Live from Saudi Arabia - Of Rituals, Other People’s Prayers, and what pilgrimage's all about (yep, all in one post)

Just back from Umrah, the minor pilgrimage to Mecca - and minor it truly is: it takes roughly 2 hours.
I am writing a second entry, about random aspects of life in Saudi (and plenty of photos!!) which I will post soon, but for now I ask you to kindly bear with today's somewhat more 'spiritual' entry...


I have been to Mecca a few times (well I do need to make up for my numerous vices, so...) and I usually enjoy performing the religious rituals of Umrah and Hajj. First because I'm usually accompanied by family, and it’s nice to share that experience, and of course for the religious value of it, a subject I surely won't address here.

But I have always been skeptical about the purpose of the rituals themselves. Why do we walk around the Kaaba - a block of brick that was built and rebuilt several times over the course of history - seven times, counterclockwise? What’s the deal with the Black Stone? Etc.

Skepticism is an old tradition in Islam - Omar Ibn El Khattab, Islam’s second caliph (3rd ruler, hence!) is recorded to have smirked at this whole ‘Black Stone’ business, and have said, addressing the stone - “I know that you’re nothing but a deaf and mute stone, and can do no harm or good; and had I not seen the Prophet kiss you, I would never have”.

Knowing Omar’s fiery temper, I’d bet much that he probably cursed, too, but historians wouldn’t report it... Oh well.

Omar had wifi in his tent. (found this when I googled his name...)

I realised today that rituals only serve insofar as they are just that: ’rituals’. No logical direct good can come as a repercussion for standing there or doing this.

The ritual, however, serves to focus this religious energy on something. Like your first love as a teenager - you just ‘had all that love to give’ and needed a personification for it, and you came up with that 12th grade hottie who doesn’t even know you exist yet haunted your diary and dreams. Well, pretty much the same here.

More importantly, its purpose is to provide a ‘Qibla’, which you may know as referring to ‘Mecca’ (because it’s what we pray towards) but linguistically simply means ‘target or concentration zone’ . (hence, you can say that Washington DC is the qibla for people who want to work in national politics, for example).

A shared qibla. And it is there that people from everywhere, meet to pray to the same God, to repeat the same moves, the same words, the same prayers of health and happiness and heaven.

Watching the Kaaba, and the crowds
(ya Balconera! This one's for you!)

I think that was God’s plan. He probably doesn’t care much whether we turn counterclockwise or hop on one foot. It’s about us coming together. That’s the beauty of the pilgrimage.

It’s not the Kaaba, it’s the people. Not the prayers, but those who utter them.
Not the accents, but the thoughts in a thousand languages behind them.
Not the verses sang in Arabic, but the heartfelt, nondescript, haphazard prayers in Urdu, Farsi, English, Turkish, or rural Algerian, sharing their love - or sometimes, anger - at God, or simply asking for happiness, a good job or a promotion, forgiveness, winning the lottery or the football cup, or something else altogether.

My pilgrimage is about them.

About the group of elderly Turks, with one person reading the prayers aloud in a slow, accented Arabic, with the others repeating.

The Syrian woman, who, dressed all-in-white, sports fluffy pink socks.

The Indonesian group - color-coded, as always. Today’s were checkered in white, black and red.

The child in his pilgrimage outfit, running against the crowd to skid on the shiny marble, laughing.

The Pakistani woman, sitting on the floor, lifting her hands up to the sky and praying, while her adorable but incredibly pesky 4-year old is whining and grabbing her fingers.

The Egyptian couple, from the rural south, holding tight to the perfumed cover of the Kaaba and weeping their prayers.

And - always, thank you God - that incredibly, incredibly beautiful Afghani green-eyed woman who makes you skip a breath.

This is what I believe in. This is, in large part, why I keep coming back - to eavesdrop on other people’s prayers. Which make me, I think - I hope - a better man.

Outside of the Kaaba complex

The Safa and Marwah walkway - part of the ritual of Hajj and Umrah is to walk that path, attributed to Hajar - Ibrahim (Abraham)'s second wife, mother of Ismail (Ishmael), and our great-great-granny (for Arabs, that is).