Diabolic Digest
Part III
A
Meccan tragedy
Spurred by both spiritual and secular curiosity, Andy Scott jumped at the chance to go to Mecca on Hajj and exercise his dormant acquired religion. In this final episode, tragedy strikes as the Hajj winds up.
December 2004
At 9.30, my
colleague’s phone rang. There had been some accident down at the Jamarat, the
pillars symbolising Satan, he said.
I called the office
then ran down there as fast as I could with my notebook, pen and phone. The
area was packed with people but it was impossible to get to the upper level, on
the bridge, because security police had blocked access.
I asked a policeman
what had happened. Absolutely nothing, he claimed. I asked a medic at one of
the portable clinics around the area. At least 100 people had perished in a
crush on the bridge earlier. My God, I thought. But he wasn’t going to give me
his name. I asked another one. At least 200, he said. All I could do was tell
the office what I had and try and find people who might have been there or in
the vicinity when it happened.
When I’d done as much
as I could do, I headed back up the steps and the road. I heard there was much consternation
among the Information Ministry officials that we had published that the numbers
of dead were of that order. “They’re not supposed to say it’s that much yet,”
one knowledgeable source in Jeddah had said. They would admit the truth, but in
their own good time.
The feast of sacrifice
That would prove to
be in another two hours – Madani, the Minister of Pilgrimage Affairs, was to
hold a news conference. Today was Eid al-Adha and, on this day, most pilgrims
took off their robes and the men shave or cut their hair seriously short. It
was in that unrobed state that they did the rest of their stone-throwing.
Owing to the rush of
the morning’s events, I hadn’t managed to shower and change. The minister’s
revelation was that 244 people had died (rising to 251) in the stampede and 244
were injured. “There were more than 400 metres of people pushing in the same
direction (which) resulted in the collapse of those next to the stoning area
and those behind. That led to panic,” he said.
But he also said some
odd things, suggesting a certain resignation and even nonchalance. The deaths
represented “less than one percent of one percent of the pilgrims” and “no
matter what research work we do, incidents do happen”, “it’s bad lack rather
than any lack of follow-up”. “I confirm that all preparations were made, but
God’s intentions are sometimes unknowable.”
Blame game
The problem, he said,
was pilgrims who had not come on organized trips, but rather were expat labour
in the kingdom who had come on their own steam – illegally, since Hajj
requires special visas and permits. Many may have done the pilgrimage last year
and stayed on in the kingdom illegally.
These people were
moving around Mecca carrying all their gear with them and that gear had got in
the way of other pilgrims on the top of the bridge as hundreds of thousands
surged ahead. Most of the dead were Indonesians, Pakistanis and other Asian
nationalities. But there was clearly another problem: pilgrims knew how to get
onto the bridge but there was no clear process for getting off.
The bridge filled up with more and more people at a far faster rate than
they were able, willing or encouraged to get off. Most pilgrims seemed largely
unperturbed, but some seemed a bit wary during the stoning rituals on the rest
of Sunday and on Monday. “I’m not frightened, but you have to be careful,” said
Indian pilgrim Mohammed Seif, who complained that some pilgrims were still
aggressively pushing their way to the pillars.
Fateful end
“You can stone any
time, you don’t have to do it all at once,” he said, which was the view that
Saudi clerics were finally prepared to endorse in statements made in the
aftermath of the tragedy.
“In the end it’s
fate,” said Saudi pilgrim Hussein Ahmed. “What can you do with millions of
people in the same spot?” And Egyptian Ilhami Osman, who spoke to me as if I was
a foreign intruder, as if I was putting on an act that he saw through, said:
“Praise be to God, if you die on the Hajj, you are considered a martyr.”
Indeed, this was true. They say that many of the old and infirm who come on the pilgrimage do so in the hope or expectation that at this spot they will die. “I pray to God that he will give every Muslim a chance to do this,” said Sudanese pilgrim Yassin Tahir. Nigerian Mohammed Ahmed, an expat labourer in Saudi Arabia, who was on his third pilgrimage, said: “I thank God. It has been a great religious experience for me. It gets better and better every time.”
The scribe and the pilgrim
These were stock
responses and they ignored the stress of the experience, but honestly reflected
the elation the Muslim has at carrying out Hajj. It was what I felt,
despite the troubles, not least the trouble of having to write about it and the
pressure that that added to my own battle to overcome the feeling of being an
outsider.
As I write, a culture
correspondent is talking to a Moroccan intellectual on an Arab television
channel about “the traveller” and the motive behind the desire to travel. “I
never saw any design or picture of the citadel in Marrakesh in all its seven
centuries in existence except in Orientalist drawings,” the thinker observes.
“They wanted to know the dimensions.”
I’m sure that’s what
some of those pilgrims who I accosted for comments, or some of the ministry
officials thought. However, in all ,experience there is that which we choose to
make known and that which we don’t.
Erasing the T word
The big T word still
dominated outside in the real world, with King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah
issuing a message to Muslims to keep fighting terrorism. “Terrorism is
corruption on earth and seeks aggression, destruction and fighting God, his
Prophet and Muslims. God abhors anarchists and forbids aggression and has laid
down the most severe punishment for aggressors,” they said.
“Such acts must be
confronted and their falseness exposed so they do not sway the ignorant. They
are results of sick minds and deviant ideologies alien to Islam’s laws and
principles.”
At the Jamarat,
meanwhile, police blared warnings via megaphones and helicopters hovered in the
sky to try to avert a fresh disaster. On Monday evening, I went down there with
a colleague to throw stones and get my hair shaved at the make-shift barbers
shop set up alongside the bridge.
Braving the crush
The crush that
evening was as bad as ever. It was astounding. Tens of thousands of Muslim pilgrims,
crowded into the base of a narrow mountain pass to stone the devil, as God
commanded, despite the ever-present danger of being crushed to death. Like
others, we went at midnight thinking the crowds will be more merciful, but a
mini-city of pilgrims had claimed most of the space around the bridge, severely
limiting access to the pillars.
We headed underneath
the bridge where there was a bit more space. A bulldozer had found its way
through and was clearing away a mountain of small stones around the base of one
of the pillars, dredging up dozens of plastic sandals and slippers thrown by
women in anger.
The booklets handed
out to pilgrims explained: “Some believe they are throwing stones at the devil
himself, so they do it with anger and insults, but we are only asked to do the
Jamarat in order to remember God. Some throw big stones, shoes or pieces of
wood, but this is going too far and the Prophet forbade it.”
“USA” had been
removed from the central pillar, though the clearing of the stones had revealed
“Bush” written at the base of another. Men crowded in to get a good shot at the
pillar while women strained at the back to hit the target.
Close shave
Although we moved
away quickly once we’d finished, we weren’t in safety yet. The way back to the steps
that take you up to the road on the mountainside was completely packed because
East Asians camped out on the roadside took up most of the space. Police on the
other side did nothing about it. “What can we do?” one smirked like it was a
comedy when we asked him about this chaos.
There were even young
boys and girls sitting on the road begging. “Something given for the sake of
God!” they shouted, pointlessly. No one was giving. At some point in the middle
of this melee, I thought I would never get out alive. The key is to stay calm.
Despite everyone’s best efforts to maintain good spirits on the pilgrimage,
tempers frayed.
The Quran enjoins
Muslims to exemplary behaviour in the sacred Utopia of Hajj: “Let there
be no obscenity, immorality or argument during Hajj, whatever good you
do God will know about it.”
But with immense
numbers the ritual now draws, it becomes a severe stretch on even the most
pious’ good manners. It’s amazing to think there were only 20,000 people here
in the eary 1930s, and now two million: 1.4 million from outside and the rest
from within Saudi Arabia.
Bad manners
That evening at the
Jamarat some people’s behaviour was hard to excuse. A Yemeni man charged from
the front with a woman in a wheelchair gasping for breath. An Egyptian came
from behind on a motorbike. “I didn’t think there would be crowds here,” he
announced with an inane grin on his face. “Is there anywhere here that isn’t
crowded?” I said back, flatly.
Men from Gulf
countries tries to protect their fully veiled wives, though the smells, the
pushing and the shoving had all but left their modesty in shreds. The standard
call for making your way through the crowds was “Tareeg, Ya Haj!” – “Please
pilgrims, gang way!” – but it was useless in a situation like this, in this
mass of Arabs, Asians, Africans and the odd Westerner.
As we eventually
neared the stairway, we found that the ground was covered in compressed garbage
– two days worth of plastic cups, bits of fruits, wrapping paper, and hair
after pilgrims had shaved.
“This isn’t Islam,” I
heard an Egyptian fuming in disgust. “These are people who don’t have homes in
the first place.” In a way he was right, I thought to myself. Our complaints
were the complaints of the relatively prosperous about the ways of the poor. It
was such an odd sight: the campers sat there silently staring at the mass of
people before them.
A policeman finally
erupted at them. “Get out! Go!” he screamed at the front row. They scurried
away without so much as a whimper, gathering up their mats, pots and pans and
small parcels of food. Suddenly the ideal of a microcosmic world without social
or cultural distinctions or a word raised in anger was exposed for the fallacy,
even if a beautiful fallacy, that it essentially was.
Between ideal and reality
In pilgrimage,
anthropologists say, you have a perfect community of believers, it is about
seeking forgiveness at the place on Earth where God will most appreciate your
efforts to obtain that. These are major themes of Islamic literature on the
meaning of Hajj and, from my experience of the event, I would say they
are both promoted by the Saudi authorities and cherished by the pilgrims.
But the logistics of
the pilgrimage make it almost impossible for individuals to stick to polite
behaviour and, in fact, results in behaviour that would require the forgiveness
of God and ironically this happens in the overzealous, even selfish, pursuit of
his favour and forgiveness on the pilgrimage!
Secondly, the
divisions of class and culture are always lurking just beneath the surface. The
Saudi authorities frown on those who don’t do things their way and, in
particular, Asians who are, in any case, treated with some contempt in Saudi
society.
Further, there is a
danger that the Hajj is being reduced to simply a set of actions emptied
of meaning, an empty shell. Tired pilgrims are herded from one section to the
next. But this is encouraged by the fact that the rituals of pilgrimage at
Mecca are so many and so demanding.
Unifying pillar
The Hajj
really is more than just a pilgrimage but a mega-pilgrimage, or a number of
pilgrimages rolled into one. The circuit the pilgrim moves around is well over
10 km long and, as we’ve seen, involves heading back into Mecca on the third
day before returning to the Mina area to complete the stone-throwing ritual.
Put simply; the
pilgrimage in Islam is absolutely exhausting and surely always was. Muslims
implicitly acknowledge this when they congratulate each other on completing the
Hajj because it is recognised as a major physical achievement to do it.
In fact, the infirm are exempted from ever having to perform the Hajj,
which is, of course, one of the five pillars of Islam incumbent upon every
Muslim.
Scholars have noted
that the Hajj appears to merge into one a number of customs and
practices of ancient Arabia and suggested a meaning to their amalgamation.
Malise Ruthven explains this particularly well in his Islam in the World. “The
central ritual of Islam, the Hajj, was arranged out of existing cultic
practices. The actions themselves were almost unchanged, but their meaning was
transformed to fit a new, vastly expanded, cosmic vision. The result was a
religious and ideological tour de force,” he writes.
Ancient roots
Anthropologists have
seen in the individual rites ancient cults connected with the seasons –for
example, the day at Arafat was a rain-making cult, stone-throwing at Mina was
to cast down the sun god, Muzdalifa was associated with the thunder god Quzah
(Saudi Arabia, to this day, has an annual “rain prayer” given in the mosque in
Mecca).
But the timings were
altered and wrenched from their old context, demonstrating the uselessness of
the pagan gods, and placed in the timeframe of the lunar calendar. Visiting and
circumambulating the Kaaba is another well-attested pre-Islamic custom. The
idea of Mecca as a sacred precinct may also have its origins in a pre-Islamic
neutral zone where tribal warring was put aside.
At pilgrimage, we
come to buy salvation through our presence and our suffering, which is of a
piece with the extensive commercialism going around the pilgrimage. Thankfully,
there’s much honesty about this in Islam, and no one bothers to rail against
the “consumerism” of pilgrimage – all the shops, trinkets and souvenirs – and I
even feel guilty about indirectly suggesting such to that camel boy Nayef when
I asked him how much money he made for giving rides.
In any case, his
answer didn’t even make it into the final version of the story as my editors
chucked it out. But ideologically, the striking and most important point about Hajj
is that it forms the focal point of a culture that is neither East nor West, a
world whose centre of gravity is definitely not Mediterranean, European or
Western. It brings together.
If there was no Hajj
and it was not in Mecca, one wonders whether the Arabs and Islam would be what
they are today. The early qibla in Islam was Jerusalem – it was to Jerusalem
that Muslims were enjoined to face in prayer. The decision to move it to Mecca
was momentous; to this distant corner in the rough hills of the Arabian
Peninsula we turn in prayer, and to this distant corner Muslims head to circle
a mysterious ancient object imbued with God’s presence day after day, but most
of all during those five days of Hajj in the lunar calendar that tricks
the certitude of the seasons.
ãAndy Scott is a writer and journalist in the
Middle East.
ã2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.