Some people climb Mount Everest, some people prepare to achieve Olympic gold medals, some people pioneer outer space. It seems to always be to prove how far they can push themselves, how much they can accomplish if they put their minds to it. Maybe they even do it to come to peace with an internal struggle. Others, I guess, just do it to connect with nature. That’s what those people do, but some of us don’t train ourselves in the ascension of mountains or in the navigation of seas, we prepare ourselves for a testing pilgrimage of its own kind. A pilgrimage that will push us in the strength of our bodies, in the patience of our minds, and in the firmness of our faiths – Hajj.

I had no idea what I was getting in to when I got on the Lufthansa airplane at the Intercontinental Airport of Houston. I took my seat, all giddy with excitement, just barely restraining myself from bouncing up and down in my seat. For at least the next twenty-four hours though I would be traveling across the world and becoming so tired I would slowly forget why I was so happy to go to Makkah. Oh yeah, three million more Muslims from around the globe were flocking to the same location at this same exact time to perform one of the greatest pilgrimages in the history of a religion, of a people – duh!

The connection I felt to Muslims all around the world was instantaneous and expected, but it was when we landed for our stopover in Beirut that I discovered a more deeply rooted feeling. As my husband, Abdullah, and I were going through the security checks to get to our Middle East Airlines flight which was going to fly us into Jeddah, Saudi Arabia a guard inspected our passports carefully. He looked at them and then back at us – a guy wrapped up in two large white towels with sneakers and a girl wearing a headscarf with a Pakistani kameez on top of blue jeans.

“Amreeki?” the thin uniformed Arab asked. We looked at each other for a second and then nodded our heads.

The guard closed our passports and met our gazes now with a little more warmth, and even a tinge of hope. “Muslim?” he asked with his raised black eyebrows. Now we both smiled and nodded again.

The guard smiled back and responded, “Alhamdullilah!” He began to praise God for having met a couple of Muslims (no matter how silly looking to a Lebanese security guard) who were American and going to perform the Hajj.

We laughed with him then and repeated, “Yes, alhamdullilah.” I felt so blessed, not just for the opportunity to make Hajj, but to be coming to Hajj from the United States. We Muslims are not only a minority amongst the religious groups in the U.S., but we Americans are a minority nationality at Hajj.

He gave us back our passports and we boarded the plane taking a cabin full of bearded Arab and American men shrouded in white towels, some traveling with their covered wives, sisters, mothers, or daughters.

Over the loud speaker of the plane the captain announced in Arabic and then in English that we were passing the meeqat point as we approached the Jeddah airport. Jeddah is a city located in the middle of the western coast of Saudi Arabia. Makkah is due east and slightly south of Jeddah. Makkah has no airport so all flights arrive in Jeddah (or Madinah) and then a bus transports pilgrims to the actual city of Makkah.

The “meeqat” refers to the traveling point at which we must get into the state of ihram. There are a few different meeqat points depending upon which geographical direction you are entering Makkah from.

Prior to getting into ihram we had to cut our nails, remove underarm and pubic hair, and take a shower. (Where did we do all this? On the plane? No, we did it in Houston before even going to the airport with the intention that it was for ihram which we would enter in to within the next day.)

Ihram is a state of being in which we cannot:

• cut our nails
• cut our hair
• apply any scents (like perfume or use scented soap)
• hunt wild animals
• approach our spouses with desire or have intercourse
• consummate a marriage contract

So this means we didn’t take any scented soaps with us to Hajj and avoided using lotions which would have scents in them, and that is probably the single hardest part about ihram. If you already had a perfume or lotion applied to yourself before you entered the state of ihram, that’s allowed. You can’t put anything on afterwards though. Also, a common misconception about ihram is that women think they can’t put on or remove their head coverings at all because it’ll make their hair come out in the process. Ladies, please don’t worry. Your hair falling out on its own doesn’t invalidate your state of ihram, but you intentionally cutting it does. (Don’t stress. It’ll make more hair fall out…)

Ihram is also a sate of clohing in which:

• women must cover themselves completely except for their faces and hands
• men must cover themselves with two white towels, one wrapped securely around their waists and the other shrouding their shoulders, and they cannot wear anything on their heads or anything sewn to shape their bodies such as undergarments or even shoes

For Abdullah, this meant the sneakers he was wearing at the Beirut airport had to be removed from his feet before he crossed the meeqat point.

When entering the state of Ihram, we also have to say out loud our intention to perform Umrah (the Lesser Pilgrimage) or Hajj (the Greater Pilgrimage) or both. We recited the intention to perform both pilgrimages separate from one another, as we were going to perform Umrah upon arriving in Makkah and then a week later we would be performing Hajj.

There are three different types of Hajj:

• Tamattu’ - which means that the pilgrim is getting into ihram and performing Umrah in the month of Hajj and then will separately perform Hajj later after getting into ihram again a second time
• Ifrad – which means the pilgrim gets into ihram only to perform Hajj alone
• Qiran – which means the pilgrim is getting into ihram for Umrah and Hajj both

So which type of Hajj were we doing? Yup, you guessed it. Tamattu’. After getting into ihram, the first thing we did was recite our intention.

We began chanting: Labayk Allahuma labayk. Labayka laa shareeka laka labayk. Inn alhamda wan-ni’mata laka wal mulk. Laa shareeka lak. Here I am at Your service, O Allah. You have no partners, here I am at Your service, O Allah. Verily, all praise and grace belongs to You and the kingdom. You have no partner.

We recited these Arabic words in unison. I could feel my heart beating with the hearts of all the strangers around me. Some of them didn’t speak English. I didn’t speak Arabic. A lot of them were from the Middle East. I was from America. None of this seemed to matter though. The walls of division had crumbled.

We were all here to serve the same God, to submit to God. We were all here on the same mission with the same purpose. Our visions were fixed on what was to come – Hajj. Nothing else mattered; not language, not race, not nationality. Just religion.

The plane landed in Jeddah and then we all got off and crammed into one bus which took us to a type of quarantine building for all incoming passengers. While sitting there I noticed another couple sitting across from me. They looked Pakistani but in a country where people from all over the world had collected, I could easily be wrong. What caught my attention though were their blue U.S. passports. Thank God, finally some fellow Americans. I made a mental note to stick around them in case we needed help later. Then we filled out forms, got our documents ready, and moved from room to room and finally into the baggage claim area.

There were hundreds upon hundreds of suitcases clustered together in between each baggage carousel. Our Hajj group organizers warned us about a lot of missing luggage problems before leaving Houston so we began a frantic search for our suitcases. Then we realized even if we find them we have no way of transporting them if we don’t have a cart so we began looking for one of those instead. We got a couple and I guarded them with my life while Abdullah went back to searching for our suitcases. It took nearly an hour to find out that Middle East Airlines hadn’t unloaded them off the plane yet.

I was exhausted. Traveling for at least twenty-four hours takes its toll on you. I hadn’t even had a meal since the last Lufthansa flight. I tried calculating in my head how long ago that was but quickly gave up since that would require too much energy, which I was running short on.

TIPS N’ TRICKS: Eat every chance you get. You never know when will be the next time you will be able to refuel or rest so take every opportunity to eat or get some shut eye.

After what felt like forever (and there would be many more ‘forevers’ to come), a loud horn-like beep sounded off warning that carousel 4, the one our airline’s passengers had been directed to wait by, was about to start bringing out luggage. A massive crowd flocked there looking for their suitcases, with women backing off knowing they couldn’t compete with the throngs of men.

While my husband collected our bags, a man walked up to me. “Sister, are you from America?” I turned and noticed he was the same guy from the quarantine building, the one from the U.S. with his wife I presumed.

“Yes,” I answered, grateful to finally be spoken to in English rather than the frustrating Arabic all the officials kept communicating with us in.

He continued to verify if we were from the same Hajj group. After doing so he said, “Okay, we need to give all of our passports to the black brother sitting over there,” and pointed to a thin, fairly young looking guy surrounded by a crowd of men in ihram.

I thanked the brother, who I later learned was named Hammad and his wife was Heena,  and continued waiting for my husband. When we finally got all of our things we navigated our way through the airport rush to where the young black brother was. I felt relieved to finally be around other American, Canadian, and British Hujjaj (pilgrims).

We surrendered over our passports, something I was terrified of doing because I had held onto them through our whole trip with dear life, but when you go to Saudi this is something you have to do. Your passport stays with the Saudi government until you’re finally leaving the country.

Then began the next test of our trip – getting through baggage security. I pushed the carts over to the line with my husband and started helping him haul our suitcases onto the conveyor belt as they went through the x-ray machine. As I was doing so, all of a sudden I heard a woman wailing in Arabic behind me. I turned around and then had to look down to see a woman lying on the ground half crying and half angry with me, throwing her arms up in the air as she said –well, God knows what she was saying to me. I stood there and said the two words I entered Saudi Arabia with, “La Arabee…?” (I’m not Arab. Don’t speak to me in Arabic. I will continue giving you a confused blank stare. You will lose hope in me sooner or later, let’s make it sooner.)

I assumed she was saying I pushed her over. I didn’t feel my body push anyone, it must be some mistake, but she seemed to be saying I did so maybe I did. I tried saying sorry but I don’t think it did much good. I was getting frustrated with her making a scene there and the airport worker who was helping her was upset too because there was this woman lying in the middle of the floor blocking traffic and setting herself up for another accident to occur. I started to turn to help her get up but she took the guy’s hand instead and hoisted herself up and started walking away. I was frazzled but a slightly amused Abdullah took my arm and said, “Come on.” The security guys were getting frustrated at the hold up and saying things in complaining voices like, “Ya Haaaajjiiiii…” Okay, okay, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be, I thought in response. But even in the midst of such chaos I was really impressed with all of these airport and security workers. No matter what their jobs were, they seemed stressful and they were doing their best to deal with the influx of three million people flooding into this terminal not just that one day but probably for the last couple of months too. They worked hard for countless hours, may Allah bless them.

We hustled through into another area of the airport that turned into a bottleneck since behind us was the baggage security area we had just come from, to our left were hoards of people coming towards us with their carts of suitcases, in front of us was a huge tent in the middle of this airport, and to our right were huge carts on wheels hooked on to vehicles that were going to pull them across the airport once the carts were loaded with everyone’s luggage piling high.

At Hajj you learn to go with the flow of traffic, even if that’s not where you want to go, just because it’s easier and, most of all, safer. So we turned to the right and started pushing our carts in that direction. A few minutes later we had moved about a couple of inches. There were airport workers in the middle of the crowd saying in Arabic and Urdu to keep moving quickly and don’t stand around but it wasn’t that we weren’t trying to move – we just couldn’t. Especially after the incident with the old lady on the ground, I was concerned about not accidentally bumping someone with my cart. Most of the people in the crowd were elderly too. Finally amongst the airport workers appeared a tall man wrapped up in his ihram speaking in English asking for who has just come from Beirut. I was in front of my husband so I got the man’s attention and communicated to him we had just come from Beirut. “Okay come through this crowd and put your bags on the cart standing over there, quickly.”

TIPS ‘N TRICKS: Always move with the flow of traffic, never against it.

Now I wasn’t just an aimless wanderer; I had a mission. I told my husband what the man had said and we started pushing forward to the big cart. I got there and turned around and realized my husband had barely budged. There was a pack of old ladies standing in front of him who barely budged. All of these women I noticed were wearing long white khimars, headscarves which dropped down to their thighs, and on the back of their scarves was stitched in their national flag. I couldn’t quite place it, but I soon learned all these Hajjis had arrived on Egypt Air.

A couple of men in green jumpsuits loaded my bags onto the cart while I stood there waiting for Abdullah. The tall man who had beckoned us, I later learned, was a part of our group from Canada and he was Iranian by ethnicity. He was going to be our leader until we got on our bus that was going to take us from this airport to Makkah later that night.

After several more minutes my husband finally made it out of the crowd. As the cart loaded with suitcases from other people in our group, we just waited around until the vehicle was ready to move. I stood there observing all the people around me. There were young, thin Saudi men in long white thobes (the traditional Saudi dress for men, sort of like a long-sleeve white shirt that goes down to their ankles) who were part of the airport task force walking around with black walkie-talkies and badges slung around their necks. On top of their heads were red and white checkered triangle pieces of cloth fashioned in different styles to describe which tribe they were from (or so someone informed me that that was the purpose). What I admired most about these workers was that they all walked so upright with perfect posture and constantly doing whatever they could to help all of the Hajjis. Oh yeah, and when I say they’re young men, I mean really young like in their late teens or early twenties. Some of them were even boys, but they carried themselves with an air of maturity and dignity, not goofing around and approaching the guests of Saudi Arabia with respect.

This was also the first time I got a glimpse at how many people of different races and nationalities were gathering to make this pilgrimage. But little did I know, this was nothing. What I saw before me were usually Turks, Egyptians, Malaysians, Indonesians, and I think some people from the countries of Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan/etc. The latter group had Asian features and didn’t pass for any other country in southeast Asia. I hadn’t even met anyone from the African and European nations and the rest of Asia. I don’t think I ran into anyone from South America but I have no doubt that they must’ve been there.

During the entire Hajj trip it was always enjoyable to see people from different countries or guess what country a certain flag belonged to. But none of it mattered. At Hajj, the color of your skin as well as the color of your passport goes out the window. At Hajj, you are Muslim before anything else. I felt a sense of pride being from America since we were such a minority there and Saudi officials always helped us out a great deal after learning we were ‘Amreeki’ and therefore handicapped when it came to speaking Arabic. But it doesn’t put us above anyone else. No one is superior or inferior at Hajj. You are who you are in the Eyes of Allah.

At Hajj, there is no race. There’s only one form of identity and it’s called Islam. It always surprised me how Malcolm X reformed his views of ‘the white man’ simply by going to Hajj and experiencing the diversity of Islam, how it is not limited to black Africans and is not contained by any border. Now I understood what he saw when he came to Hajj and how it affected him. I felt the same way.

And here I was, one bus trip away from the Kabah. The black brick structure built by the hands of Prophet Abraham and his son, Prophet Ishmael, (peace be upon them) which we had all come here to see, to pray before. The Kabah, the symbol billions of people around the globe associate with Muslims. The Kabah, an image some men and women strive their entire lives to stand before, or die trying. The Kabah, where Islam began centuries ago. Today, we were about to be blessed to see it. Now the only ‘race’ I cared about was racing to Makkah and letting my eyes set upon one of the most beautiful sites in the world.

The bags were loaded on the cart. It was time to push forward. I was tired, I was hungry, I was a mess. I didn’t care though. I followed with adrenaline shooting through me at the exhilaration. We were going to Makkah.

Disclaimer: Details accounted in this Hajj series are mostly by memory. If a mistake has been made, especially in explaining something incorrectly about Islam, please contact us so we may correct it. If you have any questions, please post or email them. We will do our best to answer them here or in future chapters. Also, all names used in this series are aliases and not the real names of the actual people.

Hanaa Gamal graduated salutatorian from Al-Azhar University in Egypt with a bachelors in Tafseer and Quranic Sciences. She has completed all coursework for her masters in Tafseer and Quranic Sciences and is currently working on her thesis. Hanaa Gamal is also the founder of Al-Azhar Institute (Houston, TX) as well as main instructor. She teaches all of the arabic, tajweed, tafseer, and hifth classes.