In the Land of Invisible Women (21 page)

BETWEEN THE DEVIL
AND THE RED SEA

M
ORNING CAME, AND WE HAD returned to Mina, preparing for the final rites of Hajj. Refreshments had just been served. Haneefa, the shyest maid of all, stood to the side, uncomfortable to be the center of the conversation.

“You know, Doctora,” began Rashida excitedly, “Haneefa is a Hafiz! Hafiz-al-Quran, no less!” I was amazed. Hafiz is the title given to one who has memorized the Quran perfectly. The entire book is committed to memory and was so transmitted for many years at the dawn of Islam. Memorization was the only way the revealed word of God was preserved and transmitted unchanged, before scribes began to record the words verbatim which remained, unchanged now, more than 1,400 years later.

“How old are you, Haneefa?” I asked, guessing she couldn't be older than twenty.

Rashida translated for both of us as we talked. “I am fifteen, Doctora Qanta, going to be sixteen next month, Inshallah,” she responded.

“So how did you become Hafiz at such a young age?” I asked, puzzled. The only Hafiz I had ever known was my own ninety-year-old grandfather, though I was unsure at what age he had mastered the holy book.

“I studied here in Mecca, at the Madrassah (Islamic school). My father is an Imam there, and he taught me to read. It was easy for me, Alhumdullilah, and with the Grace of God, I became a Hafiz one year ago!” She was unable to conceal her pure joy at her sole but rather staggering accomplishment.

“Prove it to me, Haneefa,” I challenged rudely, unable to believe what I was hearing.

Rashida said, “Here, Doctora, take this Quran and read any passage. Haneefa can recite the words which follow without looking. We do this to her all the time, to see if she ever makes a mistake, but she doesn't! She is amazing!”

In disbelief, I opened the Quran at a random page and chose a verse which was at least unknown to me (and of these there are many). I began reading, hoping my Arabic didn't sound too uneducated.

“Mashallah, you read Arabic well,” encouraged Rashida generously. Now I knew I must be sounding dreadful, but the words nevertheless were beautiful. Mid-sentence, without warning, I stopped and looked up.

Haneefa had been following me intently, mouthing the words in time to my spoken ones. As soon as I stopped enunciating, she took over and began to recite aloud. My fingers followed the words in the Quran. Haneefa's eyes were closed in concentration by now, and even so there was no way even with eyes open that she could have made out the tiny print from which I was reading. I knew she recited from memory. For pages and pages she recited the Quran perfectly—every word, accent, pause, emphasis, and punctuation. I allowed her to continue for fifteen minutes. I was incredulous.

“Mashallah, Mashallah, Haneefa please stop. You are indeed a Hafiz. I should never have questioned you,” and I went on apologizing. “But this is fantastic,” I went on. “You are such a scholar so learned. What will you do with this knowledge?”

“Be a better Muslim, Doctora Qanta,” she responded without hesitation.

“And marry a very good man, Doctora!” boomed Rashida, roaring with laughter.

I looked at Rashida quizzically.

“It is very desirable to marry a woman who has memorized the Quran. This will help Haneefa in a match.” Haneefa was now shrinking in embarrassment, burying her chin into her chest and hiding her eyes from all of us. “You know we are all very poor ladies, Doctora. We cannot be like you, independent, earning money, making our own destinies. We admire you, truly Doctora, but this is not our destiny; Allah did not choose this for us,” explained Rashida practically, not the least inflection of self-pity in her voice.

Haneefa and I were worlds apart, yet somehow in Saudi Arabia she did not deserve what I had accepted as a birthright—the freedom to seek an education. I was learning a surprising amount about the Kingdom by being at Hajj. The women I worked with in Riyadh clearly were the privileged and moneyed. These women in Mecca were more representative of the growing underbelly of the lower classes in the Kingdom, the poor strata where oil wealth passed them by. In a society where connections and pedigree are everything, nothing could ever draw them out of their circumstances.

In the afternoon I would find myself quite literally between the Devil and the Red Sea. The most hazardous of the Hajj rites was later today. Soon the time came for the ritual stoning of the three stone pillars at Jamaraat. Muslims believe in good and evil and recognize Satan to be Iblis, the fallen one of God's angels who was too defiant to bow to Adam in acknowledgment of mankind's inherent ability to distinguish good from evil. This defiance earned him expulsion from heaven, doomed to perpetual scorn, which fuels his wickedness further. Muslims must be vigilant of the temptations the Devil may place in efforts to impede sincere progress toward spending a life in good works and worship of the Devil's nemesis: the Creator. The stoning rituals at Jamaraat (where pilgrims symbolically throw tiny stones at three pillars representing the devil) are an opportunity to enact this active repulsion of evil that all Muslims must exercise in their daily jihad of self-improvement.
¹⁰

I approached the pillars on an enormous causeway that split into a two-level road bearing a million men on each level. Underfoot I walked on a river of human hair discarded from newly shorn Hajjis who had completed this ritual earlier that afternoon. Hajji is an honorific title for a man who has completed Hajj, which he can use for the rest of his life. Females who have completed Hajj are called Hajjas. Along the roadside, pilgrim-barbers squatted, shearing scalps of hair, symbolizing the spiritual rebirth of each male Muslim who had completed Hajj.

Clutching my tiny stones, which I had collected in Mina, I approached the maelstrom. The crowds were terrible, focused on the giant pillars; behind me people bore down with incredible force. I raised my arm to throw a stone. To my side, a short Afghani pilgrim suddenly bent down, grabbing his shoe and, leaning backward at a crazy angle, tossed it with all his force. In doing so, he promptly poked me in my forehead with his sharp elbow. I was a little stunned, almost seeing stars. He proceeded to remove his other shoe and throw that too, all the while shouting vicious “Allah hu Akbars!” full of scorn at the Devil, redoubling the intensity of his efforts. It seemed he had finished his stones and both his shoes but was not done with his scorn. After standing around in a minor daze himself, he turned around. A little deflated, he pushed passed me, transiently locking my gaze with his brilliantly green eyes.

I tried to throw my stones again. This time a small Indonesian woman shrieking at full volume knocked my sunglasses hard at the side of my face with the recoil of her swing. I touched my smarting nose, which was now bleeding from the bump. I wondered if the bleeding had violated my Ihram, but as it was an accident, I hoped not. Gripping my eyeglasses with one hand and my stones in the other, I began. My throws were most certainly gestures; barely any of them actually reached the pockmarked stone pillar, testament to my feeble bat-and-ball skills. Still, as I counted the throws, I couldn't believe the pandemonium around me. I wanted to get out as soon as possible.

For one, the pillar seemed to be soaking in rain. I looked hard, noting the brilliant sunshine beyond the covered asphalt. In the sunlight, the bulldozers were rumbling away moving some form of debris. There was no sign of rain but when I looked at the pillar it was covered in an incessant gray drizzle. Upward, the pillar was disappearing in a black sky of fine spray. Finally I realized this was the downpour of stones! A monsoon of pebbles was raining through the upper circular hole where another ten thousand or so pilgrims were now pressed forward, just like us, striving to complete their rituals. Intermittently the monsoon released bursts of footwear that flew through the stone torrent.

I moved closer to the waist-high wall encircling the pillar, which guarded pilgrims from falling in. Below, a huge mountain of pebbles rose up, almost to the edge of the wall. If I had been fool enough to lean in, I could probably grab a handful of the stones from here. They were collected around the base of the pillar and spilling into a funnel-shaped basin that was being scooped out by more heavy machinery. As we moved away in the distance toward the next two pillars, I could see more bulldozers pushing the pebbles into giant mountains of stones. The millions of stones (each no bigger than a large pea) thrown by the pilgrims had formed a staggering collection.

At last we completed the stoning at all three pillars and we turned back triumphantly to the tent. I began to allow myself the euphoria of a completed Hajj. On the way back with Rashida and Haneefa who had accompanied me to ensure our safety, Randa and I argued about who would cut locks from each other's hair. Returning to the tent, Rula (the youngest Saudi teenager in our group) announced my arrival to the others.

“Hajja Qanta, mabrook!” (Congratulations!) She smiled, the first to bestow the honorific title of Hajja on me. She and I burst out with laughter, and the Saudi matrons nodded a warm approval. Randa rushed up to me and, lifting the veil from my head, eased out my very short hair from the nape of my neck. With sewing scissors made in Sheffield, she sliced away a lock, wishing me “Mabrook!” Now we could celebrate Eid: Eid Ul Addha, the major festival on the Islamic calendar that celebrates the end of Hajj. It was time for sheep shopping!

In Mina, over a million head of cattle: camel, Australian sheep, and goats were already being slaughtered in the giant abattoirs specially built for this purpose. This was in memory of the original sacrifice of the ram by Abraham. Nowadays, the colossal volumes of meat are immediately frozen and loaded into hundreds of jets idling on Jeddah runways that transport the meat to share with the poorest Muslims around the world. Rashida would be preparing goat or lamb today for sure.

Rula handed me a piece of paper from a pile she had been distributing throughout the tent. I read it carefully and realized this was my receipt for the proxy sacrifice of a sheep in my name. The sacrifice had to be by proxy because only Muslim men can sacrifice animals, women being excused from this difficult task. Most Muslims at Hajj, because of its sheer scale, have to relinquish this task to the hundreds of professional Saudi butchers who were specially flown in from all over the Kingdom for the final days of the religious event.

Decades earlier, Muslims came complete with convoys of animals they would later sacrifice, but the proximity of animals and dense crowds had produced tremendous health hazards, and the practice had been stopped. In place, a monumental operation of choreographed sacrificial killing now occurs in clean, refrigerated factories. Here, with industrial precision, male animals, whether camel or sheep or goats, are lain on their sides by a Muslim butcher and immediately sacrificed with one swipe of a very sharp blade to the animal's throat as the butcher calls “Allah hu Akbar!” All blood must drain immediately from the animal for the meat to be considered halal.

I studied the receipt. It documented my name and the date of my Hajj. Meat from a whole sheep had been distributed to someone who needed this assistance. I had probably fed several families for $100. I placed it carefully in my bag and for many months would keep it on a notice board at my home, more proud of this certification than any other credential.

Now that Hajj was over, I could finally take a full shower, something I had been looking forward to for days. I gathered my items, leaving my smiling companions, and went straight to the showers to refresh myself. But inside I already felt new!

Later that evening I made the final visit to the Ka'aba before I would leave Mecca. After completing the penultimate ritual of Hajj, the Sai'e which entailed rushing seven times between the hills of al-Safa and al-Marwa which symbolized Hagar's desperate search for water, it was time to make the final Tawafs. Tearing myself away from these final prayers in the Masjid al-Haram, I drank in the view of the mysterious Ka'aba and prayed for a speedy return.