The Hadj: An Americans Pilgrimage to Mecca - The Hadj

The Hadj

The Hadj

An American's

Pilgrimage

to Mecca

Michael

Wolfe

GROVE PRESS

NEW YORK

Copyright 1993 by Michael Wolfe

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or .

The author thanks Howard Junkers ZYZZYVA magazine for first publishing excerpted portions of chapter ten in slightly different form.

Lines from The Reader are from Thomas Merton, The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton . Copyright 1949 by Our Lady of Gethsemani. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Lines from Neither out Far Nor in Deep and The Secret Sits are from The Poetry of Robert Frost , edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1969 by Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Copyright 1964, 1970 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Copyright 1936, 1942 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt & Company, Inc.

Lines from Asides on the Oboe are from Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens. Copyright 1942 by Wallace Stevens. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolfe, Michael, 1945

The hadj: an American's pilgrimage to Mecca / Michael Wolfe.

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN 978-0-8021-9219-6

1. Muslim pilgrims and pilgrimagesSaudi ArabiaMecca.

2. Wolfe, Michael, 1945 JourneysSaudi ArabiaMecca.

I. Title.

BP187.3.W651993297.55dc2093-21782

DESIGN BY LAURA HAMMOND HOUGH

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

This book is dedicated to

Cathy Summa Ford

Khalil Al-Khalil

Mohamad Mardini

Abou el-Mahassine Mostopha

And to the memory of

Tekla Fosdick Lewellyn Grace

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M any people and several institutions have helped me in the seven years that led up to this book. For financial support at two critical junctures I want to thank the Marin County Arts Council (Scott Brynd, r.i.p., and Yankee Johnson) and the California State Arts Council. For a different form of generosity I owe real gratitude to Prince Muhammad bin Faisal and to Sheikh Khalil Al-Khalil of the Department of Islamic Affairs at the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C. My experience of the pilgrimage would have been less complete without them.

In California, the congregation of the Islamic Center of San Jose, its imam, Dr. Khalid Saddiqi; Abed Imam, who showed me in; Imam Bilal ibn Muhammad; Yusef Salem; Munir and Karima Sperling; Javed Mohammed; and Hesham Zeitoun all welcomed me warmly and showed understanding. The American poet Abd al-Hayye Daniel Moore deserves special thanks for his early and energetic encouragement. Alan Ritch of the library at the University of California at Santa Cruz provided invaluable help in tracking down rare texts that informed my writing; Professor Edmund Burke lent some much-needed direction to my reading; Gwen Marcum encouraged and supported; Professor Linda Lomperis shared her interest in Ibn Battuta and the early travelers of Islam; Professor Abd al-Haqq Alan Godlas supplied humor and insight throughout; Driss Britel of the Moroccan Tourist Bureau in Los Angeles wrote me useful letters of introduction.

Tekla and Harry Grace, Daniel and Jennifer Wolfe, Peter and Hazel Weiser, Vicki Hiatt Khan, Joseph Koppal, Dr. Ronald Garren, and Professors Murray Baumgarten and Eugenia Matute-Bianchi gave crucial support and encouragement along the way. I owe thanks to the Men's Group of Carmel. Thanks also to Richard Wilbur for his loyalty and postcards over these years. And to Brian McGarry for his reading suggestions. I am grateful to Barry Gifford for sage advice and for the epigraph that opens chapter 1, from his Museum of Opinions.

In the manuscript stages Abd al-Haqq Alan and Silvie Godlas; Ed, Camille, and Matthew Helminski; Ken and Melissa Florance; Tekla Grace; and Sheikh Majid al-Gheshyan all helped focus my words and correct my views with their candid comments and marginal notes. For help with the book's publication, I want to thank Tom Dyja, who kept a clear head in the early stages; Ned Leavitt, who knew what to do; and Michael Carlisle, Michelle Tessler, and Matthew Bialeri, who saw things through. Finally, thanks to Anton Mueller and to my publisher, Morgan Entrekin, who took a chance and showed both style and patience.

In Morocco, Rene Doe, Paul Bowles, Mohammed Mrabet, Abd al-Wahed, Yusef Menari, Claude Thomas, Ira and Raphael Cohen, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Buffie Johnson, Hamza and Sa'ida Kropf each made my stay more pleasant and meaningful. In Marrakesh, I owe everything to Abou el-Mahassine Mostopha, his family and friends.

In Mecca, in addition to those mentioned in the text, I want to thank the following men at the offices of the World Muslim League for their generous assistance, time, and books: Dr. Abdullah Omar Nasseef, Sayyid Ameen Attas, Adil Jamadar, Mohamad Abedan, and Mohammed Sindi. My gratitude goes to Ziad and his family, for their friendship. Thanks also for guidance through the city and the rites of hadj to Sheikhs Nasser al Sayeed, Abd ar-Rahman, and Ibrahim Qulaibi. Thanks to David Paulson, for car information, and to Faraj Mansour al-Asmara, for the sandals. Finally, to my great, good friend Jo Menell, this work owes more than I can tell.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

T his book is the personal account of one traveler's pilgrimage to Mecca. I have tried to convey the current flavor of that journey and, without writing autobiography, to give some sense of what moved me to undertake it. It has not been my aim to provide a handbook on Islam or a pilgrim's guide. I have tried to address non-Muslims as well as Muslims, recording the essentials of Islam as a modern Western writer might perceive them, without proselytizing. In taking this approach, I have attempted to shed a more objective light on the least understood of the world's great religions.

Anyone writing about the hadj without access to the vast, untranslated literature in Arabic could be said to be working in the dark. As a non-Arabic reader, I have accepted this judgment. My pages owe a great deal to the handful of works that I could read in French and English translations. In addition, I have gleaned many facts about Mecca and the hadj from primary texts by Western travelersJohn Lewis (Johann Ludwig) Burckhardt (1814), Sir Richard Burton (1853), Eldon Ruttcr (1925), Harry St. John Philby (1931), Mohammed Asad (1954), Malcolm X (1964), and Saida Miller Khalifa ( 1977). For vital geographical and cultural information, I am also indebted to guides and companions who enlightened me with facts, insights, and dates. Some of these I undoubtedly have garbled.