Saudi Arabia was in a panic yet again because of “those damned Iranians, always creating trouble,” Adham had texted me one summer. Iran almost savored the sweet taste of “revolution” again in June 2009. It was three decades after Ayatollah Khomeini’s return from exile in France when Reza Shah, the last US-supported Pahlavi monarch, fled a country that would change forever. The triumphant ayatollah had established a theocracy that some believed would be toppled in what came to be known as 2009’s brief “Green Revolution.” Thousands poured out into the streets contesting the irrepressible Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election. The protesters said he had stolen the election from a reformist called Mir Hossein Mousavi. Allegedly, 1,500 died as the Iranian Basij (Iran’s version of the Saudi mutaween), with Arab militias flown in, quashed the protesters. Neda Agha Soltan, a young girl, died on camera on Tehran’s Kargar Avenue. The horrific video still remains in circulation.
To support the marchers, Tehranites used to gather on rooftops at dusk to cleverly shout Allahu Akbar (“God is great!”). They were smartly appropriating the religion that had been forced down their throats for three decades to express unanimous disapprobation. Marg Bar Dictator! (“Death to the Dictator!”) and a cacophony of other challenges to the regime proliferated. Directly referring to Hizbullah and Hamas, a sign said, “Gaza and Lebanon were not enough, now they found Yemen to send money too!” Iranians often complained that their tax money was used to fund Lebanon, Yemen, and other Shias.
I reported this brief uprising through the eyes of friends who were pounding Tehran’s streets. Long prison sentences awaited them, but at the time it seemed impossible. The protesters felt an impending victory. One of my friends was a forty-year-old poet called Arash who wrote to me sporadically from proxy servers. (The regime was trying, obviously, to control the web.)
The Iranian people are experiencing one of the widespread civil movements in modern history. Every day, near to the end of the protests, people get informed of the next move and the next venue for gathering. According to the word of mouth, which was the most reliable means of communication available, people were supposed to gather in Haft-Tir Square and march toward Valiasr Sq. at 5 p.m. Wednesday, June 17, 2009.
This was word-of-mouth-style insurgency.
At another time, Arash said, a young man had attached a piece of paper on his chest that read: “Shoot me in here.” In solidarity that year, Iranian Olympic athletes sported green arm-bands.
Arash said some of the more common placards included:
• “My green vote was not your black name!!”
• “Liar, where is your 63 percent?”
• “Ahmadinejad beware! We are a nation, not criminals.”
• “We want revolutionary people, we don’t want bystanders.”
• “Where is my vote?”
• “The song of those killed echoes in our souls.”
• “Iran mourning over its heroes.”
• “Congratulations to the Murderers.”
• “We are outside the time, with a bitter dagger in our backs.”
Revolution 2.0 died as fast as it had started. That’s because it never was one. In 1979, Khomeini’s Islamic revolution happened because millions willed it. This short un-revolution of the twenty-first century was primarily about disenfranchisement. Mir Hossein Mousavi’s supporters believed that Ahmadinejad had stolen the election. But they lacked the nationwide fervor and revolutionary spirit against the Shah that in 1979 brought Ayatollah Khomeini with it and a brand new name, for what for all purposes was really a new nation: The Islamic Republic of Iran. One of the first actions of that new nation would be the siege of the US embassy.
After praying a few times in the Saudi version of the Prophet’s Mosque, on a lonely morning, I returned to Jannat al-Baqi, the historic graveyard bordering the mosque. My spirituality was on the ascendant. It felt as if my mother and I had forgiven each other. The question of my sexuality seemed distant and improbable in surroundings such as these.
“Why should anybody care what gender I prefer?” I asked the Prophet Muhammad while walking the wasteland. The answer I got was simple. “It’s nobody’s business but yours, and if you want a religious solution, Islam made the path open for all of us. We talk directly to God and never through intermediaries.” I had been sitting at the Prophet’s Mosque for hours. Time seemed to have stopped. Surprised, I heard Hossein’s voice again, saying it was strange we kept on running into each other. I wondered if he knew who I was and had followed me. In any case, we made our way to our hotel to freshen up, promising to meet in the lobby in half an hour.
“I have something to show you,” he had said conspiratorially.
Our two-star and shabby Al-Ishraq Hotel was near the fancier Ramada Inn a block away. But it was all about location, because we were across from the Prophet’s Mosque. And this is why not waking up for Fajr prayers a couple of days ago had felt like such a crime. Even with its two elevators swaying dangerously, this hotel seemed to function. The shared rooms were filthy. We had four to ours. I generally kept quiet around them. Friendship was not really an aim. And if they Googled me, the results could be catastrophic.
I glanced at a group email from our Hajj leader before leaving the room:
I had a lot of thoughts that I wanted to share with you in this email but I am really running behind in my own preparations . . . Inshallah, we will talk a lot during the trip. However, I do need to start this journey with a clean slate. So my dear brothers and sisters, if I have said or seemed to have implied anything that may have offended you, I seek your forgiveness as it is an important part of the journey.
He was so right. It had to be a clean slate. And forgiveness played a vital role. My homosexuality, once again, seemed to be a non-issue with either God or his Prophet.
“Are you still able to go to Iran? Do they know you were one of the protesters in the Tehran streets of 2009, protesting Ahmadinejad’s reelection?” I peppered Hossein with questions as soon as I found him smoking downstairs. He confirmed my suspicions and said he hoped they did not have him on a list. But he reminded me what I already knew: It is rare to find an Iranian in Tehran who does not have a police record of some type. The list of punishable infractions is long, idiotic, and convoluted. He lived a dual life between Amsterdam and Tehran, where his wife and children were. He hoped to get them out of that “fucking hole,” he said, adding he was the guy who had the “shoot me in here” painted on his chest in the 2009 protests.
I was eager to change the subject, which could easily move into a problematic discussion. It seemed so was he. I told him how on the way down in the always-filled-to-capacity elevators I had noticed that someone had his possessions in a large Budweiser tote with the beer-company logo and beer bottles emblazoned all over. We laughed at the consequences if it actually held the forbidden liquid.
“Why are normal people like us so afraid of these fucked-up governments anyway?” said Hossein. I remained silent.
We walked down Al Manakhah Street lined with small shops selling all conceivable products from watches to ihrams to abayas to money belts to atar (perfume). The last was soon to be forbidden.
Iranian flags abounded. We passed the fancy-looking Medina Mövenpick Hotel.
“This is where the fancy Iranians with money live. We are going second-class!” He laughed, outside the grungy Zowar hotel that also flaunted the Iranian flag.
“Looks like Medina’s version of Valiasr in Tehran,” I joked to Hossein, who was pleased to learn I had once visited Iran and knew this major avenue that divided the city. For extra bona fides I lied and expanded my two nights there to a week.
“Hardly! That’s the longest street in the Middle East,” he said. I was surprised he used the term because most Iranians I knew did not consider Iran as Middle Eastern.
We were shortly gliding up an escalator in Hotel Makarem, which put my Al-Ishraq to shame. And I was pretty sure that this part of town was heavily surveilled. Hossein confirmed it by saying, “We are watched.” I felt reckless.
We knocked and entered Room 701. The door was ajar. Compared to mine the accommodations were plush. There were two double beds.
There were about ten men in this room. The majority were younger Western-style Iranians. Some of the younger men sipped coffee—they were dressed in what I was to discover was traditional Iranian Hajj garb—no flowing thobes for them. The men wore khakis and collared (no tie) shirts with Ahmadinejad couture.
There were two who had everyone in rapt attention. They wore black turbans and robes I had always seen on Shia marjas (revered Shia-style ayatollahs) or syeds (literally, “descendants of the Prophet Muhammad”). But for them to be hanging out in 701 probably meant they were just mere mullahs. I deliberately introduced myself as Parvez Hussein, using my middle name. For Iranians it immediately became Parviz—which in Persian means strength. And my first two names actually made me one of them. If I dared reveal I was a Sunni in 701, the consequences would not be pleasant. Hossein and I sat on the floor. It seemed they were engaged in high-level discourse and our role was perhaps to ask questions but never challenge them.
They opined on the destruction of Shia history by the Wahhabis, the real munafiqun (plural for “hypocrites”). Be strong, said the duo. We can already see their behavior at Baqi and at Dua Kumayl tonight, they said. They encouraged us to be on the lookout for coded questions that would primarily come from mutaween. They want to know if you are Shia or Sunni, said Turban #1. Turban #2 added that they do this with questions like, Where do you live? How do you pray? What is your name? Do you listen to music? What kind?
As with others I met in Mecca, there was a sense of foreboding. Turban #2 said, “Our Shia brothers in Iraq, in Sham (Syria), in Yemen, in Lebanon, in Bahrain, and in Iraq will soon face grave dangers. We will need to help them. It’s coming,” he ended ominously. In just a year, the Daesh followers of Wahhabi Islam would use all these questions and more to identify Shia innocents and brutally kill them in front of GoPro-like cameras, the videos to be uploaded to YouTube.
At the time I just wondered, How did they know what was coming? I didn’t know it then, but exactly the same kind of premonition of Daesh would come again during my Hajj. In a tremulous voice, I asked Turban #1, “Honorable Marja Taqlid . . .”
Turban #1 laughed and cut me short. “He is the marja, I am a mere syed.” Then for a minute the Turbans played the uniquely Iranian game of taarof, a half-fake, half-real merry-go-round of obsequiousness and propriety, common to every Iranian I had ever met. Finally Turban #2 looked in my direction.
“Exalted Marja Taqlid,” I began, still tremulous, “The Imam Khomeini,” and I over-obsequiously added, “our Rahbar Inquilab, said that, ‘We are in Oneness with Sunni Muslims. We are their brothers. It is obligatory for all Muslims to maintain unity.’”
I asked, “But then why do some ordinary Iranians use insults like Arabe soosmar khor (“lizard-eating Arabs”), saying Wahhabis are sponsored by America, and they call us rafidah (“rejectors”)? In India and Pakistan, our Shia brothers are khatmals (“bedbugs”).”
I was proud I had actually quoted the ultimate leader, the rahbar (“leader”) Khomeini.
But Turban #2 didn’t seem pleased, staring contemptuously at me. “Parviz, you said?” I nodded. “For matters like this, we should always obey our rahbar. So many quotes are attributed to him that sometimes it is hard to know what is true or false. I just want you to know that we Shia are sitting now in the land of the enemies.” For “enemies” he used one of thousands of words shared by Persian and my native Urdu, namely dushman. Frequently someone in the group would decide it was time for the Salawat or Darood Sharif, a supplication praising the Prophet. I had frantically learnt it in Arabic rote-style before I left, knowing that the Shia invoked it all the time. It said: “Oh, Allah, let Your Peace come upon Muhammad and the family of Muhammad.”
Chai was served. We sipped it Iranian-style by putting a sugar cube in our mouths. It was going to be a long night. The Turbans opined a great deal. Their revulsion for their Wahhabi hosts was on full display. Much more egregious behavior than plain old lizard-eating was assigned to them. It was also an occasion to lament the evils of the Great Shaitan, America and its inextricable ties to these Saudi monsters. The year 1987, when Shia-Sunni riots in Mecca killed four hundred people, was relived in great detail. As were many other Hajj slights and wars over the years, including the biggest: Iran and Iraq.
At one point Turban #1 whispered, “As you know, many of our Beirut brothers are staying in Anvaralzahra and Darolrahmah. They are the true warriors and we will gather tomorrow.”
I knew “Beirut brothers” was simple code for Hizbullah.
Time for another salawat. And then, conspiratorially, Turban #2 said, “We have to protect their identity at any cost. We meet them only in times like this and we must find time to sit together and properly strategize, nothing like face-to-face.”
Another salawat! To this day, I regret not trying to finagle my way into that coming meeting.
The young men in the room seemed to be interested in other things.
“How long are we separated from our wives?” asked one.
Turban #1 hurled an angry torrent of Persian at the questioner, who looked ready to disappear. The Turban, from what I could discern, was using a mixture of religious (sharia) law, a passage or two from the Quran, and quotes from a list of rules. He added, “Remember you have to work on intezaar.” In both Urdu and Persian, the word meant “waiting.”
Since my arrival, I had been taking notes on my phone and sometimes on pieces of paper (in Hindi—in case they were ever discovered). In this room tonight I did not dare. What I did know was that Hizbullah operatives were using the Hajj to meet their Iranian supporters, including this seemingly high-level duo. Had al-Qaeda done the same?
More chai and another salawat later, there was a dispute over ziyarat (literally, “visit”). Turban #1 claimed he had a theory that even the rahbar would approve. Ziyarat to holy places, just as I had grown up with in South Asia, was also central to Iranian identity. Iranians used it for everything. From visiting Karbala, most famous as the shrine of the revered Imam Husayn and the most-performed Shia pilgrimage on earth, to the shrine of Fatimah Masume in Qom, the second-holiest city in Iran after Mashhad—it was all ziyarat. My mother used to take me, a sickly child with frequent bronchitis, on a ziyarat to the mausoleum of a peer (Sufi mystic) called the Nine Meters Peer. You had to cover his grave in nine meters of satin every time you visited. You would also light incense and pray. Sacred to both Hindus and Muslims, shrines like this are common all over South Asia. As they are in Iran, Pakistan, and other parts of the Muslim world. Regardless, here in Wahhabi-land, the very utterance of the word “ziyarat” could land you in prison. For Turban #1 and many Shia, including the Iranians, Hajj is a ziyarat that often begins in Medina and ends in Mecca.
The grave-despising Wahhabi masters of the Saudis tolerate the semi-circular area denoted by a short wall near the third column of the Kaaba in Mecca as being “Hajjar’s skirt,” knowing full well that for most of the Muslim world this is where Hajjar and her son, Ismael, who began Islam’s lineage, are buried. If they tried to destroy these graves there would be global mayhem. This is also the reason they haven’t destroyed Muhammad’s grave. For many Shia, this Hajjar’s-skirt area, known as Hatim in Arabic, also contains many other graves of Islam’s ancestors. So for them, said Turban #1, the sanctity of that grave site was primal and constituted a ziyarat. The Wahhabis know this, and every Hajj accuse the Shia of performing shirk even within the Masjid al-Haram (Islam’s holiest mosque, home to the Kaaba, and translated simply as the Noble Sanctuary). Haram when pronounced with an emphasis on the “A” becomes the word for everything that is forbidden in Islam.
Turban #2 decided to quote from Khomeini, reminding us, “Even if we forgive Saddam, even if we forget Quds and forgive Israel, and even if we forgive America’s crimes, we will never forgive Al Saud.”
I triple-texted my safe MMS group comprising Adham, Keith, and Shahinaz: “You up? I am hanging out with Hizbullah!”
“Wish you were here dude,” replied Adham. “Amazing jam session in Jeddah. The beer is flowing like Zamzam!”
I choked on my laughter at his reference to Islam’s holiest water. Keith’s reply sobered me up.
“Don’t do all this, honey. I can’t sleep at night with worry. Just do the Hajj and get out of there. Nothing political. PLEASE.”
But I know he knew that I thrived on the dangerous and loved politics.
There was a lull and then another young Tehrani type, who looked like he was forced to come (he was, as I later learned), looked at Hossein and me.
“Hossein, have you told Parviz about what will happen at Jamrat?”
I knew that Jamrat was one of the last, most feared, and deadliest rituals of the Hajj. It had claimed thousands of lives. Pilgrims got to stone columns representing devils, re-enacting what the Prophet Ibrahim had allegedly done. Stampedes, injuries, and death (literally by stoning) were common.
“Ah!” laughed Hossein. He told me that in Iran pilgrims had schools for training for Hajj. When they were taught how to stone, they were told to say, “Death to America!” at the largest column, “Death to Israel!” at the second column, and “Death to Britannia!” at the third and smallest column. The room burst into laughter. So did I. Hossein told me later that some “poorer” Iranians actually practiced this at the Jamrat columns during Hajj.
In room 701, no one showed signs of leaving, each staring at his glowing smartphone, pretty much like anywhere on the planet. I made an excuse that it was time for my Fajr wudu and they wished me well. The night was proving what I had always suspected. The Iranian Hajj, like the Shia Hajj, was a political and spiritual act. I was back in the closet as a filmmaker and homosexual. If either Turban had Googled me, 701 would have been a very different space. Yet I felt solidarity with them.
“The Hizbullah shit is true, Parviz,” Hossein said. It could well be true. Medina and Mecca at Hajj time, when the Saudis were processing millions of visas, was the perfect time for the supposedly “bad” Muslims to get in and confabulate.
For an instant, I thought I should come out to Hossein and also tell him about Shahinaz. But my rational side told me that our friendship would be brief: Hajj buddies in Medina, but drifting apart naturally as the pilgrimage progressed.
It was still two hours to Fajr. Shahinaz joined me for a dangerous cigarette, hiding in an alley. If a mutawa was crawling at this hour, I would say she was my sister. I was not very savvy—these were early days. We did the unthinkable! A sleepless gay man and a bare-headed woman sharing a cigarette. We discussed roommate woes. She said her rudest roommate took the largest bed and claimed a superior piety. “Makes me want to vomit!” Earlier, she’d also texted, “It’s pray 24/7 in the tent every day, but then they form little cliques bitching about each other.”
She was my eyes and ears to peer into a forbidden world. I was eager to know what happened to the women on Hajj. We had never imagined this extent of segregation. She asked if my burden of faith felt lighter. We were opposites. She, like Keith, did not have a religious bone in her body. She respected how I was putting life and limb at risk, so she had also come wanting to “watch my back.” Pretty soon we had realized how impossible that was. The shared cigarette on that “Hizbullah Night” was a moment we needed to cherish. Shahinaz would suffer so much more, being a woman smoker on Hajj. In the best of times, even in India, smoking women were derided and labeled.
A menacing mutawa approached from the darkness. I was glad that Shahinaz had a small, boyish frame with a frizzy, afro-like mop of hair. From afar she could pass for a boy. We ran. This poor night-shift mutawa never got a chance to use his cane and write us up. Or worse, haul us to a Saudi dungeon.
The next morning was a flurry of activity. Younger Hajjis like me rushed between rooms of the second-timers. The day was upon us. We needed to don the ihram, the mandated dress for male pilgrims that consists of two seamless pieces of white towel. Two pieces, one for each half of the body. Both halves were about two meters long. The tying of the one over the lower part of the body was particularly challenging. The upper part was just like draping a shawl. Underwear was forbidden, so the lower half was challenging. My circumcision was still not healed. The terror I experienced over accidentally exposing it was unspeakable. One false move and my shame would be public. A kind uncle invited me into his room. He was already in full-on Hajj couture. The uncle looked at ease, wearing it around the waist, running to the ankles, which had to be exposed. His was held in place by fabric folded over without a knot.
“This is the Burmese style,” he said, “easier because you are not too fat.” He showed it to me, draping it over my pants.
“They will tell you not to tie a money belt around it, because it is not sunnah, but don’t listen to them. You will need that belt after you have worn this for even a day. So do it secretly when no one is looking,” he whispered. Sage words because they were true. I bought several. In Mecca, word spread that Parvez had extra fanny packs. This was no Christmas. Yet I felt like Santa Claus dolling them to the desperate men whose ihram’s were in danger of falling.
Upon donning the lower part of my ihram, after performing all rituals and making sure I wore no underwear, I realized the sexual potential of an unsheathed penis rubbing against this Made in China towel fabric.
“A horny gay man into mid-eastern types would be in paradise here, with all this man smell and exposed genitalia,” I texted Shahinaz, who replied, “The burqa vs Hijab vs Niqab vs Abaya wars are on here, my dear!”
I banished thoughts of the sexual implications of each man around me, separated from nudity by just a towel. We looked like the men I had seen in gay-hookup saunas during my first trip to the US in 1998. Also, fragrance was part of the long list of the forbiddens while wearing ihram, making for an unpleasantly malodorous Hajj.
I focused on the spiritual. The ihram was much more than a mere garment. A long list of restrictions came with it. I know the Prophet had deemed it as Hajj couture because he imagined an equal Ummah, in white, dressed in exactly the same way, facing their maker, naked on Judgment Day. The ihram was supposed to signify Muhammad’s equal Hajj. I had grown up listening to many opinions about ihram. Some elders used to say the word “ihram” meant abstention—abstention from war, hunting, the sexual, and so much more. Donning this garment, I entered an ineffable state of grace and piety. Faith had brought me here and it would protect me in the weeks that lay ahead. From this point on, even killing an insect was forbidden.
The terrors of walking thirsty for miles, with underwear-less thighs rubbing against each other in humid weather that feels like the 100s, lay in the future. Caused by walking with these brutally chafed thighs, the Hajj rash no one talks about is hell on Earth. I wish I had known that since 2007 the Saudis had offered pilgrims the option of “seamless trousers.” The English-language Saudi Gazette had written a piece on it on July 16, 2007, saying, “Pilgrims often complain of sore thighs because of friction as a result of long walks. The trouser will protect the thighs.”
I texted Shahinaz, “What is your Hajj couture, Madam? No underwear?”
“I will leave that to your fertile imagination darling,” she replied snarkily.
We were innocents, she and I. No one had ever dared to tell us the unspeakable horrors that unfolded when unsheathed male genitalia rubbed against the bodies of hundreds of thousands of women, not separated in the holy mosque in Mecca. At peak time, the tawaf was violent. The majority of these men had never been in such extreme proximity to the bodies of women. And not every male pilgrim had the discipline of piety.
Going down for my first fag in my brand-new threads, I took a pathetic-looking selfie for my MMS group. An older pilgrim looked on disapprovingly. I winked at him. There was no way on Earth I was going on Hajj without cigarettes. And thankfully I was not the only one with tobacco on his mind and breath.