REFLECTIONS
At the doors of the Divine
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No pilgrim can ever forget his first sight of the Kaaba, writes ILIJA TROJANOW, as he recounts his experience of making the Haj, discovering both the beatitude and the kinship that unites seekers in the midst of this churning mass of humanity.
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AP
Around the Kaaba inside the Grand Mosque, Mecca -- humanity in prayer.
ON foot, it would have taken less than two minutes to walk from our hotel to one of the 99 entrances to the Haram. As it was, it took us a quarter of an hour: we were sized up by the masses of people pouring towards the most sacred sanctuary and finally allowed through, and managed to enter the Great Mosque. Hamidbhai, whom I had met on the pavement after the afternoon prayer, had offered to accompany me while I went through the first ritual obligation. Two other pilgrims from India joined us and together we fought our way through the dense crowd. Our only means of navigation was a hand on the shoulder of the man in front of us. Women often tied their veils together so as not to get lost, or clasped hands in an unyielding grip that made it impossible to pass through a group in closed formation. We clung to one another and repeated the pilgrim's call intoned by Hamidbhai: Labbaik Allahumma, labbaik; laa sharika laka labbaik, until we were reciting the homage in a staccato chorus.
At the entrance, Hamidbhai drew me close and said with great urgency: The wish you make when seeing the Kaaba for the first time will be fulfilled. You must now look towards the ground. Look up only when I say so.
Many voices
I left my sandals at the entrance, where thousands of other pairs were piled up, and went barefoot through the Abdul Aziz Gate, my gaze firmly fixed on the marble floor. Kneaded by the crowd, reciting the pilgrim's call to myself, as nervous as if I were taking an important exam, I advanced slowly, wrapping myself more and more tightly in the prayer, voices all round me, single voices, voices raised in chorus.
Outside the mosque we had had to jostle a little, shove a little, so as not to be swept away; inside, we had to fight. Clearly, very few pilgrims paid attention to the guides' pleas to be considerate, not to push others, not to be rough, rude, selfish — in a word, not to sin. The throng of densely packed humanity forced us to ward off those next to us, and the disregard for others spread like an infection. One part of me felt a surge of panic-fuelled aggression welling up, the other part was walking on air.
Pray, said Hamidbhai as we descended a few steps, pray that you will always pray only what is right. Pray for the appropriateness of your prayers.
And then, several Labbaik cycles later, he said: Now look up.
The sight was profoundly moving. Instantly. Without contemplation or reflection. The simple form of the Kaaba, the black brocade — the kiswah, as beautiful as a bridal veil — the inner courtyard crammed with pilgrims, the maelstrom around the unyielding cube. The atmosphere of excitement and joy, charged with all the lifelong dreams that were being fulfilled in these very moments. And without thinking, without having prepared anything in advance, a clear, specific wish came to me, and my eyes filled with tears. Carefully we stepped over all the people who had sat down on the edge of the inner courtyard, blocking access to the Kaaba, and entrusted ourselves to the whirl to perform the tawaf, the sevenfold circuit of the Kaaba.
We were torn apart in the crowd, but the Kaaba, which we were not supposed to look at during the tawaf, remained a still centre, steady, steadfast. Its corners pointed to the four quarters of the compass. In earlier times they were named after the great caravan routes: Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. The small gold door in the grey cube was closed (it is opened once a year for the ceremonial cleansing with rosewater in the presence of the king of Saudi Arabia), and nothing adorned this construction except for the black kiswah cloth, which was turned up at the ends to signify the time of Haj — and perhaps also to protect it from the eager hands of all the pilgrims.
Around the Kaaba
We were on the outer edge of the crush. There was no way we could even think of performing the first three circuits as prescribed, running "with your chest thrust out like a brave warrior", and your right shoulder uncovered. The circuit starts where the Black Stone, that mysterious relic from primordial times, is set in the Kaaba: a meteor perhaps; according to legend, it was once as white as chalk but is now dark from the many sinful lips and hands that have touched it in the course of time. A strip, a foot in width, running across the marble floor eastwards from the Black Stone, marks the beginning and the end of the tawaf, and each time we completed a circuit, we stopped and raised our hands, palms upward, to receive the blessing that emanates from the stone, cried Bismillah Allahu Akbar and kissed our own hands.
The excitement of the crowd broke through my prayers. We swayed, someone grabbed my shoulder, someone almost pulled off my upper garment, the crowd drew a collective breath. Just beyond the raised palms in front of us, a few men were waving their arms, desperately attempting to divert the crowd. An unconscious woman lay on the ground, surrounded by pilgrims trying to attract the attention of some first-aid attendants.
Led in prayer
We had only completed two laborious circuits when the call to night prayers sounded. A miracle happened: the wild, raging, spasmodic circling ebbed away, each pilgrim took up his position, duly aligned with his brother and sister pilgrims around him; a stillness crystallised, out of which a well-modulated voice soared to new heights, leading us into prayer.
If you could look at the whole world at once during prayers, you would be able to see the concentric circles of Muslims, all radiating out from the Kaaba. During prayers, the ummah, the community of all Muslims, forms an Islamic ornament, and we were kneeling only a dozen steps away from the centre of this living pattern.
After the prayer we immediately stood up. To continue, as is usual, in private prayer would have been dangerous given the renewed surge of pilgrims. Soon, however, there were noticeably fewer of them and we completed the tawaf without further interruption. We avoided the litters in which the frail were conducted around the Kaaba at a trot; I bumped into a pilgrim who was reading the prayers from a sheet of paper (some groups follow a prayer leader, repeating in chorus the single lines he calls out); I was overtaken by an Arab who was busy talking on his mobile and only interrupted the conversation to utter an urgent Bismillah Allahu Akbar. During my last circuit, I was embraced by an old man from the north of Pakistan and we staggered on together, drunk with joy, adapting our prayers and our steps to each other, and for a while the man was both brother and grandfather to me.
Extracts from: Zu den heiligen Quellen des Islam. Als Pilger nach Mekka und Medina, Munich 2004.
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