice, packets of cheese biscuits, custard
creams and another type of date biscuit, while the group organizer carried out
more paperwork. Then we were on the road
again and stopped yet again at yet another Pilgrim’s Welcome Centre. After this I fell asleep and woke up as we
reached our hotel.
Mecca – the week before Hajj
 |
| Our apartment the top window on the left |
It was now 2.30am; 5.30am English time and
we were all totally drained. I was the
only European in the mostly Somali group, and knowing that men and women would
be housed separately, my husband asked the organizer if I could be roomed with
an English speaking sister. He assured
him and pointed to one sister who seemed friendly enough but she had spent the
whole journey with much older Somali sisters, so I had my doubts. Again, Allah answered my duas. The building was separated into 4 floors with
2 apartments on each floor. My husband was on the 1st floor and I was on the 2nd. As we entered the apartment most of the women
went into the first bedroom on the left so I went on to the second bedroom
along with a Somali sister, H, about my own age and a younger Somali sister, D,
who turned out to be mother and daughter and a Pakistani sister, T. There were 5 beds so there was one to
spare. There were at least 6 sisters in
the first bedroom and immediately across a hall from our bedrooms were 2 more
bedrooms which housed at least 8, maybe 10 more sisters, mostly Nigerian, but
some Pakistani and 1 Emirate sister. And
all of us had to share 2 bathrooms! The
rooms were clean and carpeted and had AC alhamdulilah.
The bathrooms were also very clean and were big enough to be like wash rooms. Only one of them had an English toilet and that was the one on the other side of the apartment, the first one being right beside our bedroom. So needless to say the other one became the most popular, which suited me fine! The hall space between the two sides contained a fridge and a table with a microwave and a kettle – the last two came from UK as they had English plugs on them. Don’t forget to bring an adaptor with you for your mobile chargers, unless you bring one from Algeria which has the same two pin sockets as Saudi. Of course if, like me, you are going via UK then you need to account for both!
The bathrooms were also very clean and were big enough to be like wash rooms. Only one of them had an English toilet and that was the one on the other side of the apartment, the first one being right beside our bedroom. So needless to say the other one became the most popular, which suited me fine! The hall space between the two sides contained a fridge and a table with a microwave and a kettle – the last two came from UK as they had English plugs on them. Don’t forget to bring an adaptor with you for your mobile chargers, unless you bring one from Algeria which has the same two pin sockets as Saudi. Of course if, like me, you are going via UK then you need to account for both!
 |
| View from our apartment window (the 'mesh' effect wasn't on the window itself) |
Umrah – the first one
So with yet another big hurdle over and
sorted out by Allah -my roommates- we sat on our beds at 3.00am and tried to do
justice to the Kentucky Fried Chicken-like takeaway of chicken and chips that
was provided – the only food that was provided by the agency as it turns out. I hardly ate any, as I was just too drained
and also because I knew that the night wasn’t over yet – we still hadn’t done
Umrah and so, my husband and 2 Algerian brothers and I went out into the early
hours of the morning to find our way to the Haram. Our hotel was a good half hour walk from it,
so we flagged down a taxi, easily done at any time of the day or night during
Hajj time. Normally the price of a 5 min
drive in Mecca would be 2 riyals, but it cost us 10 and that, we realized, was
the norm during Hajj time……sometimes. We made our way to the Haram and into the
mosque itself. I always thought that I
would get very emotional when I saw the Kaaba itself up close for the first
time, but I have to be honest I felt nothing except the urge to do Umrah and go
back to the hotel and collapse! Please
bear in mind that at this stage I had been traveling for 40 hours with little
or no sleep and, towards the end, very little in the way of food, and with swollen legs and
feet! Much to our immense
disappointment, the police wouldn’t let us do tawaf around the Kaaba, maybe
because of the crowd, or maybe because it was close to Fajr prayer, so we split
up with me going to sit in the women’s section and I spent the next hour and a
quarter trying my best to keep awake while I alternated dihkr with nawafil
prayers. I could have just lain down on
the floor which was spotless, and fallen asleep until Fajr, but then I would
have had to go find the toilets, queue to do wudu and probably lose my place in
the increasingly crowded mosque, AND miss the prayer. A few minutes after Fajr prayer, there was an
announcement for the funeral prayer – something I became familiar with as there
wasn’t one prayer, either in the Haram in Mecca or the one in Madina, where
there wasn’t a funeral prayer immediately after it. A constant reminder to us of the transitory
nature of this life, and of the number of people present. In Madina there was
one funeral prayer for children. Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) said : " Who ever attends the
Janazah until it is finished, will earn a Qirat, and who ever stays until the
burial, will earn two Qirats. Someone asked: What does Qirat mean ? , the
Prophet answered :‘It means rewards as big as a great mountain" (
Bukhari & Muslim ).Considering the reward for
praying the funeral prayer, it shocked me how many people ignored it in favour
of performing nawafil prayers and I heard a camera clicking away during one of
them! It really was a reminder to me to try to educate myself as much as
possible in my deen so that I didn’t miss out, through ignorance, on the many
blessings there are to be had in Islam!
After the funeral prayer we were finally
able to make our way down the steps and around the Kaaba to where the black
stone could be seen over the many heads of pilgrims, and start our Tawaf. We made the mistake of going into the middle
of the crowd instead of staying toward the outer circle and I have to be honest
it was quite frightening at times. There
were people who were very determined to go across the circling crowd to touch
the Kaaba and the black stone, and often, they would form a chain of people,
one behind the other and act as a ramming rod through the crowd pushing anyone
in their way. Then you had those who had
managed, with great difficulty to touch it, coming back out of it, sometimes
looking quite traumatized, doing the same kind of ramming action to leave the
crowd. I couldn’t help but remember the
saying of the Caliph and Companion of the Prophet (SAWS), Umar (RA) when he
came to the Kaaba and kissed the Black Stone: ”I know you are merely a
stone. You cannot do harm or
benefit. If I had not seen the Prophet
kissing you, I would have never kissed you.” (Bukhari and Muslim). Kissing the stone or touching the Kaaba is not
a requisite for Hajj – it is sufficient to point towards the Black Stone at the
beginning of each round of the Tawaf.
The Haram, both in Mecca and Madina is so-called because it is haram to
hurt anything or anyone in the proximity of it, and especially in Hajj. I just couldn’t understand how people could
risk invalidating their Hajj by endangering others, especially the elderly and
the weak, to do something that was not even necessary.
Then there were the groups – this is where
a group from one nationality or another would form a square where the men were
on the outside and the women on the inside, and the men would put their hands
on the shoulders of the men in front or otherwise link together and move
through the crowd without mercy for anyone who stood in their way. Sometimes you were pushed up against this
group and they would get all protective of their women and I just wished I
could ask them “And what do you think I am – chopped liver???” Many people stopped dead at the Yemeni Corner
and also at the Black Stone and faced the Kaaba to make dua, which also caused
a lot of congestion problems. And THEN there were those who stopped dead in the
middle of the packed Tawaf, behind the Makam Ibrahim to pray the 2 rakats after
the completion of Tawaf, which can actually be prayed anywhere in the mosque. There were also those who pushed and shoved
to get at the glass structure, and my husband couldn’t stop himself laughing
when he saw one man rubbing his back up and down against the structure! And, as if all that wasn’t enough, just
before sunrise there was a prayer for the rain, and many doing Tawaf stopped
altogether to pray it so we couldn’t move until it was finished. Talking about trial by fire!!!! Funny how you
don’t see any of this kind of behaviour when you watch the seemingly serene
crowd circumambulating the Kaaba on the TV! I remember saying to Allah “I
wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t to please you, and because it was something I
had to do for You.” I hadn’t learnt all
the duas (there are only two really – the one said between the Yemeni Corner
and the Black Stone, and the one said on Safa and Marwa after each sa’ee) and
my husband would say them for me, but, to be honest, I think I would have
difficulty trying to recite them anyway.
So I stuck with the one that Allah loves best anyway – “None has the
right to be worshipped except Allah alone, without partner, to Him alone belongs
all sovereignty and praise and He is, over all things, Omnipotent.” To be
honest, Allah has made Hajj so easy that you can say any dua you like, in
whatever language that’s easiest for you, and, inshallah it will be
accepted. The most important thing is
sincerity and that it comes from your heart.
Then we made our way out of the scrum,
sorry, the crowd and went off to pray our two rakats behind Makam Ibrahim. With so many men and women milling around it
was impossible to find a space where you weren’t in someone’s way or where you
wouldn’t be trodden on. I found a space
beyond a barrier and prayed my two rakats while my husband ‘stood guard’ behind
me. To give you some idea of the state
of my brain at that moment – I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember any but
the first line of Surah Kafirun – a Surah I have said at least twice a day for most of the last 18 years and which I know as well as my own name! Then as my
husband was going to pray, one of the security women shooed me away back behind
the barrier, so instead I sat on the top step of a flight of steps to act as a
sutra for my husband, avoiding the glare of a policeman who wanted me to move.
After this we went to drink some Zam Zam water.
I had always been under the impression that you had to go down the steps
underground to do this, but there are many areas within the mosque itself where
there are taps and plastic cups to drink the water from, including near the
steps up from the Kaaba, along the walkways between Safa and Marwa and up on
the terraces. We went to the nearest
one, poured some over our heads and faces and drank some and said dua –
mashallah it was so lovely and cold and refreshing.
We then went to Safa to start our Sa’y –
the going back and forth between Safa and Marwa. When you reach each mount you turn towards
the Kaaba and say a dua – I just had to say ‘Ameen’ to my husband on this one. After Tawaf, Sa’y was really nice – calmly
walking back and forth on cool tiled floors with plenty of space, and a stop
now and again to drink some Zam Zam water to refresh ourselves. But by the time we had finished we were well
and truly ‘done-in’ and went to get our shoes to go home. This is the first and last time we left our
shoes at the door of the mosque. My
husband’s sandals and my plimsolls were there but the sandals belonging to the
other two brothers had disappeared, forcing them to take a pair of discarded
ones to return once they had bought another pair. We took a taxi home, had a shower and
collapsed into bed, with me totally forgetting to cut a little of my hair to
complete my Umrah – something I only remembered later in the day when I saw the
scissors in my toilet bag! When I read my books on the subject of women cutting
off their hair after Umrah and Hajj it said a ‘finger’s length’ and I
frantically looked at my fingers trying to figure out which of my fingers was
the smallest, as it seemed like an awful lot of hair to cut! Alhamdulilah I finally discovered that it
should have been a ‘finger’s width’ – a whole lot of difference! Especially
considering that I ended up performing 2 Umrahs and 1 Hajj – I would have lost
a lot of hair!
Looking back on hindsight of course it
would have been better if, instead of performing Umrah on arrival, we had gone
to sleep and done it later in the day, which would have meant after Isha that
night as it’s too hot during the middle part of the day and too crowded during
the early evening, especially considering that being in Ihram is not a
difficult thing to do, and makes little or no difference to women in terms of
dress etc. I hadn’t coped with it as
well as I could have, and I had some regrets that lingered long after the
event. However what I didn’t realize, at the time, was how this Umrah made my
Hajj a better one – I was so determined NOT to feel like this after my Hajj,
and, to that end, I tried my best to concentrate on each ritual and the meaning
behind it, even if it meant postponing the ritual to a quieter time, (again,
something Allah allows you to do in many cases in order to make the Hajj easier
for you mashallah!) so that I could give each one my best effort.
We usually prayed Duhr and Asr prayers in
the mosque nearest to the hotel – Masjid Malik Ibn Abdel Azziz, a really lovely
mosque located bang in the middle of a very busy intersection. Most of the pilgrims in the area where our
hotel was located were from Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Iran and Turkey with some
Indonesian and Malaysian, and the mosque was always quite full for each prayer
mashallah. But it did surprise me to see
that the sisters would fill up the mosque from front to back starting at the
entrance, rather than along the front row and then the second and so on. As the entrance was straight into the second
last row, it made getting into the mosque a little awkward and impossible to do
without walking in front of sisters who were praying. But it also ensured that I could almost
always find a place in the front or second row in which to pray which meant it
was less likely for someone to walk in front of me when I was praying. Most people just walk in front of others when
they are praying without a care. Sometimes
it is unavoidable but I can’t count the number of times that someone walked
between me and my sutra, even when there was plenty of space to walk around
me. I tried, as much as I could to always pray
with an obvious sutra in front of me, and whenever I entered a mosque I would
always go up to the front, as much as possible.
But there were times when people just whisked away my khusoo with their
obvious rudeness and ignorance! Abu Juhaim reported, "Allah's Apostle
said, 'If the person who passes in front of another person in prayer knew the
magnitude of his sin he would prefer to wait for 40 (days, months or years)
rather than to pass in front of him." Abu An-Nadr said, "I do not
remember exactly whether he said 40 days, months or years." (Bukhari, book
9, No 489). The Imam in this mosque often gave a little lesson after the
prayer which was probably lost on most of the pilgrims as so many of them
didn’t speak Arabic.
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| Masjid Malik Ibn Abdel Azziz |
We usually had something to eat locally and
went back to the hotel between the prayers.
There were some small supermarkets near the hotel where you could buy
anything you needed – toiletries, food, paper cups etc and fruit. I found some of the same labels as in UK and
Algeria. There were fast food outlets
selling chicken in various forms, but we also found a lovely restaurant around
the corner selling rice and kebabs. My
husband asked the owner where he was from and he replied that he didn’t think
my husband would like him if he told him.
When pressed he said he was Egyptian to which my husband asked why would
he have a problem with him, weren’t they all Muslim! After that we always received a warm welcome
from him and his staff and the food was delicious. Sometimes on the road to the Haram and near
the hotel men with cars would park and distribute plastic sealed cups of cool
water to pilgrims with the aid of their children – these were the people who
wanted to gain the blessings from Allah for treating His Guests with care, and
this water was always so gratefully received in the heat mashallah. Once we were given a bottle of laban and a
chocolate milk drink – so appropriate for an Algerian and an Irish chocoholic!
After Asr prayer we made our way to the
Haram where we took the escalators up to the top terrace where there was plenty
of room. At the front of the terrace, immediately in front of the Kaaba there
were rows upon rows of men. At the back
wall of the terrace there were rows and rows of women, and in the space in
between, couples and families sat together.
We sat together and waited as dusk fell which was a beautiful sight to
behold in the Arab sky mashallah, and then I got up to go and pray alongside
the women. I had heard some horror
stories about praying in front of men, but found that, apart from the risk of
it happening when praying the two rakats after Tawaf, I could totally avoid it.
One of the first times that I prayed on the terrace the sister next to me
shared her prayer mat with me and when we prayed we did so foot to foot –
unfortunately a rare thing while I was on Hajj.
Most of the time the shaitaan could have danced a jig in the space
between me and the sister on either side of me, no matter how close I tried to
move to them both in the local mosque and in the Haram, and there were times when
I felt like I was doing the splits. I
discovered through the sister’s excellent English that she was from
Jordan. Another time I sat next to a
sister I thought might have been from Yemen.
My husband brought me a bottle of cool Zam Zam water and when I poured
out a cup I offered her some, which she took and diluted some juice with it
(with me thinking ‘what a waste!’). She
was with a few other sisters some of whom sat in front of me. At one stage one of them sat facing me and
asked me in Arabic what my country was – I said ‘London’ and immediately got a
chorus of surprised “mashallah”s not only from her but from sisters sitting on either
side of me. I came to realize that,
although we reverts think that we, as a group, are very numerous, and we ARE fairly
big in number, we are just a teensy weensy minority of the huge world-wide
population of Muslims across the globe – and there’s nowhere better than Hajj
to illustrate that.
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| Making our way to the Haram, Mecca |
Our second Umrah
We had been toying with the idea of doing
another Umrah before Hajj. My husband
knew that there was no Umrah after Hajj (although The Prophet (SAWS) did give
permission to Aisha (RA) to do so, but only because she was so disappointed
about not being able to perform Hajj), and we were trying to figure out which
day and time would be best. On the
Wednesday, 2 days after we arrived, my husband told me that he and the Algerian
brothers had decided to perform Umrah later that night. I was really happy at the thought of doing
another Umrah and getting the chance to do it without it feeling more like an
endurance test, but I was still drained from the journey and also rather
apprehensive after my first Tawaf experience. In addition both my husband and I
were feeling a bit headachy from the cold we had picked up. I prayed for guidance and for courage and
strength, and I knew that I had to do it with the others or it would be a huge
regret for me for the rest of my life.
That day we went into the Haram after Dhuhr prayer and came back after
Asr prayer to rest, praying the other prayers in the local masjid.
We left the hotel at 11.45pm (we had
planned to leave earlier but my husband’s Ihram was at the dry-cleaners around
the corner and they hadn’t finished cleaning it. In fact it was still damp when he picked it up!),
and I thought that we would have great difficulty getting a taxi at that hour
as we were going in the opposite direction to the Haram to leave Mecca in order
to get into a state of Ihram, and I knew that was the time when all the
pilgrims were leaving the Haram and the taxis would be fully occupied. Also
there were 3 brothers along with my husband and I honestly didn’t think we had
a hope of getting a taxi big enough for all of us. But,
Subhanallah, Allah made it so easy for us alhamdulilah. A taxi big enough stopped not long after we
came out on the road, and he agreed to bring us to the outskirts of Mecca, wait
while the men had a quick shower, and then take us back to the Haram in the
opposite direction, all for 14 Riyals each, all he asked was that we remember
him in our duas! We drove to Aisha’s
Mosque in Tan’eem only 5 minutes away so called because it was where she (RA)
had gone, along with her brother, Abdurahman ibn Abu Bakr (RA), to get into
Ihram to perform Umrah. Just before you
get to the mosque is a sign saying “Haram ends here” – a reminder that wherever
we were in Mecca, be it in the hotel room or the local mosque or in the Haram
itself, we were in the boundaries of the Haram and our prayers and duas would
be accepted as such – what a blessing!
The mosque itself is not that big and was lit up outside with a soft
green light, and it wasn’t that busy that night. The men had already had a wash at the hotel
but wanted to do the ritual wash quickly in the showers provided in the mosque,
so I went and prayed inside – such a peaceful feeling mashallah. I think it really set me up for the rest of
that wonderful night mashallah.
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| Aisha’s Mosque in Tan’eem |
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| Inside the Haram in Mecca (before I promised not to take any photos!) |
Even though I had thought of Haajar (RA)
during the Sa’ee the first time I did Umrah, I was in a much more relaxed frame
of mind to concentrate on her contribution to the whole experience of Hajj this
time round. I had been in Mecca long
enough now to see that the town is in a valley surrounded by rocky mountains,
the kind that are totally devoid of any kind of vegetation, and even the valley
itself is quite harsh in terms of soil.
You could easily forget it with all the buildings that surround you but
all you have to do is to look a little beyond them and you can see the rocky
landscape. I was quite surprised to see
that once outside the Haram the town could be quite shabby in places, not what
you expect after the glorious splendour of the Haram. In fact just opposite the gates of the Haram
is a rocky hill dotted with old, small buildings, in sharp contrast to the
magnificent buildings cropping up around the Haram. Quite often I was reminded of Algiers, which
surprised me, but the view down some of the side streets reminded me of streets
in Algiers, and in fact, the general overall feel of the area where our hotel
was located reminded me of Algeria – comfortable but a little rough and ready! So, having seen the landscape where Haajar
found herself left alone with her baby son, Ismail, with very little to eat or
drink, I was so in awe of her faith when, after asking Ibrahim (AS) several
times where he was going as he walked away and left her and his little son alone, she asked him if Allah had commanded him to do it,
and when he answered yes, she stopped asking him and quietly accepted her
fate. But, being a mother naturally
concerned for her son’s welfare she frantically ran from Safa to Marwa in
search of food, water or other human beings, and how many of us down through
the years have made that same journey in her memory. It’s strange how non Muslims consider Islam
as being so anti women, and how much one of the pillars of Islam, Hajj, was so
influenced by one woman in particular. I
was very conscious of her while I was making that same journey and how I
yearned for just a little of the strength of her Iman mashallah.
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| The view opposite the gates of the Haram, Mecca |
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| The road between our apartment and the Haram, Mecca |
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| One of the side roads near our apartment |
To be honest some pilgrims acted badly not
out of arrogance or rudeness but out of fear.
When you see some of them, and not just old people either, trying to
negotiate the escalators and obviously absolutely petrified of getting on and
off them, you realize how terrifying it must be for them to be in such strange
surroundings and with so many people from such totally different
backgrounds. There were people there who
came from poorer, less well developed countries, and probably from the
countryside or desert, who hadn’t had much contact with the outside world, and
for whom the whole experience must have been really difficult. And often people can act aggressive when they
feel threatened, as I was to find out for myself later on! Some people clung on to each other for fear
of losing each other, but I must admit it was rather nice to see so many people
walking around hand in hand looking very relaxed mashallah, and not just young
people either, but quite a lot of older couples too! And it wasn’t always necessarily within the
boundaries of the mosque, but most couples walked hand in hand all the time
whether there were crowds or not.
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| Looking towards Mina |
The days of Hajj - 8 Dhul Hijja,
Sunday, 14 November 2010, Mina
On the 7th of Dhul Hijja we had
been in Mecca for 5 days, and we decided to take it easy for the day in
preparation for the 1st day of Hajj, and the early start for Mina
the next morning. It was difficult to
get any sleep that night with the sisters coming and going and trying to get
their stuff together, having showers in preparation for getting into Ihram
etc. One Somali sister I had not seen
before joined us in the room and took the free bed. After some fitful dozing on
my part, we finally made our way down to the waiting bus at 2.00am. We had been told that the women would be
going to the tents first and then the bus would return for the men. I was feeling really nervous and very edgy at
this stage – the days of Hajj had finally arrived. All the previous days had been a build up for
this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform my last pillar of Islam and have
all my sins forgiven. The early hours of
the morning and lack of sleep were not conducive to my emotional well-being and
I was feeling uncomfortable about going to Mina (and the unknown) without the
support of my husband at my side. When I
got on the bus I saw that there were, in fact, some men on there and I turned
to my husband and asked him to hurry and have a wash, get into Ihram and come
with me. The poor man had only woken up
from his sleep in order to see me off on the bus. With all the going back and forth of people
getting on and then getting off again, I saw my husband still wasn’t in Ihram
and I panicked and begged him to go and get ready and come with me. A few days
later D remarked that she couldn’t believe it was me shouting at my husband!
Not my proudest moment I must admit! But
the experience gave me an insight as to why some pilgrims behaved badly out of
fear and helped me to be more patient and understanding of them. Meanwhile any men sitting on the bus were
told to get up and let the sisters sit down and I could see that the bus was
filling up with women. The men were
allowed to stand, but it was a difficult journey for them, as the driver didn’t
know his way to Mina and we had to keep stopping to ask for directions, then when
we reached Mina (much quicker than I expected, in about half an hour) we had to
drive along a one-way system past all the tents and then back up again in the
opposite direction. Then there was the
small matter of actually finding our tents in this huge city of tents and
finally we got off the bus at around 5.00 am, Fajir time. I must admit that my first sight of the tent
city laid out before me for miles and miles under the Arab night sky was an
amazing sight – the white tents all had domed tops that rose to a point and were
softly lit by street lights.
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| The tent city of Mina |
The toilets were grouped together and
already there were huge queues. The
women’s toilets had an outside wall that ran along in front of the toilets so
at least you had some extra privacy from the main walkway where both men and
women passed by. The wall extended
around the corner to where the wudu area was but there was an entrance at both
ends of the wall where anyone passing by could see into the wudu area and see
the women making wudu. I was quite
shocked at this lack of privacy and only ever removed my hijab to do wudu when
there was a big queue of women as they totally blocked the entrances and nobody
could see in then. There were about 10
toilets with an English toilet at either end, and the rest being the Arab style
ones, with a shower head above as well as the shower hose below for the toilet.
And there were 3 groups of these toilets in our section which had to cater to
all the European camp. I think I had
been really dreading these but they weren’t as bad as I expected. It was true that there were queues most of
the time, especially coming up to the prayer times. During the day it didn’t help that some
people had showers which reduced the number of toilets available. Then there were the women who washed clothes
under the 5 taps available for wudu. To
be fair though, most of them were considerate enough to beckon me to come and
do wudu while they washed their clothes underneath. I found that I had to get
up at 3.00am in order to beat the queues (and even then there were queues), so
that I could make wudu for the Fajr prayer at 5.00am. But they did move
surprisingly quickly especially at that hour of the morning and, on the bright
side, some of my most interesting chats took place in these queues! Once I was waiting for H outside the toilets
and a sister came up and asked me if I was Arab (again!). When she realized I spoke English she started
to talk to me in a mixture of English and French and she told me that she was
of Moroccan descent but had been brought up in Paris and was on Hajj with her
mother, brother and sister. We talked
for a little while and then she gave me a warm kiss on each cheek and we parted
company. Another time a sister in the
queue beside me waiting for a toilet caught my eye and asked me if I was Arab,
and when I replied I was actually Irish, she exclaimed that she had worked with
a lot of lovely Irish nurses in London.
She, herself was a nurse, of Asian origin, born in Scotland, and brought
up in Mombassa, Kenya. I never ever saw
any of these or any other sisters that I had made a brief connection with, ever
again!
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| View from the tent city of Mina |
It wasn’t until after hajj had finished
that I realized who all these sisters were and where they had come from. The sister who had joined us in our hotel
room lived in Dammam, in Saudi, and had come on Hajj with her son who joined
the men downstairs. She only stayed with
us for the Hajj nights and left the hotel soon after. She slept beside me in the tent, and beside
her was the kind sister from my first night in Mina who also lived in
Saudi. The 6 sisters who joined us were
from Mecca and had been given another tent without any AC so they had asked to
move into our tent. Two of them left
soon after and the other 4 were a mother and her 3 daughters and this was their
7th Hajj. Although they couldn’t speak English they were able to
communicate with H and D in Somali, and I discovered that I did have a little
Arabic – enough to get through the basics with them. One of the daughters taught Islamic studies
in a school in Mecca. Although now the
tent held 12 we all got on really well.
The older sister who had joined us from the other tent seemed a bit wary
of me….. until I sussed her love of bananas and offered her one. She was very warm and friendly towards me
after that, although she didn’t speak English or Arabic and I didn’t speak
Somali. D did ask me after a few days if
I had picked up any Somali and I told her the only thing I had learnt was
“Ay-wah” something they said a lot when talking on the phone, usually in answer
to something someone said on the other side.
I think this is probably something more the Saudi Somalis said as I
think it may be a Saudi thing. But I
told D that, although I didn’t speak Somalian, I had been with them all so long
now that I actually FELT Somali!
Although it was now a bit of a tight squeeze in the tent, we all got on
so well and were so considerate of each other that it worked out well for us
alhamdulilah.
I knew that the conditions in Mina would be
basic and, after all, we were on Hajj which was all about my relationship with
Allah and had little to do with the comforts of this life. However the whole experience taught me that
you can cope with any conditions as long as you have the company of good
sisters mashallah. There was room to
stretch out and sleep when necessary, and the sisters were usually either
sleeping also, or considerate enough to talk in low voices when others were
sleeping. We were all there for the same
reason and, although we sometimes chatted, it was almost always about the Hajj
itself - if we had been separated for a while we would catch up once we got
together again, or else we would discuss the next step on our Hajj while
referring to our books. (I had brought a wonderful Hajj guide in flip-book form
but, as it was heavy I had left it in the hotel. D had brought hers so I borrowed it and wrote
out the duas recommended in it to say on Arafat the next day.) But most of the time was spent in Dhikr or
napping, with the occasional stop for a bite to eat.
Food was cooked in the camps and could be
easily bought – it consisted mostly of rice and chicken, but you could buy flat
bread also and there were small stalls selling small tins of tuna, soft cheese,
biscuits etc. There were also stalls
selling fruit and tea. I know that I am
rather an anomaly in that I lose my appetite in the heat and find I can go long
periods on very little to eat (not the same with sleep though!), much to H and
D’s consternation – back in the hotel on the afternoon of Eid Day, T bought
some chicken and rice and, as we were the only ones in the room, she insisted
on waking me from a nap to share it with her, which I gladly and gratefully
did. D came in as we were eating and
commented that it was the first time she had seen me eating! She and her mother bought food to share in
the hotel room and usually bought enough to share with anyone else in the room,
along with teabags, milk, paper cups and plates, cold drinks etc. etc. My only contributions were fresh Danish
pastries, fruit and biscuits which I usually bought on the way back from the
Haram. In the entrance to the hotel there was a huge urn full of hot water and
teabags, milk, sugar and cups were always provided mashallah. But as I usually ate outside with my husband
they assumed I didn’t eat at all!!! In
the tent I was quite content with cups of tea provided by my husband (usually a
call of “Umm Omar” from outside the tent then a hand with a cup of tea would
appear in the flap!) and something light to eat – fruit or biscuits. One night I offered my biscuits to the sister
from Dammam who looked at it, then at me with pity and then offered me some
‘real’ food – some bread and some cheese, which I politely declined. Then D started laughing and said that all the
sisters in the tent had noticed that I never ate (biscuits and fruit don’t
count!), and were concerned for me and they also thought I was very quiet! Yes…. Me……. Quiet! Just goes to show you CAN fool quite a lot of
the people a lot of the time. Of course
it did help that I didn’t speak any common language with most of them. But it goes to show that, contrary to public
opinion, I can actually shut up and be quiet for long periods of time!!!!
One of the Pakistani sisters had done Hajj
25 years previously when she was pregnant with her first child and, once we all
got over the shock of her being old enough to have a child that age as she
looked much younger mashallah, we were interested in hearing how basic things
were then, although, also a lot quieter as not as many people were able to go
on Hajj in those days. It’s strange how,
when we think of Hajj we always think in terms of the Kaaba, and yet, we spend
the vast majority of time of the Hajj in a tent in Mina. Only a few hours out of the whole 5 or 6 days
are spent near the Kaaba. My main
memories of the time spent in that tent were of the wonderful company of those
lovely sisters, and the time I had, to spend in praying to Allah and asking Him
for everything I ever wanted, both for myself and for others, and reading His
Word. It’s hard to believe but that tent
became ‘home’ to me, and I remember remarking to myself how strange it was to
feel so comfortable about sleeping nose-to-nose with someone I didn’t even know
existed 10 days previously! Each tent
had it’s own water dispenser which contained Zam Zam water and it usually
contained enough to last the day and was replenished daily.
The first night on returning from the
toilets I opened the flap of the tent and was about to enter when I noticed
that, instead of there being a lot of black bodies (almost all of us sisters in
our tent wore black hijabs) in the tent, they were all white……ihrams – yup, I
had almost entered the men’s tent. A
brother did much the same thing in our tent a few days later much to all of our
amusement, and my husband told me that one of the sisters had actually entered
the tent and was looking around her before it dawned on her that she had
entered the men’s tent! My daughter had
advised me to bring two things that proved very valuable in the tent –
non-scented baby wipes which I used to freshen up but also to clean my fingers
and save me having to traipse to the toilets every time I ate something, and a
light scarf which I changed into that was cooler than my jilbab top and easier
to manage with in the tent, and also for sleeping in. The flaps of the tent were not very reliable
and with sisters coming in and out there was very little privacy so you needed
to be covered at all times.
The days of Hajj - 9th Dhul Hijja, Monday, 15 November
2010, Arafat
The first night in the tent we repacked our
bags yet again. My husband and I had
agreed, along with the Algerian men in our group to walk to Arafat the next
morning, on the 2nd day of Hajj, after sunrise, and we had planned
to walk from there to Muzdalifa where we hoped to stay the night until
sunrise. Meanwhile the rest of the group
were going to travel to Arafat by bus and then on to Muzdalifa by bus, staying
for a while and then returning to Mina by bus. So I was bringing my sleeping
bag but trying to travel as light as possible knowing I was going to have to
carry it, while the sisters had little to bring as they were not going to be
staying in Muzdalifa all night. As we
walked out of Mina we saw our bus – the groups all had a bus allocated to them
and our number was 27. It was already
full of people I had never seen before.
As the men gathered around the door of the bus a man on the bus saw me,
and I being the only woman, beckoned me onto the bus. Of course my husband had to come with me
being my mahram and the other Algerians had to come with him….. to keep HIM
company! I got the last seat on the bus
and we arrived in Arafat at 7.00am, one of the first bus loads to arrive.
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| Pilgrims on Mount Arafat at 7.00am |
It was already getting quite hot and there
was a haze over the plains of Arafat, but you could see the mount of Rahmah in
the distance already covered in white – how those pilgrims got there so fast I
don’t know. There were tents on
different levels with stairs between the levels, and these tents were more like
Bedouin tents with heavy material on the sides and on top, held up by bamboo
canes, and thin rugs scattered here and there on the sand. There was also a water container in the
corner. When we found our tent it was
very big, but then they divided it down the middle with more heavy material to
separate the men and the women in our group.
I was the first in the tent and, after finding where the nearest toilets
were (much the same layout as in Mina) I sat down and spent the time saying
dhikr. Soon after the sisters in our
group arrived and we sat together. But
then more and more sisters arrived until the women’s section of the tent was
absolutely packed. There was a group of Somali sisters I had never seen before
sitting near me and I heard them speaking in English to a sister whom I thought
had a North African accent. Of course I
had to let my curiosity get the better of me and I finally asked her where she
was from and she told me she was Libyan, and she thought I was Iranian! Afterwards my husband told me that he had met
her husband and he was just finishing up his contract with the Libyan Embassy
in London and was due to return to Libya, and had thought that, as it was much
easier to go on Hajj from England with so relatively few in number applying for
visas in comparison to his native Libya, he and his wife had decided to do it
before he returned to his native country. By 10am it was very hot outside and I found
that I needed to use an umbrella to go out to the toilets. I managed to have a
doze before we prayed Dhuhr and Asr prayers together. The sisters all prayed in separate groups and
when we had prayed Dhuhr, our little group all got up until I asked them if
they were going to pray Asr. There was some discussion and just as I was going
to get out my trusty Shaikh Bin Baz book on ‘Hajj, Umrah and Ziyarah’ one of
the women agreed and we all prayed Asr prayer immediately after Dhuhr. I was very disappointed that the khutba from
the Namirah mosque was not electronically piped into the tents so, while those
of us actually on Arafat on the day were unable to listen to it, those
thousands and thousands of miles away could listen to it on their
televisions.
My husband and I had agreed
that we would stay in the tent until after Asr time when it would become
cooler, and then go nearer to the Mount of Rahmah, before heading towards the
boundaries of Arafat nearer to Maghrib, in preparation for our walk to
Muzdalifa. He bought some rice and
chicken which I shared with him outside in the heat as we watched bus load
after bus load drive past with people sitting on top of the buses. From our vantage point you could see for
miles across the plains of Arafat, over tents and trees to the Mount of Rahmah and
also to the spires of the Namirah mosque.
Dotted all around were the big yellow signs indicating that we were
within the boundaries of Arafat. Knowing that ‘The best supplication is the
one on the day of Arafat’ I spent my whole time in the tent making dhikr –
I had my small dua book “The Fortress of the Muslim” and also the Bin Baz book
I mentioned earlier which contained some beautiful duas, and as my Arabic
reading is quite slow especially when I have to keep referring to the English
translation so I know what I’m saying it took me a lot of my time and
concentration - and I took out the list
I had made of all those people who had asked me to say duas for specific
reasons, and I prayed for them all and also those who hadn’t asked me to pray
for them at all. I felt that this time
was so precious that I needed to use it to the fullest to get maximum benefit from it.
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| Our tent on Arafat |
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| The plains of Arafat with Namirah Mosque in the background |
After Asr there was a lovely breeze and it
was actually a lot cooler outside the tent than inside. My husband called me to get ready to go and
when I met up with him he was with the Algerian brothers. They had increased by two as one of the
brothers’ uncle was in the Algerian camp and had come to join his nephew and
brought a friend along, both of whom were much older than the rest of us. As we climbed down the stairs from the tent I
realized that we were going in the opposite direction to the Mount of Rahmah
and asked my husband why we weren’t going there. He told me that the brothers wanted to be at
the boundary of Arafat in time for Maghrib in order to be some of the first to
leave Arafat and start on the journey to Muzdalifa. I was SO disappointed as I really had wanted
to stand closer to the Mount of Rahmah and experience the atmosphere along with
the other pilgrims. But as I walked away
from it I thought of how good Allah had been to me, how much He had ‘looked
after me’, how much I had to be so grateful for, and I felt churlish for being
disappointed, especially when I realized that, if He willed I would have gone
to the Mount of Rahmah. So, clearly I
had to accept His Will, not to mention appreciate His Mercy on allowing us to
spend the heat of the day under cover.
As I looked back over the wide tarred road I could see the many pilgrims
already getting ready to leave the plains of Arafat.
We stood just behind and beneath one of the
signs that stated ‘Arafat Ends Here’ – if we stepped beyond it before the sun
set, our Hajj would become null and void and we would have to fast the rest of
the time until Maghrib like those who voluntarily fasted in their homes. That was another one of those special times
for me as I stood, or sat on my rolled up sleeping bag, and prayed all the duas
I knew, read the ones I didn’t know and also asked Allah for all the things I
wanted and prayed for all those I knew, trying to make the most of those
precious moments as I watched the sun slowly set over the hills beyond the
plains of Arafat.
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| Leaving Arafat |
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| Waiting on Arafat for the sunset |
We met up with a friend of my husband (yup,
you guessed it… another Algerian along with his friend) and we found a quiet
corner in a car park beside a bus. After
confirming with the bus driver that he wasn’t going to be moving before Fajr,
we laid out our sleeping bags on the ground with me safely ensconced between
the ever-expanding group of Algerian men and the bus. We prayed Maghrib and
Isha prayers together, and then I had a few biscuits and a small carton of
juice and lay down and promptly fell asleep, only to be wakened at midnight
with the call of “Haji, Haji” in the far off distance. From the time you arrive in Mecca you become
accustomed to hearing this call, from policemen, shop vendors, and anyone you
have any dealings with. After some time
I realized that I wasn’t dreaming and that someone was actually calling us to
move as the buses had finally arrived from Arafat and were queuing up to
park. I remember lying there feeling so
tired and thinking “Oh let them park around me, I don’t mind.” But we got up and moved our sleeping bags to
a piece of waste land near the bus park and also near the toilets where I fell
back to sleep after some time. It
transpired that the others in our group who waited on Arafat for the bus to
take them to Muzdalifa didn’t arrive until midnight, and then had to wait out
in the open for a few hours before the bus took them back to Mina, which was
quite an ordeal for a lot of them especially as they hadn’t come prepared to
stay any length of time there. About 3
weeks after Hajj and about a week after we returned to Algeria my husband met
someone else who had been on Hajj and who also had walked the distance to
Muzdalifa, but who had to sleep on the road as it was so crowded and they
couldn’t get into the area where we were, so again, with the Mercy of Allah we
had it easier. And who knows if I had
gotten my way and gone onto the plains of Arafat and left the area later the
same fate could have waited for me? If
only I could always be patient with what Allah decrees for me and realize that
he ALWAYS knows what’s best for me.
The days of Hajj – 10th Dhul
Hijja, Tuesday 16 November 2010, Eid Al
Adha
At 4.00am on Eid day my husband woke me to
do wudu and to be ready for Fajr prayer which we prayed where we slept, along
with the Algerian brothers. Afterwards
my husband got me a cup of tea and a Madeline cake, and then I started making
my dua which I would have been quite happy to do until sunrise, except the
brothers wanted to go to the boundary of Muzdalifa to be ready to move to on to
Mina once the sun rose. After collecting our 7 stones each, we rushed between
parked buses and buses moving off, between rough terrain and the road, not to
mention wheelchairs and I found it very difficult to concentrate on saying any
dua at all. I must admit to feeling as
if we were rushing through the rituals rather than making the very most of each
one, but, again, had to accept the Qader of Allah. The walk from Muzdalifa to Mina was
relatively short having left the spot where we slept at around 5.30am and
reaching our tent at 7.00am and, in fact one seemed to run into the other as
the city of tents just seemed to go on and on for miles to see.
When we arrived back the brothers decided
that they wanted to stay put and sleep and then stone the jamarat later in the
day. They had no intention of going back
to their hotel. But I, on the other
hand, had been in the same clothes for 3 days and nights now and was absolutely
itching (metaphorically speaking of course!) to shower and get out of Ihram
partially at least. It was easy for the
men to go and have a shower but, for me, the thought of trying to undress and
dress again in the tiny cubicle of a toilet with women banging on the door was
too much of an ordeal, so my husband agreed that we would continue on to stone
the Jamarat and then go on to our hotel in Mecca. There are three things that partially release
you from Ihram – stoning, sacrificing an animal and cutting your hair in the
case of a woman, shaving it off in the case of a man. We had already paid, as a group, for the
sacrifice of the animal which was to be done that morning, so once we had
stoned the Jamarat, which on the day of Eid was only the Big one, we could then
walk back to the hotel and cut/shave our hair and be free from Ihram except for
personal relations which couldn’t take place until after we had performed Tawaf
and Sa’ee. We had decided to postpone
the Tawaf and Sa’ee until after our time in Mina was finished. We were both so physically exhausted and knew
that we couldn’t perform them to the best of our ability in our present
condition, not to mention the fact that we soon received a text from the Hajj
Ministry in both Arabic and English telling us not to go to the Haram as it was
too packed. As we walked with the throng
of people making their way to the Jamarat I thought of Ibrahim when he took his
son to sacrifice him in obedience to Allah’s request, and how he stoned shaitan,
when he came to him to try and dissuade him from doing Allah’s will. There are
huge tunnels through which you have to walk in order to get to the Jamarat and
each one has massive fans in the ceiling that make a very loud racket as you’re
walking. I bumped into another sister
who was walking with her husband and I put my hand up in a gesture to show I
was sorry. She smiled at me and then
reached over and squeezed my hand and then she was gone! It’s funny how you can
feel such a strong connection with someone you bump into and will never meet
again! At least….. not in this life. We
got lost and did twice the amount of walking before we finally found our way up
and around to the 3rd floor of the Jamarat, a walk we later found
that could be totally by-passed by escalators.
The walkway up was very wide and led up and into what looked like an
empty multistory carpark. When I saw the
big green sign that read “Small Jamarat” I thought to myself that we must be
near it, not realizing that we were actually passing it! It was the same grey colour as the rest of
the space except that it was made of stone bricks and not cement, it went right
up to the ceiling and there was a small low wall all the way around the width
of it. To be honest it looked to me like a piece of modern art! The fact that there was nobody around it also
made it look more insignificant. We
walked past it and could see the next one not that far off and once we had
passed that one we came to the Big one, where we calmly threw our 7 pebbles and
then we walked past it, faced the Kaaba and said dua. As I was throwing I thought why is it that we
don’t put as much effort into actually fighting shaitan in our lives.
Then we took the escalators down and started
making our way to Mecca. By this time we
were so tired and hot and had just one energy drink (Bison) between us, but on
the way we bumped into D and her husband.
I don’t know who was happier to see the other! She gave me a bottle of juice which I
gratefully accepted, and we showed them the way back to the hotel, which,
alhamdulilah was on the road to the Haram.
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| The building that houses the Jamarat |
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| On the road back to our apartment from Mina |
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| Road into Mecca from Mina |
On the 11th of Dhul Hijjah and
the 4th day of Hajj I got up at 3.00am to do wudu for Fajr and had a
really difficult time keeping my eyes open.
I said dhikr, prayed tahajud, and finally texted Eid Mubarak to all my
children and everyone on my phone. Once
we prayed Fajr prayer (A Somali brother led the prayer and his recitation was
so beautiful that it was easier to keep your khushoo mashallah), I said my
dhikr and then collapsed onto my sleeping bag and slept until 10.00am when I
finally woke up. That day at lunch time
H and D got a big plate of rice and chicken and H said to me “Wallahi you will
eat with us today, and no argument!” And
she received none because actually I was starving and really enjoyed the meal,
even if I was a little bemused by the fact that H put banana in with her rice! We spent most of that day in the tent
recuperating, sleeping, resting, reading Qur’an and saying dua. I hadn’t seen
my husband since the previous day so, on my way back from one of my jaunts to
the toilet I ‘beeped’ him and met him coming out of his tent as I came round
the corner. I greeted him and then asked
‘Remember me? Just thought I’d remind
you that I’m still here!’ and then we agreed on a time to
go to the Jamarat that evening. We went with
the Algerian brothers and this time we stoned all three of the Jamarat,
stopping to say dua after each one.
Allah finally answered the prayer for rain and it poured for a little
while as we were making our way back to our tent, but as it was so warm we were
dry by the time we reached it.
The days of Hajj – 12th Dhul
Hijjah, Thursday 18 November 2010, Mina
On the 5th day of Dhul Hijjah I
was woken by my nice friends with a cup of tea.
When I offered them a biscuit they said that it was not a proper
breakfast but only a snack. I told them
my mother would so totally agree with them.
Most of the group had agreed to go back to Mecca on that day instead of
staying a third night after Eid, and, as many of them had come down hard with
the Hajj flu and felt awful, they found someone to throw stones for them at the
Jamarat and opted to take the bus back to the hotel in Mecca at around
noon. My husband and I had planned on
staying the last night in Mina but the Algerian brothers had other plans – they
wanted to go back to the hotel in the bus, have a shower and change and then
return in time to stone the Jamarat, but they had to be back before
Maghrib. We gave our sleeping bags to
them to bring back to the hotel knowing that most people would be leaving and
we would find a mattress or two to use for the last night. I got H’s mattress and, after they all left,
I joined my husband in the men’s L shaped tent which we now had all to
ourselves. We got some food and decided,
like many others, to wait until the temperature of the day had cooled after Asr
to go and stone the Jamarats. It was
lovely and quiet and we were able to say dua, when suddenly it started to pour
out of the heavens. Alhamdulilah the
tents were very well water-proofed so we felt quite cosy, but this rain,
although a bounty from Allah, meant that a lot of people who had intended to
only wait until after Asr and then go stone the Jamarat and continue away from
Mina after that, ended up staying the night in Mina. If you want to leave you must do so before
Maghrib, and, as the rain only stopped a little time before then, most people
found themselves unexpectedly staying overnight.
We left the tent at 6.15pm, after Maghrib
to go stone the Jamarat and just as we had left the camp where our tent was
located, my husband got a call from the Algerian brothers saying that they
intended to find an empty tent closer to the Jamarat in which to spend the
night. We had left our mattresses in the
tent along with some personal items of my husband so we decided to go back and
get them so that we wouldn’t have to return later that night. We had only left the tent 5 minutes but
already it had been completely cleared of all the mattresses and sleeping bags
that had been abandoned there. The only
one left was my husband’s mattress along with his small bag of personal items,
all of which were intact alhamdulilah.
Even while we were in the tent we could see young boys and older girls
in hijabs hovering, waiting to see if we left anything behind. Obviously they were looking for anything they
could find that might provide some kind of an income to them. This was one of the saddest things that I saw
while I was on Hajj – the number of women and children, usually of African
origin, selling small items on the pavement or begging. In Mina they could often be seen cooking on
small stoves on the ground – nothing elaborate, but simple things like chips
and boiled eggs. On the road to
Muzdalifa I saw young girls, and women and children pushing along small
trolleys with barrels on them containing all the items they needed to set up
shop again. They rushed past the
pilgrims in an effort to get to Muzdalifa and cook before the pilgrims arrived
weary and hungry. To be fair they did
provide a service as there wasn’t much else in the way of food there, but it
was so sad to see what an effort they had to make to eke out a living. Most of these vulnerable people had no status
in Saudi, even if they were born there, unless their father was Saudi and they
had obviously left their homelands because there was no future there for them
or their children. It begged the
question was there any future for them in Saudi when they had no status
there. It made me appreciate the simple matter
of having a passport, my children’s ability to own one, and our right to belong
to a country, all of which we take so much for granted. My husband talked to one boy near the hotel
one day and asked him about his education – he said it wasn’t very good, that
when they had finished one book they didn’t have any others so they had to do
the book all over again. I don’t think that
this is the case for the mainstream Saudi education system, but, again, for all
the faults I find with the Algerian education system, I began to appreciate it
so much more.
We went on to stone the Jamarat which was
busier this time. It was awful to see
the hysteria on some people’s faces as they actually raced to the Jamarat and
fired stones at it, with some actually picking up any stones they could find
and flinging them at them with a force as if to kill, totally disregarding any
injury they might inflict on anyone around them. It was very easy to walk around the
hysterical crowd and find a quiet place in which to throw our stones
alhamdulilah. Again I bumped into a
sister who smiled at me in answer to my ‘sorry’ and then reached over and
squeezed my hand. I can’t really put
into words the feeling that simple gesture generated in me, but a bond of a
kind was formed in my heart. Then we walked back to meet the brothers in Al
Khaef Mosque on the outskirts of Mina.
This mosque has the distinction of having 70 prophets who prayed in it. It was quite a simple mosque with a large
section for the women, in front of which there was a small white wall with a
white wooden lattice fence above it where you could look into the men’s section
but not actually be seen by them. The
floor had a green carpet and on that night looked more like a refuge centre
from some kind of natural disaster with women sleeping here and there on the
floor, obviously settled there for the night, and with clothes thrown over the
lattice woodwork. I prayed 2 rakats for the
mosque and Isha prayer and then met my husband along with the brothers outside.
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| Al Khaef Mosque |
Tired though I was I just couldn’t sleep,
and it didn’t help that the hem of my hijab was wet and felt cold against my
skin. We had been walking for 3 hours since we left our tent to stone the
Jamarat and I felt that the walk to Muzdalifa, having taken the same amount of
time wasn’t nearly as exhausting as these 3 hours had felt. I had been told by
many who had gone on Hajj that the last night in Mina, if you chose to stay was
lovely as you had a tent to yourself with your husband and had plenty of peace
and quiet to make dhikr and sleep. But,
again, Allah had other plans for me and I just had to rid myself of my false
expectations and make the most of what He had given me alhamdulilah. I made dhikr and then updated my diary in the
dim light. I finally lay down and dozed
off when two other sisters came into the tent.
Then it was my turn to tell them where they could find dry chair-beds.
These were a mother and daughter-in-law with whom I prayed Fajr later, one of
those rare foot-to-foot occasions. Some
time after that yet another older sister came in with a more elderly companion
and this time I got up and helped them to get the chair-beds and lay them out,
and was rewarded with a ‘Saha Binti’ for my trouble mashallah. I felt like I was back in Algeria! The next morning the younger sister and her
mother-in-law overheard me talking to my husband outside the tent in English
and before they left, the younger sister came over and asked me where I was
from. I resisted the urge to be a smart-ass
and say ‘Bordj El Bahri’, and instead gave her the longer version. She knew “la Peruse” which is not far from
where I live, and after a brief chat, we parted company. Another sister with whom I made a brief connection
and with whom I may never meet again.
Having said that, Algeria can be a tiny village when it comes to bumping
into people you’ve met before, so who knows but we may meet up again in this
life inshallah. For all I know, she may
be related to the far distant cousin twice removed of one of the neighbours of
my husband’s sister-in-law’s, brother-in-law’s niece’s cousin…… or some such
chain of connection. I kid you not –
that’s the way it is here in Algeria.
The days of Hajj – 13th Dhul
Hijjah, Friday 19 November 2010, Mina to Mecca
At 12.15 pm we left the tents in Mina after
having prayed Dhuhr prayer, and headed for the Jamarat. This time we ended up
on the ground floor which worried me a little as I knew it would be much busier
than the other floors, but it was easy to avoid the hysterical people in the
crowd and go around them to a quieter part of the Jamarat. We stoned, said our dua and walked back to
Mecca having an ice-cream on the way.
Just as we were leaving Mina we saw camels with carpet-canopied seats,
beautifully decorated, which were for hire for a ride, and I thought of how it
must have been like this that the women traveled (those lucky enough not to
have to walk) who accompanied the Prophet Muhammed (SAWS) and his entourage on
his only Hajj pilgrimage. And there
wasn’t an awful lot of room on the back of a camel! Another reminder to ‘yours truly’, to shut up
and stop complaining because I had it SO easy alhamdulilah.
We arrived back in the hotel at 2.15 pm and
discovered that we had a much better time than those who took the bus the
previous day. They had left the tents in
Mina at 12.00 noon the previous day, Thursday, and only arrived in the hotel
at…… 12 midnight that night! There was
so much traffic on the road all going in the same direction that the police
kept diverting their bus away from Mecca.
Those poor women had been stuck on that bus all day long, unable to get
off as they weren’t physically able to walk the distance to the hotel…the
distance it took us 2 hours to walk. So
most of them were now sleeping out of sheer exhaustion, and once again I got
the bathroom to myself to have a shower and wash my clothes. Our bags had gone on top of the bus and got
soaked in the rain so my husband put our sleeping bags over the doors in his
apartment to let them dry. After Asr a
brother sent up a huge circular plate of rice and meat from one of the
sacrificial animals and we shared it with the sisters in the room next to us –
I think he had given one to each apartment mashallah. I then slept from 9.00 pm to 11.00p m and got
up to get ready to leave at 12.30 am to go to the Haram to perform our Hajj Tawaf. It was very busy but this was my third time
and I wasn’t exhausted and physically at a low ebb like my first Umrah so I
managed to concentrate on my dua while coping with the crowds. Safa and Marwa was busier than I had ever
seen it, but again nothing that we couldn’t cope with alhamdulilah. We ate a take-away on the walk home noting
that most of the shops had closed in contrast to before the Hajj. There were
now taxi drivers standing on the pavement touting for business, a sharp
contrast to when they could pick and chose before the Hajj. We arrived back in the hotel at 4.20 am. I had
a wash and washed my husband’s clothes, prayed Fajr prayer and then slept until
9.00 am.
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| Enroute back to Mecca from Mina |
My husband told me that the two older
Algerian men who had joined their group had gone back to the Algerian camp and,
before he left, one of them asked my husband to send his salams to me! While I was picking my jaw up from the floor,
my husband told me that he had said that I had inspired him – that every time
he thought he couldn’t go on walking during the long walks we did together, he
just looked at me and thought to himself that if I could do it then so could
he. He also said that he didn’t think
there were many Algerian women who could have walked as much as I did!!! Subhanallah!
What a lesson to learn – you just never really know what impact you have
on someone unwittingly, either for good or for bad!
Our Final Tawaf
The next day was Saturday and everybody was
packing and repacking, ironing clothes (yes, someone actually brought an iron
and the sisters were making great use of it!), and generally getting ready to
leave Mecca the following morning for the next leg of our journey, to
Madina. I was more or less ready and
spent the day relaxing and making dhikr, and then decided to sleep in the
afternoon before we made our final trip to the Haram to make our final Tawaf, a
farewell to the Kaaba and to Mecca before we left the city. Ideally we would make the Tawaf and then
leave the city, but as we were with a group who had organized a bus to come and
collect us to go to Madina, any time from 6.00 am to 10.00 am the next morning,
we decided to do it late Saturday night, return to the hotel, sleep and then
leave with the group. It would have been
so much better if the group had organized a bus to take us and our luggage to
the Haram, waited while we made our final Tawaf and then taken us away straight
to Madina, but this was a pipe-dream, at least where this group’s organization
was concerned.
As I was dozing my husband rang me and told
me that we had to leave the hotel there and then to go the Haram as friends of
ours who live in Jeddah were coming there to meet us. After we prayed Maghrib in the Haram, we
waited for our friends to arrive. I didn’t bring my camera with me, and wished
I had as I watched the sun set in the beautiful Arabian sky over the hills of
Mecca. After praying Isha prayer the sister, M and I
chatted and caught up on old times, a little distance away from the men. We had known each other for many years in
England but had not seen each other in 6 years so we had a lot to catch
up. The Haram was emptying by now and we
saw a small black scorpion approaching us over the white tiles which I shooed
away with my shoe bag. No matter which
direction I pushed it away in, it kept coming back to us. Suddenly a sister sitting at some distance
raised her bag and ‘splat!’ the scorpion was no more. She looked at us, shrugged her shoulders and
said that, as we weren’t on Hajj it was ok to kill it. Then M got a call from her husband more or
less telling us, in polite terms of course, to… get lost! So off we went to go and get something to
eat. She knew her way around the Haram
and we went into one of shopping centers and upstairs to buy a take-away and to
sit and eat it. It was nice in that a
lot of the take-away stalls had a sign up for women to make a separate queue,
and, in fact, we didn’t realize until much later on, M’s husband had tried to
ring her while we were queuing for our food, to ask us to order for them as our
queue was much shorter! Too bad!
Afterwards M treated me to a lovely
ice-cream which I ate as we walked and laughed our way around the outside of
the Haram. I did some souvenir shopping
and then we met up with the brothers and we said our good-byes to our friends
and went to make our final Tawaf. We
could have combined this final, farewell Tawaf with the Hajj one we had made
the previous night, but we didn’t mind doing another one. Although it was 11.00 pm the area around the
Kaaba was absolutely packed right up to the walls of the mosque, and for the
first time ever my husband suggested doing the Tawaf upstairs. But I said that we would manage to do it next
to the Kaaba inshallah. And it was fine alhamdulilah. How I had changed my tune
in less than a week since I had done my first Tawaf! We got a taxi home where I found H getting
ready to go to the Haram to perform her final Tawaf.
The journey to Madina
After Fajr I slept until 7.30 am but the bus
did not arrive until 10.30 am and, while we were sitting on the bus waiting
while they packed all the baggage on top of the bus, my husband disappeared and
returned with a chicken fillet sandwich which I gratefully ate before we
finally left Mecca at 12.15 pm. The bus
was air conditioned and was quite comfortable mashallah and we stopped at two
service stops on the way. Although they
were quite basic I was surprised to find that they were clean and not the
horror stories I had heard about. As we
drove along I discovered why – there were so many abandoned service stations
along the route, while just a little way past them were brand new ones with
better facilities mashallah. The ones we stopped at served rice with various
toppings include whole fish, and plenty of tea.
They also had a mini-musala. The
other services I saw on the road had petrol stations and
mini-supermarkets. Although the journey
was quite long it gave me a chance to make dhikr and to think about the Prophet
Muhammed (SAWS) and his family and Companions and their families making this
very same journey, in the opposite direction.
On Eid day as we were walking back to Mina from Mecca we saw people gathering
around a very old building and somebody said that this was the spot where the
Prophet (SAWS) had stopped and been told by the Quraish that he couldn’t enter
Mecca to make Hajj, and where he had made the Treaty of Hudaybiya.
Allahu Alim whether it was the actual spot or not, but I thought of how
disappointed he (SAWS) and his Companions must have been after coming all that
distance and then being turned away, and it made all my disappointments seem so small in comparison. He (SAWS) ordered that the animals be
slaughtered and nobody did so, and he discussed this problem with one of his
wives who suggested that if he himself slaughtered his animals then everyone
else would follow suit, which, of course they did.
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| Service station on the road between Mecca and Medina |
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| On the road to Medina |
‘Upon seeing a man walking and leading his badana
(sacrificial camel), the Prophet (SAWS) said to him, “Ride on it.” The man replied, ‘But it is a badana.” The Prophet again said to him, “Ride on
it.” When the man gave him the same
answer, the Prophet (SAWS) said on the second or third time, “Ride on it, woe
to you.” I often thought of this while
we were on Hajj – whenever my husband saw someone doing something wrong, e.g.
men praying in their Ihram with one shoulder uncovered, he would try to correct
them. Sometimes they understood and
thanked him, but more often than not they just ignored him. And I thought of this particular hadith and
wondered if anyone would have listened to the Prophet (SAWS) if he went on Hajj
today and tried to correct people. Allah
knows they don’t listen to the scholars who are all in agreement on the rights
and wrongs of the rituals of making the Hajj pilgrimage.
Medina
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| Medina |
 |
| Louloubek No 3 |
The following morning was Monday, and we were now exactly 2 weeks in Saudi. The Haram was only a 10 min walk away mashallah
and was so different to the Haram in Mecca.
The Haram in Mecca had high walls and seemed like a fortress around the
Kaaba, whereas the mosque in Medina, though also very big, was reached after
walking over what seemed like miles and miles of tiled floor that ran all the
way around the building under the shade of the most beautiful canopies in the
shape of huge ornate umbrellas. I felt
such a sense of peace in Madina and especially in the Haram mashallah which was
always packed during the prayers. But it
was always easy to find a quiet corner in which to sit and make dhikr and pray
Nawafila prayers mashallah.
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| The Prophet's Mosque in Medina |
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| Inside the Prophet's Mosque, Medina |
We met up with our friends who had driven
all the way from Jeddah again, and with M, I decided to try getting into the
Rowda and the graves after Isha prayer.
After the prayer the security women stood at different places in the
mosque with a placard that read place names, the idea being to let sisters into
the Rowda and the graves with other sisters who spoke the same language. For some reason the Europeans were always
lumped with the Africans, maybe because most spoke English as a common
language. There was a brown wooden
lattice fence-like wall that went all the way across the women’s section and
divided it from the men’s section and a door within this fence was opened to
allow the women through to the Rowda.
The idea was that groups would go in one at a time, and then there were
little alcoves where you could go and sit in your group while waiting to enter
the Rowda. The atmosphere was frenzied
with a hysteria that permeated the mosque and a look of panic on a lot of the
women’s faces as they barged past the poor security women who were trying their
best to bring some kind of order to the whole proceedings and rushed into the
Rowda area. We were some of the first
allowed in and when I looked behind me and saw what can only be described as a
herd of hysterical women bounding towards me I thought to myself, get me out of
here, this isn’t part of Hajj and it’s not worth being bowled over by
someone. I also thought that there would
be no hope of praying 2 rakats in such a small space with so many women totally
disregarding each other in a panic to pray.
So I pushed my way back and M suggested that I go to a completely empty
alcove to one side and pray 2 rakats there and she would be a ‘look-out’ for
me. As I was praying my first rakat,
suddenly from what seemed out of nowhere I found women rushing to me and all
but sitting on top of me, while M frantically tried to shield me and shout in
Arabic that I was praying, all to no avail.
I couldn’t even put my head down in sujood as there was someone sitting
so close to me, so I got up and moved away, feeling as if I had made a lucky
escape. Then M suggested another part of
the mosque which was behind where all the women were rampaging and offered to
be a ‘look-out’ for me again, and I muttered in amusement to her, ‘where had I
heard THAT before’. She sat as my sutra
and I had just said my final salam when, again, out of nowhere these women came
straight at me and ran in front and behind me, over my kneeling legs, and I
wondered what kind of invisible magnet I had that seemed to attract such a
bunch of lunatics. We got up and left
the mosque with the idea of trying again the following day when perhaps
daylight might attract a saner and more reasonable crowd of women.
M and her husband insisted on bringing us
to a Chinese restaurant to eat. We entered a dark establishment with a deep
dark red décor and large fish tanks displaying the most beautiful, tropical
fish. There were no tables and chairs
visible as you would expect to see in a restaurant, but instead there were two
sets of stairs leading up to 2 red doors behind which were very privately
enclosed alcoves each with a glass circular table and 4 chairs. When you walked
around this high walled alcove you found another 2 sets of stairs leading up to
two more alcoves and so on throughout the restaurant. Once you closed the door you could not be
seen by any of the other customers or staff who knocked and waited discreetly
to be allowed to open the door and then stood back to take the order and later
serve the food. M and her husband were
determined that my husband and I had a romantic meal… even if it killed
us! So they ate at a different booth. We did enjoy it and the food was
beautiful, and we had quite a laugh at the texts M and her husband kept sending
us throughout the meal. My husband
couldn’t finish his ice-cream so I, purely from altruistic motives I will have
you know, finished it for him. By the
time we left the restaurant, I didn’t walk so much as waddled. Where was that walk to Muzdalifa when you
needed it! M and her husband had booked
accommodation in Madina for the night so we parted company agreeing to meet
them the next morning.
It was now Tuesday morning of our last week
in Saudi and we were due to leave on the following Friday. The group that we
traveled with had organized a Ziyarah, or tour of the Islamic sites for 7.30am
that morning but my husband and I had decided to give it a miss as our friends
had kindly offered to bring us around instead.
We were having a leisurely breakfast in the lobby of the hotel waiting
for them when the group returned from their trip.
Our friends M and her husband had invited us to stay with them in their home in Jeddah for a couple of nights before we flew back to England. We wanted to see their children and also to see another good friend, IS and her family. We could have gone to Jeddah, stayed a couple of nights and then returned to join the group in time to….. drive back to Jeddah for the flight home. Jeddah, Mecca and Madina are in a kind of a triangle with Jeddah being only 45mins/1hr from Mecca but 3-4 hours by car from Madina, or 5-6 by bus. If our trip had been organized such that we went to Madina first and then on to Mecca for the Hajj and stayed in Mecca after the Hajj then it would be easier to commute back and forth from Jeddah. Although our flight wasn’t until 4.50pm on Friday, the group had arranged for us to be booked out of the hotel on the previous day, Thursday for reasons known only to themselves. This would mean that we were going to sleep Thursday night either in the bus or at the airport. Not an attractive thought bearing in mind all the traveling back we had to do to return to England. Therefore the prospect of staying with our friends in Jeddah until Friday and then going to the airport which was only a short distance from M’s home to join the group, seemed a much nicer one.
As the husbands had some business to sort out, M and I parted company with them at 10.30 am and very happily wandered off to the Haram to enjoy just being there, and to pray Dhuhr and to try, once again to get into the Rowda and the Prophet’s graves afterwards. There were stalls selling goods on the way to the Haram and I found the trinkets and books there far more interesting and easier to choose from than in Mecca, and I did do some shopping. We went into the Haram early for Dhuhr and prayed and made dhikr and just enjoyed the peace that comes with being in the Prophet’s Mosque mashallah. Immediately after Dhuhr prayer had finished the sisters with the placards took their places and the crowds began to form. And, again, the atmosphere was one of panic and hysteria and I decided that, much as I wanted to go in, I really didn’t want any part of this uncomfortable atmosphere and I left. With hindsight, I think that it might have been easier if I had tried after Fajr prayer, but Allahu Alim. I had to accept it was the Qader of Allah that I didn’t get in, and I was quite happy to accept it especially as it wasn’t one of the rites of Hajj alhamdulilah. While I was in London, my friend S, told me that she had feared that shirk might sneak into her worship in some, small way unwittingly when she visited the graves and had prayed to Allah for guidance – and she was stopped from going in for one reason or another and accepted this as Allah’s answer to her. I thought of this and felt comforted by it.
Our friends M and her husband had invited us to stay with them in their home in Jeddah for a couple of nights before we flew back to England. We wanted to see their children and also to see another good friend, IS and her family. We could have gone to Jeddah, stayed a couple of nights and then returned to join the group in time to….. drive back to Jeddah for the flight home. Jeddah, Mecca and Madina are in a kind of a triangle with Jeddah being only 45mins/1hr from Mecca but 3-4 hours by car from Madina, or 5-6 by bus. If our trip had been organized such that we went to Madina first and then on to Mecca for the Hajj and stayed in Mecca after the Hajj then it would be easier to commute back and forth from Jeddah. Although our flight wasn’t until 4.50pm on Friday, the group had arranged for us to be booked out of the hotel on the previous day, Thursday for reasons known only to themselves. This would mean that we were going to sleep Thursday night either in the bus or at the airport. Not an attractive thought bearing in mind all the traveling back we had to do to return to England. Therefore the prospect of staying with our friends in Jeddah until Friday and then going to the airport which was only a short distance from M’s home to join the group, seemed a much nicer one.
As the husbands had some business to sort out, M and I parted company with them at 10.30 am and very happily wandered off to the Haram to enjoy just being there, and to pray Dhuhr and to try, once again to get into the Rowda and the Prophet’s graves afterwards. There were stalls selling goods on the way to the Haram and I found the trinkets and books there far more interesting and easier to choose from than in Mecca, and I did do some shopping. We went into the Haram early for Dhuhr and prayed and made dhikr and just enjoyed the peace that comes with being in the Prophet’s Mosque mashallah. Immediately after Dhuhr prayer had finished the sisters with the placards took their places and the crowds began to form. And, again, the atmosphere was one of panic and hysteria and I decided that, much as I wanted to go in, I really didn’t want any part of this uncomfortable atmosphere and I left. With hindsight, I think that it might have been easier if I had tried after Fajr prayer, but Allahu Alim. I had to accept it was the Qader of Allah that I didn’t get in, and I was quite happy to accept it especially as it wasn’t one of the rites of Hajj alhamdulilah. While I was in London, my friend S, told me that she had feared that shirk might sneak into her worship in some, small way unwittingly when she visited the graves and had prayed to Allah for guidance – and she was stopped from going in for one reason or another and accepted this as Allah’s answer to her. I thought of this and felt comforted by it.
Quba Mosque and Uhud
The brothers contacted us as we were making
our way back to the hotel and we met up with them and went to lunch, after which we set off to see some of the sights, the names of which were so familiar to me from reading and hearing about them so much. We drove to a huge modern shopping mall out
in the middle of nowhere. It was glossy
and shiny and I could have been in England with a lot of the same shop names on
the store fronts, but it was almost totally empty. We had the huge food court almost completely
to ourselves. M then told me that the
Saudis usually went out at night when it was cooler and that this place would
come alive then. I wasn’t complaining as
I enjoyed my taco in peace without anyone sitting near me.
After lunch we drove to Quba
Mosque which is the first mosque that the Prophet built in Medina. On the
authority of Sahl bin Haneef it is reported that the Prophet (SAWS) said: ‘One
who does Wudu at home, then offers prayers in Quba Mosque is entitled to the
reward of ‘Umrah.’ (Ahmad, Nasa’I, Ibn Majah and Hakim). It was so old and small and quaint
mashallah. The women’s section consisted
of a small entrance hall surrounded on 3 sides with wooden walls of alcoves for
shoes, and a small praying area to each side, forming a T shape, one side for
women with children and one for those without.
The chandeliers were very simple and plain and the whole place had
a unique character all of its own.
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| View of the garden opposite the Quba Mosque |
 |
| Quba Mosque |
 |
| Uhud |
The ground has not been covered with beautiful tiles and instead, as I walked across the red earth, I tried to imagine what it must have been like for those Companions and how they must have felt going into battle, which, in those days was face-to-face and not the cowardly bomb dropping that seems to be the main method of modern warfare. And these Companions had to fight face to face with their own family and friends. This was the battle where Hamza (RA) the Prophet’s uncle was killed. Uhud is in a very big valley surrounded by rocky mountains with the very small hill to one side.
Nearby was a walled structure with a wire fence above it, surrounding what looked, to all intents and purposes, like a large barren waste-ground with a very low wall, the height of a brick, in the middle. This was the graveyard of those Muslims who had died in the battle and the low wall indicated where Hamza (RA) was buried.
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| The graveyard at Uhud
M and I read a dua for visiting the graves and reminded ourselves that one day, Inshallah, we all will join them.
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The journey back to Jeddah
I had already packed our bags for the
flight back to England, on Monday night and when I got up on Wednesday morning
I packed the remaining toiletries etc. My
husband called me and we left the hotel that morning and headed off for
breakfast in yet another deserted shopping center before our trip back to
Jeddah. A funny incident happened as we
were parking the car. M’s husband found
a space very near the entrance but there was a small pick-up blocking the space
with a young boy, who could not have been more than 13 in the driver’s
seat. When M’s husband asked him to move
his truck so he could park, the boy told him no, that he could park further
down. After some more polite asking both
on the behalf of my husband and M’s husband, with a flat out refusal from the
boy, M’s husband started taking off his seat belt and opened the door to get
out, at which the boy promptly moved his truck back out of the way. I was quite bemused by the whole incident and
it seemed, to me, in sharp contrast to the way the youth in Algeria behave
towards the older generation, which is to say always with respect, at least in
my personal experience. After my
breakfast of cheesecake and coffee we hit the road at midday for Jeddah only
stopping once at the services to pray, and we reached Jeddah at 4.00 pm. The first thing I noticed on opening the door
of the car was the heat that hit me in the face immediately. It’s amazing really how near Mecca Jeddah is
but it never became cool in the evening in Jeddah the way it did in Mecca –
which was such a Rahmah from Allah for our Hajj alhamdulilah.
After meeting M’s lovely children we ate
and chatted. Another brother joined our
husbands, the brother with whom we had met in Muzdalifa, and he had very kindly
brought us our Zam Zam water from Mecca.
We had put off getting our Zam Zam water until the last minute and then
we decided to get it in Madina. But then
this brother had so kindly offered to bring it to us (all 20 litres) in Jeddah
as M’s husband was bringing him to the airport that night for his flight back
to England. Before we went on Hajj some
people came to the hotel and were selling 10 ltre bottles of water in a sealed
and stamped bag for 25 riyals each and D had bought three, one each for her
mum, herself and her husband. We hadn’t
even bought the containers so we had nothing to put the water in. I really
would advise on getting containers early on and then bringing them to the Haram
and filling them up, bearing in mind that you cannot bring them into the
mosque, so be prepared to pray outside and then lug them home again. It would have been easier before the taxis
put up their prices. If you have more
than one container (We had been told we had a 10 litre allowance per person)
then it might be better to make more than one journey depending on how near you
are to the Haram and to the Hajj pilgrimage.
We then went to bed because the husbands
were still recovering from their previous night’s labour. M very kindly washed our clothes and hung
them out for us and, needless to say they were dry and ready to wear first
thing the next morning. After a lovely
leisurely breakfast we headed off to IS’s house as both families had been
invited there for lunch. On the way we
were given the guided tour of the Corniche which was a water in-let by the
coast of the Red Sea itself. There was a
tiled walkway all around the water with benches at intervals and then behind
this were grassy parks with seats and children’s playgrounds all along. We prayed Dhuhr in a small mosque beside the
sea. We had been aiming for one that
stood on stilts on the sea, but it was packed with pilgrims so we gave it a
miss. Some of the seated areas had a
shade and already some Saudi families had sat down and laid out picnics, and M
told me that in the evening this place came alive with a lot of families making
the most of the relative coolness of the evening. As we drove around Jeddah I was amazed at
where people stopped to have a picnic – on a pavement beside a busy road, or on
a grassy verge, or in a car park - anywhere there was a space to park a car and
lay a blanket on the ground!
We had a lovely lunch, followed by coffee
and lovely cakes at IS’s home and after some time sitting around chatting and
getting to see her lovely children, the three of us sisters headed out the door
just before Isha prayer to go to a shopping mall near where IS lived. We didn’t spend long there as the adhan went
and all of the shop-keepers were closing until after the prayer, so we headed
back to IS’s apartment. The brothers
agreed to bring us to another shopping mall but first they brought us a
take-away from Al Baik – a very popular Saudi chain of take-aways, much on the
lines of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and once everyone had eaten, all 6 adults left
the children to go shopping, with M’s eldest girl very kindly agreeing to
babysit mashallah.
While we were at IS’s house I received a
text from D – she and I often texted each other when we were apart. She told me that they had been told to vacate
their rooms in Madina that afternoon at 2.30 pm but had refused to do so and
were then given until 6.30 pm when the next lot of pilgrims arrived. They then had to wait from 6.30 pm in the
hotel lobby with their entire luggage until their bus for Jeddah finally
arrived at 11.00 pm. I felt so awful for
them, especially for those of the group who weren’t feeling very well.
We went to a street in a rather smart
shopping area of Jeddah and went in to “Red Tag” first… and never left it until
I had spent all my money! I bought
something for all the children and some mementos and we came out of the shop
with bags and bags and bags, and M said “just wait for the comments we’re going
to receive from the brothers!” And sure
enough, not one to disappoint, as we got into the back of M’s husband’s very
comfortable 9 seater, my husband exclaimed to the night air, ‘Men work and
women spend’. To which M whispered to me
– ‘go on…… tell him he has to stop and pick up the rest of the bags. And…. Oh one more thing….. he has to pay for
them! Oh ….and he owes each of one of us
sisters, but we’re prepared to wait for payment!’ And on that note of smart comments we were in
a fit of giggles all the way home. Must
be something in the Jeddah water – normally I’m the epitome of decorum!!!!
Ahem! Such an enjoyable end to our stay
in Saudi mashallah. We finally left poor
IS and her family in peace (probably more correct to say ‘in pieces’) and
arrived back to M’s home where, after a brief chat, we went to bed. We had another lovely leisurely breakfast,
after which the brothers went off for Jumuah prayer. My husband had contacted the group to be told
that they had just discovered that they had spent the night in the wrong
terminal, the Hajj terminal, and were now waiting for a bus to take them to the
International one. They were all
exhausted having waited around in the airport since their 4.00 am arrival.
The journey back to England
After Jumuah I said goodbye to M and her
lovely family and her husband drove us the short ride to the airport where we
met up with the rest of our group who looked totally shattered. We first brought our water containers to the
wrapping kiosk where they put them into strong plastic bags and sealed them. The
queues at the check-in were very long and, as we waited, M’s husband noticed
that a business class check-in desk had opened and managed, somehow to get us
checked in there without too much fuss.
There was a problem with luggage allowance especially as we had the Zam
Zam water but some others in the group had a lot more baggage than we did and
had a lot of arguments with the check-in desk.
We had been given to understand that we had a 30 kg allowance per person
and that the water was separate. Instead
they told us we had a 25 kg allowance with the water included in that
allowance. We didn’t have much problem,
in the end and all our luggage went through without any hassle and we brought
the water over to the out-sized luggage department without paying anything extra
for it alhamdulilah. I then said a lot
of dua for the others in the group – they looked as if they were at the end of
their tether and were still trying to get their baggage accepted, which,
eventually, alhamdulilah it all was.
 |
| Jeddah Hajj Terminal |
We didn’t have to wait long before we went
through passport control and then while my luggage went through the detectors,
I went into a small room on one side where a security woman frisked me with a hand
held detector and then I went and waited for my husband – the women’s queue
moved much faster. As I was talking to D
and H a woman sitting on a chair nearby asked me if I was American. I felt, at this stage as if I had been called
everything under the sun except Irish!
When I told her that I was Irish she told me that she was South African
and wouldn’t arrive home until 5 the next morning – she was going a lot further
than I was but she still was going to arrive an hour earlier! I told her that sometimes the Irish accent
has been confused with the American one (I was being polite but as impossible
as it seems it has been known to happen!), and then D remarked that all
throughout the time previously she hadn’t really noticed my accent before now,
but that she now found it more pronounced –
I blame it all on M’s influence as she also is Irish and somehow, after
a few days in her company, my Irish accent was stronger!
 |
| Salams, Jeddah |
England after Hajj
We arrived in London at 6.10 am after a 7
hour flight to -3 degrees, quite a change from the 40 degree heat we had left
in Jeddah. But, alhamdulilah I didn’t
find it so cold although I wasn’t dressed appropriately for it and we arrived
to the comfort of my husband’s niece’s home at around 9.00 am safe and sound
alhamdulilah. After showering and
repacking our bags I went to stay with a very good friend for the next couple
of days. It was a lovely time for me as
we had plenty of time to catch up and spent evenings sitting around her gas
fire drinking hot chocolate and stuffing our faces with chocolate and
crisps. Who could ask for more? On the Tuesday after we arrived back in
London, it started to snow, and snow and snow and snow. And I marveled at the wonder of Allah – I had
hoped to ‘hop over’ to Ireland to see my mum for a couple of days before
returning to Algeria seeing as ‘we were so close’, in comparison to Algeria
anyway. Just before we traveled to England before Hajj I prayed Istikhara and
was just about to book the flight when I decided to ring my mum and confirm it
with her. I had already spoken to my
sister and got the ok from her (she lived with my mum and would be responsible for feeding us). But my
mum was horrified at the thought of us making all that effort for only a couple
of days, especially at that time of the year – “you’ll be miserable”, she
said. ‘You mean YOU’LL be miserable……
for the 3 of us!’ I replied! So,
although I was disappointed I thought there was no point in making all that
effort to go and see her if it only caused her to worry. And, again, Allah showed his Rahmah and His
answer to my prayer – Cork, where my family lived, was snowed in and the local
airport was closed during that week so even if we had got there we probably
wouldn’t have been able to get back to London in time to get our flight back to
Algeria! But I did manage to talk to her
and some of the rest of my family alhamdulilah by phone.
Back home to Algeria
We finally arrived back in Algiers 1 month
and 2 days after we left and, needless to say, we were so happy to be back with
the children again. I felt so happy and
relieved to be back home safe and sound and yet……. There was a small part of me
that felt sad that all the opportunities of having duas more likely to be
accepted through performing Hajj and also through all our travels away from
home were now finished. Yet here again
Allah comforted me because 4 days later was the 1st day of Muharram,
a month in which there are great blessings to be had and in which is the day of
Ashoura where fasting the day before and the day itself can, inshallah, bring
us Allah’s forgiveness for all the sins accumulated in the previous year. And then there are the blessings on Friday,
and with extra fasting Mondays and Thursdays and praying at night, etc. etc I
realized that Allah, in His Mercy, gives us many opportunities in our daily
lives to seek blessings from Him where our duas are more likely to be answered
alhamdulilah.
In Algeria there is a tradition that when
someone returns from Hajj they kill a sheep and feed all the neighbours and
family and friends. This is called a “Wa’da”
which means ‘promise’, probably stemming from the promise some people make to
Allah to make such a sacrifice if they should be granted the honour of going on
Hajj. However, here it has become the
expected thing to do. I wouldn’t go so
far as saying that it is a biddah because I don’t think that people consider it
necessary in order to have your Hajj accepted.
Perhaps for some people it is nice to have all your family, friends and
neighbours around once you’ve arrived back and I believe it can go on for
days. However, my husband and I had been
away for so long, from our children who had been ill and also had their end of
term exams as well as spending Eid on their own without us, and all we wanted
to do was close out the world and be with our children and catch up with them
and their lives. They had all worked
really hard and done remarkably well in their studies while we were away alhamdulilah.
We could not have gone on Hajj and made the most of the experience with a clear
mind if it wasn’t for my eldest daughter, Sarah, who single-handedly took over the
running of the home at a rather stressful time – the end of term with exams,
and also Eid – as well as take care of sick children and sort out her own
University studies. May Allah reward her
and my other children who all chipped in to help her mashallah. We hadn’t made
a “wa’da” so we felt no obligation to sacrifice an animal and feed a lot of
people. My husband did have some remarks
made in jest by some Algerians whom he had already spoken to about Hajj on
the lines of “So when are you going to feed us then?” Being rather mischievous and not one to pass
up an opportunity for a laugh he answered them by telling them to come around
on a certain day at a certain time in the evening. It just happened to be the day and the time
that our nextdoor neighbour was holding his wedding dinner…. to which these
brothers had been invited anyway! My
sister-in-law did come to visit the morning after we arrived while I was having
a shower and my husband was still in bed! She brought enough dinner to last 2 days and
only stayed long enough to make sure we were all ok and then went back home –
taking 3 buses to get there. May Allah
reward her as she also made the same journey several times to bring food to the
children while we were away mashallah.
And a lovely friend called a few days later with a huge tray of
assortment of cakes… for all our guests!
They were very happily consumed by my family of gannets.
The hardest question to answer when I came
back was “how was your Hajj?” How do you
answer that question in one simple sentence?
People have asked me if I have changed since I made the pilgrimage. I think that every new venture in our lives
change us – moving away from home, getting married, having children, moving countries,
reverting to Islam etc. etc. and so too does Hajj. One very good friend of mine
said that she didn’t think I would want to see her once I got back from Hajj,
as I would have had all my sins forgiven and would not be interested in talking
small talk with her. I told her then,
and this was before I left for Hajj, that I don’t consider Hajj like the New
Year where you make all these resolutions to be and to do better and then
within a day or two you are back to the way you were before, but more disillusioned. Of course it’s important to always aim to
improve and do better, but I am human and part of the human condition is to
sin. Allah’s Messenger (SAWS) said, ‘By
the one in Whose hand is my soul, if you were not to commit sin, Allah would
efface you and would replace [you by] such people that would commit sins and
then seek forgiveness from Allah so that He would forgive them.’ So the
important thing is to try not to sin, but when you do to ask Allah for His
forgiveness with sincerity and to pick yourself up and try again
inshallah. And of course to keep very
far away from the Major sins inshallah.
This is my own personal account of Hajj –
everyone has their own story to tell and I know that even those with whom I
shared the experience, my husband, the sisters in the hotel room and the others
in the group will all tell their story very differently. For me Hajj is like childbirth – it’s really
difficult to describe to someone who has never had a baby what it’s really
like, it has be experienced. And
everyone’s experience of childbirth is very different. There is nothing dignified or clean or easy
about childbirth and the same too goes for Hajj. And yet, despite the hardships and the
difficulties, we all want to go through it all again because the rewards are so
wonderful. Would I go back again? Absolutely! In a flash!
Every year if I could!!!! But shhhhhhh!!! Don’t tell the kids!
List of items I packed for Hajj
3 black hijabs and abayas as well as the
cap to go under the abaya
1 black, very light, head scarf
3 pairs of leggings/jogging pants
5 sleeveless t-shirts
2 Pairs of Pyjamas
2 tops to wear over Pyjamas
1 very light dress
1 cardigan
20 pairs of underwear
Packet of Panty Liners
Packet of Sanitary Towels
6 Pairs of black socks
1 Pair of shoes
1 Pair of plimsolls
1 Pair of trainers
2 packs of non-perfumed wet wipes
1 non-perfumed deodorant
1 non-perfumed hand cleanser
Toothpaste, toothbrush
Comb, hair elastics and clips,
Small, sharp scissors and a razor
Facial cleanser (not used during Hajj)
Shampoo and Conditioner (not used during
Hajj)
Shower gel (not used during Hajj)
Hand bag size Qur’an in English and Arabic
Dua book
Books on Hajj
Sleeping Bag
1 large towel and 1 hand towel
Black thread, needle and safety pins
Mobile phone, charger and adaptor
Elastoplasts
Sudocream
Viatmin E capsules
Crystallised ginger
Diacalm
Two tubes of travel wash
Two notebooks, pens and pencils
Two mobile phones plus chargers and
adaptors
Paracetamol
Aspergic
I regretted bringing the sleeping bag and
my cardigan. It was very easy to buy a
thin mattress which was just as
comfortable, if not more so, than a sleeping bag, which folded up, was light
and had handles for easy carrying, for something like 5 pounds sterling. Instead we had lugged two sleeping bags all
the way to England, to Jeddah, back to England and then back to Algeria when
instead we could have used the baggage allowance to better effect!
I regretted not bringing a back supporter
which comes flat packed and opens up to an L-shape where you sit on one side
and the other supports your back. I
found sitting for long hours in the mosques without any support for my back
very tiring. I also regretted that I
didn’t bring some kind of body belt. I
used a small handbag with a long strap which I wore over my head and across my
body and it was no problem most of the time.
But there were times when I was praying and it fell across my body and I
had to adjust it, or when I was using the bathroom and wished I could leave it
in the tent, or when I slept with it in my arms or under my head, and I wished
that I didn’t have any valuables in it.
If I had worn a body belt I could have kept our money and any other
valuables strapped to my body and just kept my bag for my Qur’an, dua book,
phone, diary, pen etc.
Something that my daughter did bring with
her and which she found very useful was bug repellant – again non-perfumed. But maybe it was because it was a different
time of the year for her – she had gone in February and we were in November,
but we didn’t have to contend with any bugs at all alhamdulilah.
List of Books on Hajj which I read
Handbook of Hajj, by Islamic Teaching
Center, Indianapolis, Indiana
Important Fatwas regarding the rites of
Hajj and Umrah, by Shaikh Abdul Azziz Bin Abdullah Bin Baz.
The Prophet’s Conduct During Hajj, by
Faisal Al-Baadani,
How to perform Hajj and Umrah, by Dr Saleh
Ibn Fouzan Al-Fouzan
Hajj, Umrah and Ziyarah (in the light of
the Qur’an and Sunnah), by Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Abdullah Bin Baz
Hajj & Umrah made easy, by Dr Taqi
Hashmi and Adnan Malik
The last two books were the ones I most
referred to while I was on Hajj.
I do feel that, if you have any health
problems or have never been on Hajj or are going with someone else who has
never been before and are feeling nervous about it, then it is a good idea to
pay the extra money and go with a well organized agency who has years of
experience on providing the Hajj service and who has good contacts in
Mecca. They will usually have good
hotels closer to the Haram and will provide more buses to and from the Haramain
and the sites. And I would strongly urge
people NOT to postpone the Hajj until they are much older – it makes such a
difference to have the energy and good health to make the most of this amazing
experience.
As-salaam 'alaykum wa rahmatAllah wa barakaatuh, jazaaki Allah khairan for your lovely blog and especially the part about hajj is very interesting and informative maa sha Allah. I really like the way you write and the humour, and it is nice to read a muslim blog which is done with good taste and without pictures of humans etc. May Allah bless you and keep us firm on the deen.
ReplyDeleteFrom your sister in Islam umm khawla
Walaykum asalaam wa rahmatulah wa barakatu, BarakAllahufiki for your lovely comments and for the encouragement which is always appreciated Alhamdulilah. It's been almost 4 years since I was blessed to be able to make this Hajj journey, and I think a lot of things have changed in Mecca since then....and more changes are planned, but I hope that some of the sentiments and experiences I shared will be of use to others inshallah.
ReplyDeleteI like your article about the Hajj
ReplyDelete