Diary of A Pilgrim - Counting The Days To Arafah

Our favourite eating place, the unimaginatively named Makkah Restaurant, about 200 metres from Qutubah Barakah Hotel. The mutton curry served here, eaten with 'roti arab', was to die for!

The bazaar-like atmosphere in the vicinity of the mosque. Although prices were already cheap, haggling was customary. A seasoned haggler's paradise, truly.

My bed in Qutubah. It faced the window from which I could see people praying on the upper floors of Masjidil Haram.

Our daily fare. Tabung Haji provided two meals a day - lunch and dinner - and they came packaged as above - rice with curry (meat or fish), a serving of vegetables and a fruit (either apple, orange, pear or banana) for dessert.

A well-known date shop situated beyond the traffic light intersection some 1000 metres down the road from Qutubah, run by a couple of Indian nationals.

A common enough street scene in Makkah - people 20 to 30 deep, returning from Subuh prayers, seeking breakfast at one of the many shops lining the narrow street.

View of the mosque courtyard from the 9th floor of Inter-Continental.

Another view of the mosque from the Inter-Continental.

Thirteen kilos (28lbs) lighter and feeling like a million dollars. Among the first things that I did upon reaching home was to weigh myself. I knew I had shed some pounds – my hefty middle had shrunk noticeably - but I didn’t realise it was that much.

A couple of favourite kurungs and beaded jubah (robes) that had been hanging dejectedly in the closet for the last two years are now seeing sunlight again. I wore one to a wedding reception last weekend, mighty pleased with the fact that I no longer needed to hold my breath and wriggle into it like I used to. And corset be gone!

“Enjoy it while it lasts”, said acerbic Pak Abu, seeing how smug I was. Yet to recover fully from his Hajj-acquired coughing fit, Pak Abu shed 10 kilos (22lbs) himself and had to punch additional holes in his belt.

It is an established fact that the Hajj, apart from being a soul-cleansing exercise, also provides exercise of the physical kind, making it a most effective weight-loss programme.

There are exceptions to the rule, however. The husband of one of Pak Abu’s cousins gained 5lbs while on pilgrimage two years ago; this despite all the walking and climbing. He ate like a horse while in the Holy Land, he admitted. He added that his appetite soared like never before.

The flu had, by now, reached epidemic proportions. People were sneezing and coughing and bringing up phlegm everywhere. We took to carrying wads of tissue paper at all times in our Tabung Haji-issued blue pouch bag, discreetly depositing the soiled ones in bins placed all over the city.

Much to Pak Abu’s disgust, many simply spat and regurgitated their phlegm wherever convenient. Fortunately, the streets were hosed down often in a day. Strangely enough, in Makkah, the usually finicky me wasn’t in the least bothered by the sight of phlegm and spit.

Divine reward and retribution are swift and instantaneous in the Holy Land and many pilgrims bear witness to this, especially those not short on complaints, comments and grouses.

In the case of Pak Abu, for example, his constant griping about phlegm saw people spitting directly into his path (narrowly missing his foot), and phlegm from nowhere sticking to his sarong, until I cautioned him not to voice it out anymore for fear of more 'phlegmatic' torment.

As for me, a fleeting yet uncharitable thought had me properly and promptly chastised. Once I was about to begin Subuh prayer on the top floor of Masjidil Haram when a woman joined our saf (row). Seeing that she didn't have a sejadah (prayer mat), I adjusted mine to share with her.

As I raised my hands for 'takbir', another woman, also sans sejadah, joined us. I quickly readjusted mine to include her as well. I began again, this time feeling a little peeved at the interruption and thinking crossly, "These women knew they were coming to the mosque. Why on earth didn't they bring their own sejadah?"

As soon as the thought crossed my mind however, a sudden gust of wind blew so hard that the sejadah lifted and rolled quite a distance away, leaving the three of us matless! Sufficiently chastened, I said a quick prayer, asking for forgiveness for my pettiness. (We ended up prostrating on the very cold, finely-veined marbled floor).

With the contagious flu infection now spreading rapidly, the Tabung Haji medical team had their hands full with sick pilgrims. To add to my misery, I was also down with fever and had to pay a visit to the clinic. Located on the first floor of the hotel, the clinic went full steam from eight in the morning until 10 at night.

I asked the doctor why, despite my hundred-ringgit jab, I was still affected by the flu. “It’s God’s work. You will only recover once you reach Malaysia,” he replied with a smile.

With days to go before leaving for wukuf in Arafah, there wasn’t much to do but to continue familiarising ourselves with the numerous prayers and supplications, absorbing as much as we could, and attending religious talks held at the hotel surau (prayer hall).

One morning we met up with Dato Zaki of Darul Fikir, a close friend and golfing buddy of Pak Abu, for a scrumptious breakfast at the opulent Dar Al Tawheed Inter-Continental directly across Masjidil Haram, after which we adjourned to the upper floors for an overview of the Grand Mosque.

The six-star Inter-Continental was a favourite of the rich and famous and this was where pilgrims of Tabung Haji’s lavish Al-Maas Package were put up. I gasped to learn the said package costs RM100,000 apiece. We were told a lot of wealthy Indonesians stayed at the hotel; in fact we saw a few during breakfast, the ladies sporting huge sparkling rocks.

Dato Zaki told us of a wealthy Malaysian he knew who spent RM2 million a year to send people from his kampung on the Al-Maas package. When asked why he chose the most expensive package when he could have sent more through Muasasah or the cheaper packages, his answer was very telling.

The man said he wanted the kampung folks, living a hardscrabble existence most of their lives, to experience the very best, at least in terms of physical comfort, in their once-in-a-lifetime journey. Put that way, I really couldn't argue with his reasoning.

The evening before we ran into another close acquaintance, Datuk Mohaiyani Shamsuddin (who founded stockbroking firm Mohaiyani Securities) and her entourage. She had heard of Qutubah Barakah’s famous crispy roti canai and had dropped by for a personal rating. The good-looking Datuk looked exceptionally comely in a tudung.

Makkah may be a holy city but there were creeps and cretins aplenty, waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting. A woman pilgrim walking alone got mugged at the darkened walkway just before the two escalators that led up to the hotel entrance. Luckily she wasn’t sexually molested.

A male pilgrim lost RM3,000 when he hung his pouch at the toilet door to relieve himself, only to find it gone in an instant. Another male pilgrim, lost in the mosque and seeking help, was manhandled by a rogue who relieved him of RM2,000 before dumping him in a secluded area.

Women were warned time and again by Tabung Haji officials not to walk alone, even to the mosque, not to enter public conveniences (like toilets) unaccompanied, and to avoid backstreets and alleys unless in groups. Personal safety should never be compromised.

The night before our departure for Arafah was a sobering one for us. After almost two weeks in Makkah, we were finally on the threshold of the ‘big ones’ – the Wukuf, Stoning, conclusion of our Ihram state and subsequently, Tawaf and Sa’ei Haji.

We packed our hand luggage in silence, contemplating the historic journey, well aware of the significance of the shift to Arafah, Muzdalifah and the Mina encampment the following day. We would be away from the safe cocoon of Qutubah for five days, joining three million others in the tent city of Mina.

Simply put, wukuf means “keeping still”. It is a key rukun in Hajj, a must, failing which one’s Hajj quest is rendered null and void. A pilgrim must be present on the plains of Arafah, even if for one second, between noon (selepas gelincir matahari) and before the sun sets on the 9th of Zulhijjah.

The standard practice (at least for pilgrims under Tabung Haji) however, is to spend one whole day in searing hot Arafah, in makeshift tents, praying and making doas. Prophet Muhammad (saw) had said that there is no doa like doas in Arafah, for Allah (swt) guarantees its deliverance.

I went to bed that night fearful and anxious, not knowing what awaited on the barren plains of Arafah....