Laughing All the Way to the Mosque

by Zarqa Nawaz

  “Did she get the videos I sent her?” asked the vendor anxiously.

  “Yes, she did, and here’s the list of what she wants now.” I pointed out the items for him. “Send her Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Given her tastes, she’ll probably like that one.”

  The vendor thanked us profusely and pushed two rolled-up plastic mats into our hands.

  “What are these?” I asked Sami.

  “They’re hajji mats, I think. We’ll use them in Mina,” he said. “Let’s find you a good but ugly pair of sandals. Tomorrow’s going to be tough.”

  Once we’d found me some new footwear, I whined until Sami agreed to let me buy a kebab. Sami’s father had adamantly warned us against eating food from street vendors, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. As I chewed away happily, we stumbled upon Sami’s parents buying some prayer mats to take home. I quickly hid the kebab wrapping. We exchanged stories about our day, then agreed to meet early the next morning.

  “Make sure you pack light tomorrow,” said Sami’s father. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  The next day we got on a bus heading for the tent city of Mina. Mina is significant because it’s where Abraham was ordered by God to sacrifice his son. The devil then came and tried to dissuade Abraham from fulfilling his duty. The road was clogged with thousands of buses, inching along in a swirl of smog and pollution. The valley of Mina is only five kilometres east of Mecca, but because of the traffic, it took us three hours to get there. The journey was a huge test of patience, as if traffic jams and the devil were linked somehow. But even the devil couldn’t keep the hordes of Muslims from eventually reaching Mina.

  The Saudis had built a temporary tent city to accommodate the millions of pilgrims. As far as I could look was a sea of identical white tents. The sections of the valley were divided into different continents and then subdivided into different countries, so in theory pilgrims could find their area more easily. It took us several hours to find North America, and then Canada. The Canadian “tent” was four poles and a white awning: no walls, no floor. I looked at the dirt and rocks on the ground.

  “Are you sure there aren’t any hotels nearby?” I asked.

  “No hotels allowed. We’re just going to be camping out for the next few days,” said Sami. “And we’re fortunate that your friend gave us these.” He laid out the two hajji mats.

  I was speechless. Now I knew I should have read the manual. I’d been camping, but this was more austere. By now it was night, not that it was any cooler, and we said our prayers and got ready to sleep. We lay down on our hajji mats, which were thinner than I’d realized—I could feel all the rocks and pebbles beneath me. The Hilton this wasn’t. I curled up next to Sami.

  “Now it makes sense why sex isn’t allowed during hajj,” I said as we tried to get comfortable. “This place could erupt into a giant orgy. The Saudis, despite their billions, would never be able to police us all.”

  “It’s good you think of these things at the right moments,” he said, trying to sleep.

  In the morning, after prayers, Sabreena and I headed off in search of food. The tent city was like a real city, with mini-markets that sold pilgrim essentials. As we made our way through it, I quickly realized that when you’re sleeping among lots of strange men who aren’t wearing underwear, you have to be careful where you look.

  While we prudently picked our way around the modestly compromised, I felt spasms in my stomach. I knew this feeling: I needed to find a bathroom. Fast.

  “You didn’t eat any of the food from the stalls, did you?” asked Sabreena.

  “Maybe just a little,” I said sheepishly.

  Since the Saudis had to house millions of us, they also had to deal with our bathroom needs. Sabreena and I went to the rows and rows of cubicles. The floor of each cubicle was lined with white plastic that extended into a neat hole in the middle. There was a hose attached to the wall of the cubicle. Many pilgrims came from countries and cultures where an above-ground toilet is not common, and plunging a toilet isn’t an option in the desert. But I had never used a squat toilet before. Sabreena looked at me.

  “They’re not hard to use,” she said. “Just don’t fall in.”

  My stomach gurgled. I went in and was surprised by how much it didn’t smell. I used the hose to wash the white plastic floor to make myself feel better about hygiene. Then I made sure the door was locked, took off my clothes and put them in a corner because I didn’t want anything to get dirty. I wouldn’t be changing clothes for the next three days.

  When Sabreena and I returned to the tent thirty minutes later, with no food in hand and me looking a little ashen, Sami’s dad gave me a knowing look. I nodded meekly.

  “Try to eat as little as you can,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “Less ammo for my stomach.”

  I strenuously avoided eating and just drank water, which evaporated as sweat so quickly that I didn’t need to use the plastic cubicle. There were hawkers selling umbrellas, and Sami’s father bought one for each of us. It wasn’t rain that people were worried about. The tiny bit of shade the umbrella provided while walking around the camp was an incredible mercy. We were supposed to spend our downtime in prayer and reflection. I’d lie down on the ground, rubbing my tummy, feeling very grateful for the tent and the toilet, which were the highlights of my world at this point.

  The next day we left by creaky, un-air-conditioned bus for what pilgrims call the heart of the hajj—the plain of Arafat, which is a stretch of desert where the Prophet gave his last hajj sermon, “The Farewell Sermon.” It was a fourteen-kilometre journey.

  School buses that looked like someone had taken a can opener and removed the roof drove by.

  “Did you see that?” I asked Sami.

  “Some Shia sects discourage the use of any shelter during hajj. They’re trying to be authentic to the real experience.”

  “I couldn’t deal with this heat,” I said.

  And then suddenly I had to.

  Our bus made a terrible squealing sound, then stopped. It had overheated.

  The driver wanted us to walk the rest of the way. It was already stiflingly hot on the bus, but when we got off, it felt like stepping into an oven. It was 120 degrees Fahrenheit. I watched the roofless bus pass us by and I was jealous. Up to that point we had done our rituals at night to avoid the punishing heat, but there was no getting away from it now. The umbrellas provided some relief, but what really helped me was pouring a whole bottle of water on my head.

  “What are you doing?” asked Sami.

  “This actually cools you off for about fifteen minutes, but then you get dry again. If it wasn’t so horrible, it would be amazing.” I dumped another bottle of water on my head. Luckily for us, the Saudis made water available in refrigerated semis that were parked along the route to try to reduce the number of pilgrims who die of dehydration every year. I noticed some pilgrims pulling a suitcase. They looked exhausted. I was glad I had heeded my father-in-law’s advice and brought only a small backpack.

  At the plains of Arafat, people read the final sermon given by the Prophet before he died. As they read, “All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action,” I remembered reading “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” to Maysa but changing the words to “Potato Head and the Seven Dwarves” so she wouldn’t get a complex, which was ironic since she had inherited her father’s fair skin. Even as a child, I knew that fair skin was coveted in our community and wondered if my brown skin meant I wasn’t pretty. So these words from fourteen hundred years ago still resonated for me.

  That evening we left for Muzdalifah, another rocky valley, by bus. At Muzdalifah, the plan was that we would collect rocks for the next day’s ritual, then combine Maghrib and Isha, the last two prayers of the day, before settling in for the night. But
there were no tents.

  “So where do we sleep?” I asked.

  “Just on the ground,” said Sami. And just like that, after performing prayers and reading Qur’an, people simply lay on the bare ground and slept. I couldn’t sleep. I was feeling unwell. I could control my food poisoning if I stopped eating, but there were still painful spasms in my stomach. I noticed Sabreena was awake too.

  “Can’t sleep?” I asked her.

  “There’s a semi behind me that keeps spurting diesel.”

  We both got up and looked around. It was eerie.

  “It’s supposed to remind us of death,” said Sabreena. “We die naked and alone in the end. All we leave is our actions.”

  Millions of people lay on the ground all around us in white clothing that now looked liked shrouds. I felt a chill go up my spine. It didn’t matter how rich any of us were back home. We were all in the same boat, or in the same desert.

  “It’s like the end of days here,” I said. “I wonder if it’s going to look like this on the Day of Judgment, minus the semis and the halfnaked men.”

  I saw a child nearby watching me as her mother read from the Qur’an. She was almost the same age as Maysa. She put her arms out to me and I looked at her mother, who nodded. I picked up the little girl and held her close. I missed that feeling. I missed Maysa. When the girl became agitated and wanted her own mother, I reluctantly gave her back.

  I imagined what it must have been like for Abraham to be ordered to sacrifice his son. He had almost lost a son before when he left Hajar alone in the desert, and then when God asked him to sacrifice Ismail, he came so close to losing another. Abraham stopped three times because it’s said the devil tried to stop him. I imagine any parent would have had a difficult time. I wondered if Hajar’s faith ever wavered, being left alone in the desert. At her most desperate hour, did she ever wonder if God had abandoned her?

  Why did God want us to remember these painful stories? I could think of only one reason. Having faith is more than just believing; it’s about living with fear and self-doubt and working through those feelings until they bring some sort of answer.

  People started waking up for the pre-dawn prayers, and our valley of death turned into a valley of zombies as people lurched towards the cubicles to make their ablutions.

  Sami woke up and saw me.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Deciding what to do next with my life,” I answered.

  “Should I be worried?”

  “Let’s have another baby.”

  He looked surprised. “Are you sure? Because it seems like you’re pretty busy already.”

  “And I’m going to leave journalism and try to make films instead,” I added. The feeling that journalism wasn’t enough anymore had been gnawing at me before I left. I wanted to tell stories. Maybe the ones I was reliving here inspired me. I felt that there was a well of creativity that I hadn’t tapped yet. Hajj seemed to make the impossible possible. I felt a sense of calm about decisions that had seemed agonizing at home. The cacophony of noise, people and physical suffering suddenly fell away and I was left with a feeling of conviction.

  “Those are pretty big steps,” said Sami. “Having a baby and changing careers.”

  “I guess faith is about overcoming hardship and not being consumed by it,” I said, thinking about Hajar and Abraham again.

  “Anything else?”

  “I also thought that you made a good-looking corpse.”

  “That’s nice,” he said, as usual unfazed by my logic.

  We boarded our bus again and headed for a part of the valley named Ramy al-Jamaraat, where pilgrims gather small stones, no larger than a chickpea, and throw them at three pillars that are symbols for Satan.

  As we approached the pillars, I could hear a roar from the pilgrims closest to them. People were getting very emotional. Instead of pebbles, I could see flip-flops, water bottles and large rocks flying along with curses aimed at the devil. Often the objects would miss the pillar and hit the pilgrims on the other side. It seemed like many people were getting carried away and had forgotten that this wasn’t actually the devil cast in modern-day concrete.

  I knew that this was historically the most dangerous part of the hajj. The previous year, 240 people had been crushed to death during stampedes. I felt a wave of panic as the crowds became more dense and agitated. My stomach heaved again from the food poisoning. I didn’t have the physical stamina to enter this mob of agitated people.

  “I can’t do this,” I told Sami as memories of the crushing crowds around the Kaaba came back to me.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “This looks too dangerous. We’ll do it for you guys.”

  Sami, Amir, Munir and my father-in-law continued on while the rest of us moved to safety. The four men disappeared into an angry vortex of people. I’d never thought I’d actually worry about Sami being crushed to death in a stampede of people out to stone the devil.

  “They’ll be fine, inshallah,” said my mother-in-law as she watched the three of us look anxious. She was suffering from uncontrollable fits of coughing caused by the pollution and exhaustion. If anyone had a reason to complain about health problems it was her, but she was our pillar of strength. As I counted the minutes and listened to the deafening roar of furious pilgrims, I felt that I would be incredibly grateful to have my life back, screaming baby and all. Why on earth had I wanted to leave so badly?

  And then the men appeared suddenly by our sides.

  “How was it?” I asked as I hugged Sami, grateful to see him in one piece.

  “That was insane.” He described emotionally riled-up pilgrims yelling at the devil for all the things that they blamed him for: a bad boss, arthritis, a nagging mother-in-law. It would have been funny except that it was so dangerous.

  We headed back to Mecca, where we would perform tawaf and sa’i again. Sami went to have his head shaved, and I had a fingertip-width of hair cut from my head.

  “Oh well,” said Sabreena when the men came back looking like shorn sheep. “You have to let go of your pride.”

  I ran my hand over Sami’s head, which looked enormous without his beloved hair. “Your head looks like a giant melon.”

  “Thanks,” said Sami.

  That left the animal sacrifice. The Saudis had set up a system whereby we could purchase tickets to have a goat or sheep sacrificed on our behalf. The meat would be distributed to the poor. We didn’t see any blood, and were grateful to just take the Saudis at their word when they said that everything was taken care of.

  The major rites of hajj being finished, we were now able to take off our ihram.

  We went back to our hotel and took hot showers, which seemed like heaven. As the water washed away the dirt and grime from days of travel in smog and desert, I felt happy and satisfied. Hajj had been an emotionally and physically exhausting ordeal. Never in a million years had I thought the trip would have been this difficult. I felt like I had accomplished something significant in my life.

  We flew to Medina to see some historical sites and then returned home.

  When we arrived back in Toronto, my mother was holding Maysa in her arms. She looked much plumper than when we had left. She saw me, started to cry and jumped out of my mother’s arms and ran to me.

  “Every time she asked for you, I’d tell her you were in a plane,” said my mother. “She spent the last two weeks staring at the sky as planes flew by and saying, ‘Pane, pane, Mama pane.’ I had to feed her constantly to keep her distracted.

  “You did remember to pray for the salvation of your soul?” she asked.

  “Of course.” I decided this wasn’t the time to tell her I’d also prayed for my film career to prosper.

  Sami took Maysa from me. “Is she heavier?”

  “Yeah, she just ate and stared at planes while we were gone,” I said. “It will be amazing to have another one.”

  “After everything you’ve gone through with her, are you sure you want to start
all over again?”

  “Hey, I got groped and crushed, suffered from heatstroke, starvation, dehydration and insomnia, and I probably have black lung.”

  “So having a baby doesn’t seem so bad,” said Sami.

  I hugged my father-in-law and thanked him for the opportunity to do hajj earlier than I had expected. He was pushing my mother-in-law in a wheelchair because she was too weak from her journey to walk.

  “Did you get what you wanted out of hajj?” I asked him.

  “I got to be with my family before all of you get too busy with your families.” He put something in my hand and headed for our connecting flight.

  “What’s that?” asked Sami.

  I looked inside the paper bag.

  It was a piece of fudge.

  * Sura 22, verse 27. Muhammad Asad’s translation.

  BBQ Muslims

  “Is this Zarqa Nawaz?” asked an annoyed man when I picked up the phone.

  “This is her.” I cradled the handset under my right ear while settling one-month-old Inaya in to breastfeed. Inaya means “gentle person,” and other than a penchant for projectile vomiting, she had lived up to her name. Some babies are fussy eaters, but Inaya would latch on with the strength of a lamprey, which let me talk on the phone while blending chicken pieces to make baby food for another fussy eater.

  “I’m hungry!” yelled Maysa. I threw a bib on her as she climbed into her high chair.

  “My name is Mario, and I’m calling from the Toronto International Film Festival. BBQ MUSLIMS has been officially selected to participate in this year’s festival. Congratulations,” he said, completely unaware of the chaos surrounding me.

  My finger paused on the pulse button. After hajj I had decided to make a break from journalism and try launching a career as a filmmaker. This was the second time in my life that I had completely changed directions when it came to my career. First it had been medicine to journalism and now journalism to filmmaking. Something inside me was convinced that storytelling was my strength. It was a frightening leap of faith. To be sure I wasn’t making a mistake, I took a summer film workshop at the Ontario College of Art as soon as I got back and submitted my student project to the Toronto International Film Festival. I figured if I got in, it would be a sign.