The Turning of Arrival

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I fell in behind my fellow pilgrim, Mohamad Mardini, as we climbed Umm al-Qura Road. At the top of the rise, where the street was closed to cars, five thousand people moved up the pavement. Reaching the crest, I came up on my toes. Everyone knew what was down there, glowing at the bottom of the valley: the largest open-air temple in the world.

Soon I was being introduced to a Saudi guide named Shaykh Ibrahim, a professor of hadith at the local university. I asked him, twice, what the Prophet had said about the mosque. Finally he said, "Just remember: the Ka'ba is a sacred building. But not so sacred as the people who surround it." Pointing to the ground, he made a circle with his finger.

"Whatever you do here, don't hurt anyone, not even accidentally. We are going to perform the Umra now. We will greet the mosque, circle the shrine, walk seven times between the hills, like Hagar. Think of it as a pilgrim's dress rehearsal. Don't rush, don't push. Take it easy. Get out of the way if anyone acts wild. If you harm someone, our performance might not be acceptable. You might do it for nothing."

the tawaf 

The core of the mosque at Mecca is an open, roofless forum overlooked by tiered arcades. The marble floor is 560 feet on the long sides, 350 feet wide, and polished to the whiteness of an ice rink. At the center of this hub stands the Ka'ba, a four-story cube of rough granite covered in a black embroidered veil. This monolith is Islam's most sacred shrine.

The first sight of the shrine was stunning. Men wept and muttered verses where they stood. Women leaned against columns, crying the rarest sort of tears-of safe arrival, answered prayers, gratified desire. A ring of pilgrims 10 rows deep circled the shrine, forming a revolving band of several thousand people. Each hajji began at the Black Stone and circled the Ka'ba counterclockwise. This ritual,called Tawaf al-Qudum ( "the Turning of Arrival") is expected of every visitor to Mecca. From a distance, the wheeling pilgrims obscured its base, so that for a moment the block itself appeared to be revolving on its axis. I noticed wooden litters passing, bearing pilgrims weakened by age or illness. These pallets marked the circle's outer edges. As we came nearer, the shrine increased dramatically in size. On the edge of the ring, we adjusted our ihrams (two lengths of unstitched cotton cloth worn by men) and raised our hands to salute the stone. Then we joined the circle.

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