A Tale of 2 Holy Trips!

A muslim is supposed to perform the holy pilgrimage at least once in his lifetime, free from all debt and obligations, sponsored by himself and when he’s old enough to understand the significance of it and perform all the rites in order and with the correct intentions.

I have had the honour of performing this trip twice in my thirty year old life and the 2 trips could not have been more apart.

Trip 1:

Sheikh Adil Hussain is 17 years old, studying at The Cambridge High School in Dubai UAE. The year is 1998 and the month is April. Adil has been in a relationship with a nice, sweet girl (who will remain unnamed for reasons you all know too well J ) for about a year now. It had all started off when the 2 had hit it off at the junior school prom a year earlier, the senior prom was 2 weeks away and this would be their chance to celebrate the anniversary in style. This time, there would be no going as stags and hoping for a good time, this time there was the anticipation of a special evening. Discussions on the dress and modes of transport had started when the bombshell fell.

Enter Mom: “beta you’re going to Saudi with me for Hajj in 2 days”

Adil: ________________________

That’s right I was speechless! How could this happen to me? How could I miss the senior prom? How could I miss this special moment we were going to share together? Boo hoo boo hoo, much sobbing and whining later, I still ended up boarding the bus from Shah Faisal mosque in Sharjah bound for that most holy of trips…..the Hajj.

My parents had duped me into going along by keeping me in the dark till the very end. The reason for this deception was that my dad couldn't take off from work and my mom needed a mahram to go with her. Its then that I realized that the injection I had received a week or so earlier was for this purpose. My mid term spring break which I was going to remember forever was slipping away from me. Turned out, that I still remember it but for entirely different reasons.

The trip itself was a blur, I fell ill almost immediately and when I say ill, I mean seriously ill. All I recall are endless roads, bad food and smelly toilets at our pit stops and me not being able to even sit up straight. Oh and did I mention witnessing the death of an elderly woman on the sidewalk next to us on the morning after Arafat and Muzdalfah? The irony was that everyone around thought it was the best thing that could happen to anyone, dying during Hajj, guaranteed eternal bliss and a one way ticket to heaven.

I came back seriously depleted in weight and with no hair on my head, I cut a sore sight. The first comment I received was not a “Mubarak ho” but “you look like you’re strung up by a hanger”.

I promptly went back home and instead of sleeping saw “Pyar kiya to darna kya” (the latest release from Salman Khan and Kajol) and then received congratulations on performing Hajj from my cousins at an Awaz concert 2 days later. Clearly I had had my sins forgiven and come back reinvigorated!!!! Yeah right.

Trip 2:

Sheikh Adil Hussain has now matured and is a 29 year old man with some modest accomplishments behind him. He is spiritually and religiously more inclined than he was previously following the influence of a close friend and an awakening back in 2005. The year now is 2010 and the month is October. Adil has just paid off all his loans and is now debt free. He is somehow able to muster up just enough to take him, his wife, both his parents and his thus far single younger sister for Hajj the following month.



Saba, his wife has gone to Karachi ahead of Adil as they will leave from there for Saudi as Hajj was a wee bit too expensive to go on from Dubai (40,000 dhs vs. 13,000 dhs per head). By this time, the couple also had the good news that they were expecting so there was a sense of peace and accomplishment in the air. Everything was going well and in the right direction, life was panning out the way it was supposed to.

Yes, predictably another bombshell. (Come on, admit it, you knew there was one coming right?)  I receive a call in the middle of the night that Saba has felt a serious pain and has been taken to hospital where she’ll be operated on immediately. I was supposed to fly 3 days later, however, upon hearing this, quickly took a flight for the following day.

I went straight to the hospital and by her bedside, once satisfied that she was okay I let the news of us no longer being parents sink in. There would be bigger decisions to make pretty soon. Saba’s grandmother (henceforth known as nano) started crying and resigned herself to the fact that we were the victims of someone’s evil eye. Saba lost her child and would no longer be going for Hajj as well, sob sob. Saba’s mom was also feeling sad but keeping up a strong front. I on the other hand was stuck in the middle of it all and for some reason or the other didn’t for once think that Saba would not be going with us. It was the same kind of feeling I had when Benazir got shot and we were to get married the next day and everyone wanted to call it off whereas I was intent on going through with it. I tried to calm everyone down and said, we’ll see what the doctor says. There was still a week for us to go.



A little before this, out of nowhere, my younger sister also got married in late Sep and promptly pulled out of the trip as well (it obviously wasn’t as simple as that, but lets leave that for another blog). For her, we managed to get almost a full refund, however, now at this late juncture, getting the cost of Saba’s trip back would’ve been a challenge. Saba will tell you that this was my only motivation to make sure that she went along on the trip J. Well, that wasn't entirely true.....

The doctor said Saba needed complete bed rest for a week and would need a further 2 weeks of more rest vs. activity. I said perfect, because, Hajj itself was a good 4 weeks away however, we were going earlier to be able to go to Madinah as well. Somehow I convinced everyone around that she would go with us and we’d take her in a wheelchair.



People actually asked if she was "Masoom" meaning retarded  :-)



Can’t say it was a cakewalk but boy am I glad she went along. It turned out to be a truly divine experience and there were certainly moments that I felt the closest I have ever felt to Allah. Saba recuperated well after the initial 16 hour arduous journey of getting to Makkah, and then used to look forward to our trips to the grand mosque.

On one of the first tawafs I was taking Saba through, I cut an old man’s foot from behind with the wheel chair, purely unintentional but I was being a bit cavalier with my driving. The guilt was so immense that I actually did a whole tawaf for that man not knowing whether he was able to complete his or not. I still ask for his forgiveness in my prayers.



Other highlights included the al Baik trips and the 9 hours it took for us to get to Madinah, otherwise a 40 minute drive. My mom saying “humain nahi jaana” like a kid when asked to vacate the back seat in the bus knowing that was the only seat she could stretch her legs out on. Arriving in the wee hours of night at our so called hotel in Madinah and being blocked by a qaflah from Ivory Coast, who had been informed late that they had to vacate the premises to make way for us.

Bed bugs in the hotel beds, tikka from the Paki restaurant, losing our luggage on our way back from Arafat and Muzdalfah, the mad dash for a clean toilet in one of the road side clinics and most of all going through a sea of people twice knowing that one misplaced step could lead to a stampede. The trip sure was churning out its fair share of memories.



On the night of Muzdalfah



Once the actual Hajj started, our camp at Mina ran out of water, we didn’t get any bed space inside the tents which were supposed to have air conditioning, so were forced to stay outside, which turned out to be a blessing as it was stuffier inside. We avoided eating or drinking much so that we wouldn’t have to go to the toilets, which was a fair way off as we had to go to the next door camp.

I have to say that the time we spent at Arafat was probably the most meaningful for me personally as I really felt connected. I started to read the dua in one of our books which was in Urdu and then suddenly was prompted by a few guys in the group to read aloud so that they could take part as well. I swear I have never read so much Urdu so fluently without mistakes as I did that day, and somehow the words evoked emotions of guilt and true submission at the life I had led before then. Such that tears started rolling freely and I started to pause to allow for genuine sobs. It is said that if you can truly ask for forgiveness from the bottom of your heart at Arafat, your Hajj is done, and I would like to think that this is what happened with me.

Numerous other such moments, but the proudest of all was knowing that Allah had made me able to provide this for my parents and given me another chance to do it the right way. Can’t thank the Supreme Being enough for that opportunity and for letting us come back safely.



My Parents



Moral of the story: there is none; just that we all go through different phases in our life and we feel and react differently to the same things during those phases.

Later,

Shaku