All pilgrims are equal but some are more equal than others

All pilgrims are equal but some are more equal than others

 Part 1 of 2 - The South Africans and Nigerians

Financial analyst and stock-broker Dawood Mndebele was born in Soweto. His family converted to Islam when he was just a boy in 1978. 

Articulate and jovial as I joined him just before lunch at his Hajj accommodation in Aziziyah, a few kilometres from Mecca, his simple pilgrim's dress betrayed his rags-to-riches story.

He would've been four as the world's attention was drawn to Soweto in 1976 - when Apartheid police massacred children in broad daylight at a protest over education policies that year. But his parents' conversion to Islam had a byproduct that gave Dawood a chance to attend a private Islamic school in Lenasia, a higher income Indian township - arguably a better chance at an education.

Apartheid's "Bantu education" curricula for black children still focused mainly on subjects based on former South Africa Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd’s view that: "There is no place for (Blacks) in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?"

Dawood learnt more than mathematics, he even memorised the Qur'an, and worked his way up the financial ladder. But despite having the means for the most comfortable Hajj package available, Mndebele chose to make his pilgrimage this year using a tour operator that aims to take "profitability out of the Hajj" and make Hajj "more affordable" for all South African Muslims.

'The essence of Hajj'

He wholeheartedly endorses the organisation - "Khidmatul Awwam" - whose entry level Hajj package he, his wife and mother are on.

Their accommodations aren't lavish, but are clean and spacious and definitely not run-down. Buses take the pilgrims to and from Aziziyah to the Grand Mosque at prayer times, and (spicy Indian) food is provided for the pilgrims.

As I ate on the floor with Dawood I remembered how he joked with me just moments earlier: "My black friends think I have a hose-pipe in my bathroom because of the spicy food. Some people used to think I became an Indian, not a Muslim."

Dawood explained: "The essence of Hajj was to take away those social and economic differences of human beings to basically simplify it and make it the same - and we've now allowed the want for profitability to kick in ... that to me is the greatest shame."
 
But despite this laudable attempt to provide a more affordable package for pilgrims, it still cost Dawood over $6,000 per person in his family, though this package includes trips to Medina (not compulsory in the Hajj) and Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem after the Hajj is completed. Religious tourism on a shoestring, you might say.

Ayoob Kaka, a lawyer and also South African of Indian descent, is not on a shoestring. He is doing the once-in-a-lifetime trip for the third time. He's also done the 'Umrah', or minor pilgrimage, every year since 2000. A small, energetic man with an economy of words; sharp and organised, dressed with a mild sprinkle of cynicism.

'First world'

"I first came in 1987. This place has changed a lot since then. The facilities were a little more primitive. Now it's almost first world."

His package, for the Mecca part of Hajj anyway, includes one of the most luxurious hotels in the city.

"The hotel that I'm staying in, the Darul Tawhid, which is 5-star plus, has a prayer room where you can pray - but you're in a glass cage, outside the real experience of being with the crowd, the ground level, reading with the people."

Ayoob is performing Hajj this year with his daughter. The overall package cost them around $11,000 each. Does he feel there's a disconnect between the spiritual aspect of Hajj, theologically designed to strip away layers of individualism and materialism and the other side of Hajj: the "almost first world" comforts of his front-row seat on Hajj, of a hotel literally on the marble of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and access to a 5-star shopping mall?

He acknowledged the contradiction: "It's the way of the world, the capitalist system."

The Nigerians

At 10pm on a piece of road peppered with plastic bags, cans and wrappers of fast-food paper, as the post-evening prayer calm descends upon Mecca, I met Mohammed, who had carved out his temporary piece of real estate here.

The reflection of the floodlights on the bursting white tile of the Grand Mosque over his shoulder in the distance, providing an eerie atmosphere for this night time relaxation. An Ibo from the east of Nigeria, Mohammed told me he was happy to be here on Hajj, and was satisfied with everything the Nigerian and Saudi governments had done for pilgrims. But Mohammed, like thousands of others, lived too far from the Grand Mosque to come and go as he pleased.

"My house is very far from the Masjidul Haram (Grand Mosque)," he said.

This means he spends upwards of 18 hours a day, at this same spot. Unable to have the liberty to go back and forth as he pleased.

Isa's place was also about an hour's walk from the mosque. A proud Hausa, Isa says in Nigeria they are Ibos and Hausas. Here they are Nigerians and Muslims - no other ethnic differences exist between them. A brotherhood of the periphery permeates around the Grand Mosque that seems to thrive in the late hours of the night, before the pilgrims make their way back to their accommodation. This is anything but a glass cage.

When the Hajj moved to Mina, a vast sea of white tents where pilgrims spend four days of the pilgrimage, Isa's group found themselves ushered to a section that was overcrowded, oversubscribed, so overflowing with people that he had to sleep rough.

In Mecca his accommodation was far away - but at least he had accommodation there. His schoolteacher's salary squeezed to the last drop to get here, the over $4,000 he spent to get here was supposed to guarantee a tent in Mina, but it wasn't to be.

"We thank God," he said. Isa refused to show anger, no violating the spirit of Hajj. "Sabr!" (Have patience). "Sabr!"

A word Pakistani Sayed Mahboob would hear over and over again.

(To be continued ... )