Hajjnotes (2)

On the Ka’bah and Tawaf

Here I must first submit to a pen (fingers?) more eloquent than mine, but which could just as well have been in my own hand, for how perfectly it encapsulated my own feelings.   

“And there I stood before the temple of Abraham and gazed at the marvel without thinking (for thoughts and reflections came only much later), and out of some hidden, smiling kernel within me there slowly grew an elation like a song.” (Road to Mecca, Muhammad Asad) (1)

(i) The first time one sees the ka’bah, whether it is really the first time, or the first time after a period of separation, is something difficult to express in words. I am condemned to inarticulacy. How can I convert something I can only ever really feel into a human language, into words I was never taught, words that perhaps do not even exist? How can markings on a paper, or lines on a screen, possibly do justice in translation? Maybe it were never meant to be? Maybe that is why everyone who can must see it themselves, this House of God? On reaching Makkah, we had already missed the jama’ah for prayer, and left the hotel briefly to pray salah in the masjid, with the intention to return properly after a short period to complete the ‘umrah. I and x were separated from the others, and so walked straight into the masjid in the crowd of people hoping to stop somewhere close to the exit to pray. All of a sudden as we continued to walk and talk, x’s words faltered, “Err, is that the ka’bah? It is! We’ve just come straight to the ka’bah!” The intention, of course, had never been to see the ka’bah then. (2) I was shocked (I have never been any good with the doors and could never remember which led to where in the masjid), and had genuinely not realised we were walking straight towards the ka’bah. We stopped then. We looked, eyes glassy – the first look – at the stream of people doing tawaf, not so much walking as flowing. Oh, where is all this water, in my eyes only?

(ii) During my first tawaf, that of the umrah, the mataaf was as usual very crowded after maghrib. It was hot and loud and noisy, people shouted and pushed, prayers were recited loudly, people chanting individually and in groups, always turning to look at the ka’bah as they walked, drinking it in, always trying to get closer and closer. In the midst of this tumult was one person. He was a tall Afghan man, wearing a black turban, neither young nor very old, and in all the people, he stood out to me. He never once looked up from the floor, and walked reverently on sacred ground. It seemed, even amidst all those people, that he was absorbed in some great, important task requiring the utmost concentration, and there was nobody else there. I turned to look at him several times. It was as if there were something pulling me to watch him, but simultaneously, I felt a strange sense of discomfort at witnessing something so obviously intimate, for clearly, there were he and God, and nobody else. From all the people there, I envied him. Perhaps he alone understood the sheer enormity of this act?

(iii) There is no doubt that there is something entirely strange and foreign about circumambulation to the Western mind. But why, it seems to ask, and the people would ask, if they dared, and why seven times, and, well, just why? And perhaps the question might not arise for many others, because it seems to be a universal ritual, as old as time itself, to circle the object of veneration. (3), (4) I remember thinking: Allah, You know this is not something I would do for anyone else, in any situation; I am too proud, so accept it. There were times when I wondered how it was I was mindful throughout and able to think and reflect sometimes – and I hope this does not sound grandiose – as if on a different and superior level to how I could ordinarily; it was not simply a mindless act of rotation driven by some kind of hypnosis. I presume it must have been a flow state, perhaps what it means to be in qunut. (5) And then, almost suddenly, it felt completely right, completely correct and sensible, and in fact the only fitting way to do some justice to the place I found myself in. I think there must be something about this ritual that resonates with some unconscious implicit memory within the human body itself, that understands that at one place in the whole world, there is only one action that can even in the least way do justice, and that is to circumambulate the House of God that Ibrahim built. And then I felt revolted that this could ever be done anywhere else, for anyone else – what a great act of rebellion and transgression against God Himself, and against all that is right and proper. (6) Sometimes I would be heedless of my good fortune, and then all of a sudden my glance would fall on the ka’bah, and it would catch me by surprise – I did not know that one could be awed and then awed again, and again, and again, by the same thing.

“I walked on and on, the minutes passed, all that had been small and bitter in my heart began to leave my heart, I became part of a circular stream—oh, was this the meaning of what we were doing: to become aware that one is a part of a movement in an orbit? Was this, perhaps, all confusion’s end? And the minutes dissolved, and time stood still, and this was the centre of the universe.” (Road to Mecca, Muhammad Asad)

(iv) I would often look at people who were old and had disabilities, and wonder at their commitment to tawaf, and that of their family members who helped them. It made me proud to be part of an ummah of people that still so clearly revere their parents, and happily serve them. (7) One day, I saw a man, who after some time pushing what appeared to be his father’s wheelchair, then took a long piece of cloth, perhaps a turban, and having threaded it through the armrests and around the back of the wheelchair, walked in front, leaning forwards and pulling the wheelchair behind him, like a rickshaw. One Kyrgyz lady in a wheelchair would make her son stop so she could stand and walk a short distance on her feet using her stick as support, and then when no longer able to walk, sit in the wheelchair again, and he patiently supported her, both pushing her when she sat, and holding her when she walked. I saw a tall African man using crutches who only had one leg, and he was doing tawaf walking by himself on the second floor. There are so many such stories, and everyone has many of their own which they noticed, and it touched them in some way. And if we noticed them, and were moved or impressed by their striving, then what of God, who sees that which we do not see, and He encompasses all things, and rewards even an atom’s weight of good with abundance.

Sometimes I think about the amazing grace of God, that the hardship and apparent misfortune of someone can be to their benefit without their even knowing it, and without even their active involvement in it - and this cannot occur except for the one who believes in God and life after death. This is the fallacy of those who demand a world without ‘pain’ or ‘evil’: you fundamentally do not have the ability to measure what ‘benefit’ or ‘good’ is ultimately. All these people doing tawaf, and so many others, can never know, will never know, that during a moment of negligence, they reminded me, made me grateful, reinvigorated me, prompted a choking du’a, increased my faith; and that even now, so many weeks later, when their memory is faded and they have returned to their homes, I raise my hands and ask God to give them all the good of this world and the next, and save them from the punishment of the fire.

  

(v) I would rarely do tawaf in the main mataaf area directly around the ka’bah. It is difficult to view it, and in fact most tawafs during the hajj season, as anything other than an introvert’s nightmare. The people, pushing and shoving, the sweltering heat and dripping sweat, the shouting and chanting, the sensory overload, the evaporation of any concept of personal space, the disorder, the lack of rules or even any restraint, the absolute bedlam, and oh, the people, the people! The whole thing felt like a contradiction, a conflict even – how can there be devotion and reverence in this? Reverence was in the slow, steady steps on the mobility scooter level (8), the measured recitation, the calm that allowed reflection on the verses. Around the ka’bah, there was none of this - I felt unsettled, minor infractions grated; I could not enjoy it, this need to be constantly on guard, to be aware, with seemingly little in return. But, paradoxically, it was this tawaf that was entirely meant for people like me. This time that was hard to describe as ‘spiritual’ in any conventional sense of the word, yet was precisely that, in its own odd way. It taught me a lot about life. And because I could rarely concentrate much on formal recitation or structured du’a when I was so focused on surviving, it gave me time to observe the people and think (a little!). The conduct of many people annoyed me, and that of even more irritated me. It was probably fortunate for me that I am limited to only a few languages, because the simple incapacity to communicate safeguarded me many a time, buying me the precious moments I needed to be able to rein in a streak of temper, or even worse, contempt, and positively reframe the situation. 

And in actual fact, when I did think about it, I found myself able to love even those people I felt I would have instinctively disliked. The Afghan women who had tied themselves together – had probably never travelled outside their village, much less found the way back to a hotel many miles away in a foreign country where they didn’t speak the language, and getting lost here would be the most catastrophic thing. The man who insisted on making a video call, shouting loudly and getting in everyone’s way – had an elderly parent back home waiting eagerly for one glimpse of the ka’bah their son had travelled to, during a journey they had collectively spent years saving for. The distraught woman, stationary, blocking the flow of thousands of people, shouting hysterically down the phone to her husband who had walked faster than her and left her behind – would not know how to complete her umrah without him, or how to get home. The lady who insisted on putting her hands on your shoulder or back from behind you and weighing you down – was not able to walk independently in such a crowd and feeling frightened as she had nobody to help her. The Chinese women who aggressively pushed you out of the way only to scurry forward a few paltry steps – were desperate to fit in a single extra tawaf, even a few extra paces, and knew they would never be here again. Every person had an excuse that I didn’t. How often in life do I walk around, annoyed at people who have excuses that I don’t, simply because I don’t think? That these people, the believers, are here or there, trying, striving, surviving, worshipping God, is a testament to their love of God, and His love of them. How could it be then that I, a believer, did not love them too?

(vi) The tawaf -l-wida’ of course, had to be done as close to the ka’bah as possible. By then, even I could not justify missing this, so bittersweet, for that, so inoffensively anodyne. And surprisingly, when I did it – and God is gracious – there were relatively few people. It struck me whilst I walked that this was very much the example of life. You are surrounded by so many people, continuously walking past you, in different ways, some independently, some supported by others, at different speeds, some inching forward slowly, some rushing past, some polite, some not. The people who push rarely reach their goal faster, though hurt others along the way. The best of the people are those who give way, assist even; when pushed, their bodies slacken and their shoulders turn to make space. It is not that they don’t know, don’t understand; they are not too stupid to see what is happening, but rather, they recognise what is happening and still forgive, giving way even when it is their right to pass. They are the best of people because without them, society would not function. This giant, heaving mess of humanity that manages to somehow drift along without any major mishap, relies on those people for its very existence.  

At one point, a woman entirely in black clamped a hand on my shoulder and leaned on me. There was no room to look to the side, but I slowed down to her pace as she clearly needed some support. It occurred to me that now at this crawling pace I will not be able to finish my tawaf for hours! I had unhappily resigned myself to this, but was surprised when before even we had completed a further full turn, she clapped my shoulder and left, making du’a for me. I thought: how many times have I lost the opportunity to do good because I have worried about the adverse effect it could have on me, worried that I would be taken advantage of? Of course, what you fear will happen sometimes, but it will also not happen sometimes. In fact, what you fear, or worse, may happen anyway. It could have been that a sudden rush of people came and it still took me a couple of hours to complete a tawaf, and I would not be rewarded additionally for that. Yet God is gracious and presents us with opportunities that we repeatedly overlook from our shortsightedness. (9)

I found it difficult to concentrate whilst reciting Qur’an there, and would often repeat two or three particular supplications of the prophets that were important to me. I consoled myself thinking that there will be times when a situation itself precludes worship as one would desire, and in those times, being conscious of God may take on a different form, where you cling tightly to the core things that matter and continue to move – the devotion being in the movement itself. But in any case, I felt the loss, and wanted to use that time to recite what I had revised. I was thinking to myself that if only everyone were a little quieter and did not insist on chanting so loudly and in groups, I would be able to focus, as it is impossible to recite in such a melee. Just then, there was a slight lull in the din, and I heard the clear voice of a young man, reciting Qur’an with the sort of perfect tajwid that requires complete concentration, each letter distinctly articulated, each rule stringently applied. My breath caught in my throat while I listened. I thought: how silly I am – I want the melee to stop for me, but it is I who must to adapt to the melee.

(vii) As I was coming to the final turns, and walking towards the edge of the crowd, I reflected on how much nicer it was to walk there, in your own shadow. I was fascinated by my own shadow, and how it was so accurate, I could see myself perfectly in it; of course, it is me, and I am it. In the crowd, you cannot see your shadow - it becomes harder to reflect on yourself. But when you are in the crowd, you move with the crowd; little navigation is required. The crowd circumambulates, and it is your feet that move, but you are led around, you will not lose your way. And if you need support, it is easier to find; if you stumble, a hand will hold yours while you regain your balance. When you are at the periphery, you need your own compass, you must navigate yourself, you need to look intermittently at the ka’bah to make sure you don’t walk too far away, or your circle is not too distorted. It strikes me that this tension between the individual and communal is just like that – it is not that there is one or the other, but the recognition that there must be both. When you are in the crowd, whilst it is safer, you cannot think clearly; to not follow where you are led, rightly or wrongly, requires hard work, and may well be impossible. But when you are alone, if you are not constantly vigilant, constantly checking where you are in relation to the ka’bah, you may well go astray. The believer is aware in both states: she walks intentionally, with devotion, with the community and without it. She is tied to nobody, but flows with the believing community, never against them. She checks herself when she is with them, because she knows their presence cannot lift her personal accountability, and she checks herself against them when she is alone, because she knows that yadullah is with them. (10)

Toenotes

(1) As previous, excerpts here. 

(2) What makes me laugh about this still is that it was so unexpected – we were following the group, then we lost everyone, including L, and just continued walking and there it was. X had planned for a long time to have this moment with her husband – I was poor and unexpected replacement, the little sister of a friend of a friend, and we had only just ‘met’ earlier in the day, in the awful service station toilets (graded exposure leading up to Mina toilets) where we had a (possibly slightly odd, but normal for me) conversation in the toilet queue about my sister’s unsuccessful attempts to turn me into a theatregoer (uncultured cheapskate habits die hard), husbands being born in Bangladesh (hers not mine), and intersectionality (which in retrospect sounds pretty pretentious for a toilet conversation, but we needed to address the thorny issues of identity crises and institutional Islamophobia and suchlike to distract ourselves from the faecal stench).  

(3) I was reading up a bit about this in Abrahamic faiths, particularly Judaism, and came across this interesting article. (However, there are parts that are just so inaccurate and bizarre; it really makes me wonder about the sorts of things that can get published in academia. Sometimes I just wonder if I could pick an obscure topic and get published and become a professor without actually really knowing anything much at all).

(4) One of the recurrent themes that came up for me during hajj was that something not making sense to me does not make it nonsensical. There were so many things I didn’t understand (and still don’t), but real submission to God requires that despite this you submit. (This is why sh A is always, err, less than complimentary about the maqasid approach). When people say that worship must be undertaken and experienced, it is not from the books, they are correct. To teach acts of worship using a fiqh approach means that the core is overlooked, and it is the antithesis of how the Qur’an teaches. [Reminder to write up sh A’s views on this]. In any case, I am even more convinced that a relationship with God cannot reliably be constructed entirely through intellect alone, but must be pursued with acts of worship and experienced and ‘tasted’ (like the tasting of the divine words :)), and gradually things start to make sense, and you may come to understand some wisdoms. This is similar to virtues such as sabr and tawakkul which we all understand in some way, but to really understand must be acquired through practice and there is no alternative to this. 

(5) Regarding tawaf as a space for thinking and connecting with God in a different way, I think this is something to do with the ‘deep work’ that Cal Newport talks about. I felt I was in a state which facilitated the deep work on a reflective level, but very rapidly – I seemed not to have the difficulty in achieving that state that I usually do. I need to think about this properly at some time (your thoughts welcome) – my basic theory is that everything in the hajj itself is aimed to tip you slightly off balance, to make deep work easy, so you can understand how easy it is to slip into shallow work in your normal life (e.g. everyday ritual prayers), and then once you realise this difference, you can act to address this accordingly.

(6) This links to sh A's position of sajdah being only for God, and only ever having been commanded for God, and understanding the lam of verses in stories of Yusuf and Adam for ta'leel, although this is not the mainstream position.

(7) I am reminded of the story of Ibn Umar and the man who carried his mother on his back during tawaf, and asks him if he has repaid her. 

(8) For this we have to thank L, who came upon it accidentally one day, and I spent many a happy hour there later. I did feel slightly guilty that it said ‘no pedestrians’, but there was so much space, and I didn’t get in anyone’s way, and if anyone had asked me to leave, I would have done so immediately. We ask God to forgive us our trespasses (and you know how I am about trespassing, but this is even worse; it’s the thin end of the wedge of which the thick edge is al-kabaa'ir like highway robbery [for which you might end up crucified [5:33]] or parking in a disabled bay without a blue badge). Anyway, even on there, despite all the space, I couldn’t walk with a mushaf – I tried at one point but in my clumsy incompetence nearly tripped over someone sitting on the floor. After that I just stuck to reciting from memory and embraced the fact that I will never have a fraction of L’s talents, for she can read from her mushaf walking next to the ka’bah, find ways through impenetrable crowds, pick maggots with her bare hands, and has various other superpowers :)

(9) Something happened to me recently which reminded me of this. I was sitting at the back of a mosque in Istanbul while my friend (of three days) prayed salah, and my wandering gaze fell on the donation box on the side next to the misbaha tree. It occurred to me to take some money from my purse and put it into my pocket so I could pop it in unobtrusively on the way out. I thought of an amount taking into account how many liras I had, then wondered whether that was really appropriate considering it was less than what I would give in England. Ultimately, after some quick calculations, I decided I did not have enough money if I were to leave enough for a meal, potentially a taxi, and/or an emergency. I thought of the ayah: وَلَا تَجْعَلْ يَدَكَ مَغْلُولَةً إِلَىٰ عُنُقِكَ وَلَا تَبْسُطْهَا كُلَّ الْبَسْطِ فَتَقْعُدَ مَلُومًا مَّحْسُورًا - 17:29. I did feel some slight discomfort in my heart, but I convinced myself and put in the amount I was going to initially. What is both interesting and crucial to note here is that I genuinely had no problem with the amount of money in itself, and would not have cared to give many more multiples of that amount in another situation. The issue was that I didn’t have enough liras and I wasn’t sure if I could exchange the pounds I had or use a card (which I only keep for emergencies), so it was the matter of inconvenience for me. In any case, after a lovely evening (during which we never did find the Suleymaniye library!), my purse got lost/stolen (ok, stolen/stolen). In the subsequent unsought nocturnal adventure, my lovely friend, who spoke some Turkish and managed all communication with the shopkeepers, tram security guard and policemen, starred as undisputable heroine, calm and competent and just a gem – I could not have asked for a better companion (jazaha-llahu kheyra). Obviously, I was not happy about my purse and losing so much money and cancelling my card etc. (I’m not that great yet :)), but I read the du’a to be compensated with something better at the time knowing that I would be, and now I really believe that I have been already. I had been thinking for some time about spending in the path of God (and I was actually talking to her about this before we entered that very mosque!), and how I don’t really understand it very well, because it is hard to unlearn what we unconsciously absorb about charity, and to completely disconnect this issue of the amount of money (capitalism is pervasive, and so seductive) and perceived benefit to the other person (e.g. only recently I have come to understand the position of not giving interest money to 'charity'), . God says you cannot achieve al-birr until you spend of that which you love (3:92), and this does not necessarily make sense from a conventional ‘charity’ point of view. But this incident helped me understand that I ‘loved’ the equivalent of about £30 in liras more than I loved the £300 in pounds and euros. It seems counterintuitive, and this is the problem. The issue was not the amount of money, but what it represented - my tawakkul in the liras that I had to facilitate my affairs, at the expense of God, whose Beloved salAllahu alayhi wa sallam said – and he did not lie – that sadaqah did not decrease wealth. What was wrong was not that I did not spend enough money, but that I trusted the little money, and I had to be shown that this was not befitting a believer. The verse from al-Isra I used to justify my decision is followed by إِنَّ رَبَّكَ يَبْسُطُ الرِّزْقَ لِمَن يَشَاءُ وَيَقْدِرُ ۚ إِنَّهُ كَانَ بِعِبَادِهِ خَبِيرًا بَصِيرًا - 17:30  and it is this that I was unmindful of. So back to the link – God showed me that my money is not in fact ‘mine’, and whether I spend willingly or unwillingly, it can be taken from me. He gave me the opportunity to spend a little and be rewarded, but I didn’t, and then I lost much more than that and was not rewarded (and this is a reminder that even the inspiration of an inclination to do good is from God, yet often we ignore it and plough on in misguidance). I was forced to turn to God and depend on Him, when I could have chosen to do that from a position of nobility in the first instance. I wanted to use only my own money, but ultimately it was my friend’s money that both fed me and got me back to the hotel. Such is the way that God teaches. But even in that, I am mindful of His mercy, that He could have chosen to teach me in a much more difficult way, but I was protected from evil, and there was only relatively little inconvenience in comparison to the enormity of what I had to learn. 

(10) Explanation of the hadith here. 

Hajjnotes (1)

Bismillah -il-'rahmaan -il-'raheem

“This pilgrimage to the Holiest of Cities has been a unique experience for me, but one which has made me the recipient of numerous unexpected blessings beyond my wildest dreams.” (Malcolm X) (1)

Even though it’s not yet been a very long time,(2) what has surprised me somewhat since I returned from hajj is how quickly my memories blurred, and how glad I am now in retrospect that I even briefly noted down bits and pieces of what I was thinking at the time. (3) The intervening period has allowed some time for the thoughts to germinate, and occasionally, often in the most unlikely of places, a seed will suddenly sprout, or some link will forge itself, and flesh out an inchoate thought into something more coherent, and that is so helpful now that I no longer have the luxury of that instinctive and heightened sense of feeling that I had then, or even, regrettably, the ability to really recall what that was.

Quite fortuitously, I recently came across a lovely quote of Fanon that goes some way in describing how I feel about writing this, and how I was moved out of inertia to actually do it.

“The discovery of writing is certainly the most beautiful one, since it allows you to recall yourself, to present things that have happened in order, and above all to communicate with others even when they are absent” (4)

My primary interest with this particular piece of writing, selfishly I suppose, would be the first, but of course, the other reasons are there too. I’ll try to make it at least slightly beneficial in terms of including some points I’ve remembered from sh. A’s teaching when it’s relevant or I found it particularly helpful in shaping my perspective on a situation. (5)

On the gathering of people for Hajj

(i) It is said, “Ibrahim made a call.” And yet what a call, and what an acceptance from God. He called, and God facilitated the call, and so the people came, and came, and came, and come, and will come.

وَأَذِّن فِي النَّاسِ بِالْحَجِّ يَأْتُوكَ رِجَالًا وَعَلَىٰ كُلِّ ضَامِرٍ يَأْتِينَ مِن كُلِّ فَجٍّ عَمِيقٍ –22:27

I kept thinking of this verse. When I was young, I remember learning the meaning of fajj, and looking up the meaning in English, and then having to look up what a ravine was. That imagery has always stayed with me. When I first read Asad’s Road to Mecca many years ago, (6) I remember breathlessly reading the scene about the camels thundering past, and all I could think about was this verse. I have read that extract many times since – it is a beautifully written scene – and resonates all the more having done hajj. (It makes me smile in my heart until it spills out onto my face). I don’t recall seeing any camels during my hajj, but no doubt even now, parts of the journeys of some will have been made on camels, and many more on foot. Consider this: Ibrahim made a seemingly bizarre call in answer to God’s command, and God made all of this happen. All of this that you see around you happened because he submitted. Just because he submitted. Then what of you, unyielding, even whilst your nose is in the dust?

(ii) There is something that really must be witnessed in person, and is almost inexplicably overwhelming, about the sheer number of people that travel for hajj, and assemble in Makkah and the other sacred places.(7) Yet it is not merely, or even primarily, about the number, because in years past, certainly that number was much smaller, and yet I feel that the awe that I felt was shared by all those who came before me. Of course, there is something utterly unique about the reason all these people have gathered, and what they commemorate, and what they seek. But also, I think it is something to do with the number of people being - really and not just apparently - from not simply so many different places, but so many different backgrounds: the rich and poor, educated and illiterate, healthy and sickly, motivated and lazy, happy and grieving, observant and sinner; almost any distinction you could make between people, apart from that of believer and non-believer, is a distinction that, even if only temporarily, is shown to be meaningless, as it will ultimately be – and this is somehow perceived instinctively and completely within the very core of your being. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I would never meet people, together, from such a variety of backgrounds, on such a level of equality, in any other circumstance in my life. Of course, I meet people who are different to me all the time – I meet poor people, people who have no home or family, people who have never been to school, who can’t read and write, who had children at 13 years old, people who have experienced horrific trauma and circumstances one finds difficult to even imagine; I am even witness to their stories in the most intimate of ways. But whilst this happens in this country, there are always similarities between us; and of course, there is always the imbalance of power. They see me because I am their doctor; I see them because they are my patients; the wall is erect, invisible, permeable even at times, but ever present. (8) It is almost impossible, certainly if you live the conventional life, to meet people who are very different to you, and most importantly, I include in that, ‘different’ at a very fundamental level in how they view, engage with, and make sense of the world. This is notwithstanding the fact that  more people than ever in the West travel, including in the course of ‘volunteering’ or suchlike, and apparently have rather a lot of interaction with people who live seemingly different kinds of lives to their own. (9) Even performing umrah at any other time of the year cannot come close to the experience of hajj, because I am sure that the rich and local (and both are relative terms) are vastly over-represented. Much of the Muslim world could not even conceive of the possibility of a voluntary umrah, when the hajj itself remains a distant dream. For many, this will be the first, and perhaps only, time they will travel out of their country, and many others now in their old-age, have waited heart-achingly long years for this opportunity. It was simultaneously humbling and exhilarating: oh, I am part of this? Somehow – and I am not sure exactly how – I was whisked away in a ray of His mercy, and ended up here, with all these people, who are nothing like me and yet just like me. My people. The ummah who responded.

(iii) I read or heard somewhere before I went for hajj a reminder to think that every year without fail for over 1400 years, people from all over the world have been leaving their homes, and travelling for hajj. Despite all of the events that have happened in history, empires risen and fallen, wars fought and lost, massacres and famines, corpses buried and children borne - throughout all of this, the hajj remained: enduring, immutable, both transcending time and being necessarily of it. I thought about this a lot, often during tawaf or whilst walking to the jamaraat, when I had the opportunity to see the backs of people, what they wore and carried, and what that indicated about where they were from. Of course, there were people from every country I could imagine, places I could not even, to my shame, point to accurately on a map. Yet more than that even, there were people from Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, Palestine, Afghanistan, China; people who were hurting so much, so much, their very hearts riven, yet in spite of that, in the midst of all the pain and turmoil, had left their countries and travelled, only God knows really how, to be here, walking next to me. They had somehow understood something I hadn’t, something about the millah of Ibrahim, and that it had to be upheld, that the call is to be answered, that even in the most awful of circumstances, or perhaps certainly in the most awful of circumstances, God is to be turned to, to be travelled to, to be submitted to, absolutely. It made me think about things I have always taken for granted because they made intuitive sense from my experience, like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and realise that it was simply that – my flawed experience – that made me accept it unthinkingly and uncritically, and yet be so critical of the possibility of achieving the higher ground that Islam calls to, that is necessarily entailed in submitting completely to God, because I had never really seen this enacted, and possibly on some level have never really believed that it could be, by mere humans like me. Many of these people did not have security and food, yet desired something beyond self-actualisation! (may God give them what they desired and more). It is as if even now I read the names of cities stamped in blue on the long white burqas of the old Afghan ladies, read the names of cities on the dusty brown waistcoats of the men from Kurdistan, read the names of cities on the shawls of the women from Syria; read the names of cities I know only from the news, Kunduz and Kandahar, Suleymaniyah and Dohuk, Halab: cities of the believers, their people, noble in peace and war, unwavering, resolute, answering the call. My world is all upside down; everything is in disarray; what made sense no longer does, and what did not make sense now does. All I know for certain is that their Lord and my Lord is One. (10)

(iv) After completing the sa’y of umrah, I was trying to make my way back to the hotel, and due to a combination of various exits being blocked and my dire navigating skills, was unable to orientate myself in the crowd of people, and I found myself lost, having to take a long detour around the courtyard of the masjid. I was feeling tired and sad, and annoyed at myself for having ended up so far from where I wanted to be. I trudged along, weaving slowly between, and against, the flow of people, trying to get back to a landmark I recognised. Looking up, suddenly, I saw a very large group of African men, over a hundred I am certain, stretching backwards into the distance, in ihram, reciting the talbiyah loudly, walking towards one of the main doors of the masjid. Impossibly, as it seemed to me, as they filed forward, the huge crowd I was in appeared to part by itself in deference to this group. There was something so striking about this picture, this never-ending line of men surging forwards and the crowd parting to let them through, the white ihram against black skin, the talbiyah repeated, loud and exultant. I looked around me, and all around were people who had stopped to look. On my right, a young man who seemed to be from a Western country looked on in obvious awe. As the last few men of the group passed us, a charming little scene played out in front of me. The man next to me, as if unsure of how to respond in a fitting way to such a sight, finally put his hand up for a high-five; and even as he marched past, one of the men closest to us turned slightly and put his hand up in response. And as their palms met, their eyes met, and their smiles met, and I suppose, in some odd and beautiful way, their hearts met, bursting with joy. I thought: God must have willed for me to lose my way so that I could be here now and witness this.

(vi) Sometimes, the crowds were so large, and I would be bothered by the sheer number of people, that I couldn’t even carry out the movements of prayer properly, nor concentrate on my prayer; I could never really relax, and that would frustrate me. I would wonder whether this prayer could even be inferior to many others I had prayed at home, quietly, alone. Then I would remember that all of these people, and I amongst them, came to establish the prayer as we were commanded to, and that was the du’a of Ibrahim, that the prayer be established at the Sacred House. How pleased is God with all of them, even in their imperfection, and how He boasts to the angels about them.

Toenotes

(1) I know it seems ridiculously uninspired to start with Malcolm's hajj letter, but apt, so apt. I’m so glad that people wrote letters by hand then and posted them, so that 54 years later, I could read what he thought and felt and wrote just when he completed the hajj, and then I could feel everything I feel now, rahimahullah.  

(2) Nowhere near a year - how good am I?! Of course, it can’t be as good as me in person (nothing is :)), but I will imagine you sitting in your (/my?) room and having a small part of me there (but without actually stealing your bed) to make up for all the Frenchies and their, well, just Frenchiness I suppose. Anyway, I wasn’t entirely sure how best to do this, as I didn’t end up keeping a proper journal, but made some notes on my phone as I went along so I used those. Surprisingly, I’ve quite enjoyed writing it (ok, it was bittersweet – at some points I had to stop), and don’t think I would’ve got around to it for a long time if it weren’t for the not-quite-promise I had made to you (and a few other people) that I would write something, so jazakillah kheyra.

(3) Recently, I’ve had a few times where I’ve been really surprised by how unreliable memory is, particularly after The Awful-Squashing-Incident, and that I couldn’t really recall, accurately, even key parts of the sequence of events, and it was surprising to watch the recording (luckily, I wasn’t doing anything embarrassing like picking my nose). There is a whole very interesting area of study about memories and trauma. (I’m trying to be careful how I use the word ‘trauma’ but it’s really hard [I’m reading a really interesting book called The Empire of Trauma by Fassin and Rechtman {but I haven't got past the first chapter because there’s a lot of Foucault, and that’s ermm...really hard?}]).

(4) This is from the recently published ‘Alienation and Freedom’- 24 December 1953, no. 1. Memory and journal – The whole entry for that date is so interesting, profound even, and I just happened to hear the writing quote in a talk (on nothing to do with writing!), scribbled down a few words, and later looked it up, and then found the rest of it. Now of course I need to buy the book, and it’s far cheaper than I expected on Amazon. But how does one justify that – how does one justify breaking the commitment to only buy books in emergencies; to read all the important unread books one has already bought first; to spend more time with the Qur’an and less with Fanon (thanks Mohamed Ghilan); to not let Fanon influence me too much because of recent experiences and how much he resonates, and to remember I strive for something even higher, even against my own will and pride? How does one justify that? (But actually, I need to read it at some point soon just to understand how to make sense of his psychiatric practice - some of the bits and pieces I’ve read are so fascinating, and of course, there is all the delightful inconsistency… [but perhaps not too soon or I might make some rash decisions and be left destitute]). Anyway, I’ve been thinking about Fanon, and especially of how he died at 36, and of Malcolm X dying at 39. You know that slightly surreal feeling when you’re reading the introduction to a book and just idly work out how old the author must have been at the time they wrote it, and then suddenly remember how old you are and feel so, so, sad? I remember when I was a teenager and read that sh Abdul Hayy Lucknawi died when he was 38-39 and it still seemed a bit old, but now it seems almost incomprehensible to my mind that someone could die at that age and have achieved so much, and such a dispiriting reminder of my own failings :( (perhaps I’ll have to try and find lots of books written by old people to make me feel better [or maybe that’s not quite the way I should be approaching this problem? {maybe I am the problem..?}]).

(5) What is slightly annoying here is that there will be things I will have to paraphrase as I can’t remember where it was in my notes, and I haven’t figured out a way to efficiently code and cross-reference hand-written notes, so you will have to overlook that. If I come across things later, I’ll try to link back to the relevant references, but I’m pretty sure that will not happen any time in the near future. In the meantime, if I put a reference to the class, it’s from him (ish), but if not, I’ve just remembered it from somewhere and can’t guarantee its accuracy (obviously in that case I’ll try not to say anything spectacularly controversial [e.g. about qira’at!]). Also, I might just put link reminders for myself when I can’t be bothered to articulate the whole thing in writing, so if you’re interested in what it means, remind me at some point.

(6) You can read some nice excerpts here. I only got round to re-reading the final chapters before hajj, but I really need a nice cozy Sunday afternoon-evening with some tea and biscuits just to sit down and read the whole book properly because I can’t even remember all the exciting things that happened, and often his writing is just exquisite, it’s actually a pleasure to read.

(7) This makes me smile, because I actually began writing it a while ago, and then Sh A was teaching about balaghah and how the jahili poets observed things and then described them so well that even if you had no experience of that thing, it were as if you did (I think he was talking about the line from the mu’allaqah of Imra’u-l-qays which really impressed him about the dung of deer ترى بَعَرَ الأرْآمِ في عَرَصاتِها*  وقيعانها كأنه حبَّ فلفل ). He said how most people are very different, they see but don’t observe, e.g. if you ask them about hajj, the first thing they will say is how there so many people. I felt so uncomfortable and thought he must be talking about people like me because those are actually the first words that come to my lips whenever anyone asks me about hajj! I felt like a little girl again, when my dad would tell me whenever I asked a question which he thought (with his Big-Adult-Brain) I ought to be able to work out myself, that I was just like Watson whereas I should try to be like Sherlock Holmes, “You see, but you don’t observe.” (I’m wondering whether it is less unattainable to aim to be like Sherlock Holmes [who may well be fictional but was based on a surgeon, so a tenuous link {must improve my clinical acumen}], or a jahili poet [who may as well be fictional considering I can barely even understand a hemistich {must learn to notice animal excrement on the floor and make similes with spices in rhyming verse}]).

(8) The wall is, of course, amongst other things, a psychological defence. (But then what is the minimum thickness required and how to determine the variables involved in this decision?) There is a really-interesting-for-medics but also readable-for-an-average-person book called Also Human (The inner lives of doctors) by Caroline Elton, an occupational psychologist which addresses some of this, and has reminded me of this quote from William Osler in Aequanimitas: “Deal gently then with this deliciously credulous old human nature in which we work, and restrain your indignation…Curious, odd compounds are these fellow-creatures, at whose mercy you will be full of fads and eccentricities, of whims and fancies; but the more closely we study their little foibles of one sort and another in the inner life which we see, the more surely is the conviction borne in upon us of the likeness of their weaknesses to our own. The similarity would be intolerable, if a happy egotism did not often render us forgetful of it. Hence the need of an infinite patience and of an ever-tender charity toward these fellow-creatures; have they not to exercise the same toward us?” (I never fail to be surprised by how wise everyone seems to have been even one or two hundred years ago [he describes sabr and hilm so well], whereas now we’re all just mainly stupid).

(9) Here is Ivan Illich telling it how it is in To Hell with Good Intentions (If I haven’t told you about him before, you will love his mind to bits – look up some of his work on modern medicine and education)

(10) Malcolm X in his letter from hajj: "You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth."