Haj Reflections Day 4:

A riot of color in Mina

By Siraj Wahab

Arab News, 12 Dhul Hijja, 1429, December 10, 2008

PICTURE OF HAPPINESS:

Having performed some of the most challenging rituals, smiles return to pilgrims’ faces (AN photo by Mohammed Ali)  

The color returned to Haj yesterday. Mina is still an overwhelmingly “white” city due to the Haj tents but now everyone is wearing their national dress and it is a vibrant mix. On Monday the pilgrims were exhausted after a night in the rough at Muzdalifah, followed by the rituals of stoning and sacrifice and then the “Tawaf Al-Ifadah.” By 10 o’clock yesterday morning the pilgrims were awake and preparing for the second day of the stoning at the Jamrat. Many could be seen greeting acquaintances outside their tents, hugging each other.

It is always so amusing to see the once white clad crowd burst into color. The tall Afghans with their somber black turbans could be found walking beside Africans wearing the brightest reds and blues. The Malaysians gathered close together in ordered groups to walk to the Jamrat complex. In one group they all wore saffron colored ribbons for identification. The Qataris came to the Jamrat in their traditional formation. They placed all the women in the group in the center and then the men formed a circle around them. The men and women moved forward under their leader's direction in measured steps. Almost every man in Mina was wearing some sort of covering on his shaven head. This could be anything from a modern baseball cap to ethnic specialties such as the topi, karakuli and of course ghutra and shamagh.

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The problem of lost pilgrims continues and it is important to emphasize that it is not only the illiterate, inexperienced travelers who get lost at Haj. Once again Arab News had to take on the role of boy scout and it was a frustrating experience. Dr. Zahoor Raja, an American of Pakistani origin, who currently lives in New York, stopped me in the street. Due to my green vest he realized that I was a member of the media. He insisted that I must help him locate his camp at Mina. I was reluctant to get involved as I might mislead him, but he was so desperate that I decided to drop him off with the boy scouts and hope they would get him to his tent. The good doctor had gotten himself into trouble by breaking one of the cardinal rules of the pilgrimage — he went off to the Jamrat without his group. He discovered that his group wasn't planning to stone the Jamrat on Monday until late afternoon. Being quite fit, he decided that he would proceed without them. So he left for the Jamrat complex at 9:30 in the morning and after finishing the stoning, he proceeded to the Grand Mosque in Makkah. Then he took a taxi back to Mina early in the afternoon and that was when things began to go badly wrong. In the whiteness of Mina, he couldn't find his camp. He actually found several missing person’s centers but since none of the volunteers there spoke any English or Urdu, they couldn't really help him.

“I found several centers for lost pilgrims and they gave me water and juice. That was nice but it wasn’t what I needed. I needed to know the location of Camp 41. That’s all,” said Raja in exasperation. He had lost his sandals in Makkah and had been walking for hours in his bare feet. It was 10 p.m., and at 71 years of age, the strain was too much. He sat down on the pavement beside me and begged me to flag down an ambulance. I advised him that this would be a poor choice since he would end up in a hospital instead of in his camp. Finally, I convinced him to go with me to one of the lost pilgrims’ centers. There we discovered the root of all his problems. A map showed several Camp 41s. Pilgrims are divided by nationality. Many national areas had a Camp 41! The boy scouts had been assuming that Raja was a Pakistani when in fact he was an American. This had resulted in his being sent several times to South Asian Camp 41. The American Camp 41 was on the opposite side of Mina from the South Asian one where he was stranded. A boy scout from Safa in the Eastern Province, Ahmed Ali Al-Khalaf, kindly pushed Raja in a wheelchair to the Arab News tent where I was able to put him on the back of my moped and drive him to the American Camp 41. Even once we arrived he couldn't believe he had found the way back to his temporary home, but he was sure it was the right one due to the green balloon floating overhead. Delighted, he invited me to come and drink a cup of tea with his family. Then we hit a small snag. “Please don't tell my wife that I was lost,” he implored. “She told me not to go off alone, that I wouldn't be able to find my way back. I'll never hear the end of it if she discovers that she was right!” Let’s hope Raja's family doesn't read Arab News today.

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Lost or perhaps missing would be the better term for the traditional Haj traders, who are nowhere to be found in Mina this year. In the past, as soon as the pilgrims were released from ihram, many would set up “shop” just off the main streets of the tent city. Now the authorities have made it very clear that such activity is illegal. This doesn't mean that nothing is sold in Mina. But it requires a license to set up a proper shop here and those licenses were sold at a premium.

A visitor to a stand in Mina selling cool drinks, fruit and snacks found that every item was sold at double the price in downtown Makkah.

“Pilgrims think we are making a killing selling water or soda for SR2 but the truth is that we had to pay a lot of money for the license to sell here and we hope that we can at least cover our costs,” said the manager of the refreshment stand. “We have to employ four people from Makkah at 1,200 riyals each to run this operation for five days. Plus we have to struggle to replenish our supplies daily. If we are lucky we will make a small profit.”

Two riyals for a cool drink might not sound like a lot, but for many poor pilgrims that amount is out of the question. All the pilgrims calculate the costs during Haj in their home currencies and for many, those costs are rising daily. A cup of tea or a soda in Mina might cost as much as a meal back home. With economic worries looming large, the pilgrims just can't justify the expense so they do without. Perhaps the authorities should reconsider the licensing fees for commercial operations in Mina with a provision that foodstuffs cannot be sold at a price higher than in the Makkah market. This would certainly be a benefit to all pilgrims who already pay large sums to come to the Kingdom for Haj.