CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Allah's City, Man's Abode

Mardini rang me from the lobby at eleven. His friend Saleem was outside with a car. They were going to drive across town, he said, to visit Saleem's shop and meet his father. Saleem had invited me to come along.

The heat rose up in a wall on the sidewalk. We hurried across Umm al-Qura Road to a late-model Buick parked outside a bank. I climbed in back and was still pulling shut the door when the car roared off. The doors were heavy, the engine huge. The seats were in thick, fake leather. Saleem drove what at home we called a hog.

Besides being air-conditioned, it had a special sticker on the window that permitted us past the roadblocks around the mosque. We were climbing a ramp that circled the haram when I noticed below us the entry to an ancient-looking souk. Incredibly, it resembled a slice of the Marrakesh markets, nestled between new offices and hotels. Men in robes stood trading goods down there, as always. Then the car swung into a cloverleaf on trestles and we sped through a tunnel.

On the other side of Mount Qubays the view gave way to more familiar urban buildings. We rolled along in the sunlight down a modern four-lane road lined with the usual low white-walled apartments. Makkah, like Amman and Baghdad, is a contemporary city designed for commerce and the car. Lit signs began appearing in shop windows. Laundry fluttered overhead on poles. By the look of the skyline quite a few Makkans let out their flats at hadj time, camping on the roof for extra rent. Everyone seemed to be selling something to someone. The grocery shops and vendors’ stalls buzzed. The walks were crowded. Three miles away we still were passing knots of white-toweled pilgrims walking in the direction of the mosque.

Saleem's family owned a mechanic's shop in this district. His father had come from Sidon in the fifties and opened an engine repair business on this road. He had settled the neighborhood, set up two more shops, and raised a family. Saleem waved at a passing gate and said, “I was born here.” It was hard to imagine him ever being small. His head grazed the roof as he drove, and he had to slouch turning corners, to keep the wheel from binding on his lap. There was no fat on Saleem. He was simply extra-large in all directions, with a tree-trunk neck and hands made to wrestle pistons. He towered beside Mardini, taking up two thirds of the seat.

Mardini, I now recalled, was from Sidon, too. He had worked for Saleem part-time on coming to Makkah. I heard two stories about his tenure as we rode: one from a time when Saleem had won a contract to build an office building near the mosque and how Mardini had got him the permits and purchased his lumber, and one from later on, when Saleem had been owed a large debt and Mardini had seen it through court and got him his money. They were an unlikely-looking duo. Mardini stood five foot nine with soft, circular features. Saleem, more reminiscent of a bear, wore heavy glasses. They slid down the bridge of his nose every few minutes, and he was always pushing them back with the jab of a thumb.

Personally, I felt glad to meet a Makkan who spoke English. For Mardini and Saleem this was a reunion. They hadn't seen each other in six years.

I asked Saleem what kinds of engines he repaired. “Automobile engines,” he said. “Mostly for big American cars, like this one.”

From what I could see, big cars were in demand here. During the last few years cheaper Japanese compacts had nosed them out of the U.S. markets, but guzzlers were still favored in the Gulf. Their weight and huge engines supplied the traction drivers needed in the desert, and their egregious fuel consumption bothered no one. They were used cars when they arrived, Saleem explained, and usually came equipped to “Texas specs,” with oversize radiators and thick hoses. In this way the streets of Makkah resembled Houston. Broughams, Town Cars, and Signature sedans were everywhere. Fortunately for Saleem, enough of these specialized crates still boiled over to keep him in business. Besides repairing the ones already here, he and his father imported them to sell.

I asked the local price of the car he was driving. He thumped the wheel and said, “Twenty-four thousand dollars.” The car was already five years old. Despite shipping costs, the profit margin looked impressive. I had worked on car lots once or twice myself. I reached for my wallet and showed Saleem my salesman's license.

When Mardini had seen it, he smiled and said, “Now Saleem's father really wants to meet you.”

Saleem pulled up outside a row of shops and we got out. The call to zuhr prayer had already sounded, and traffic on the street was thinning out. As in most Gulf states, businesses closed down five times a day here. The sidewalks were empty. In the shop windows blinds were being drawn.

We passed through a door and stepped into a bright, fluorescent workshop lined with aisles of drill presses and lathes. The floors were oil stained, and twists of steel filings twinkled. Spare-parts racks ran deep into the building.

Saleem led us back to a partitioned space that served as an office. A dais stood in one corner. Old carpets covered a portion of the floor. We removed our sandals and joined a group of eight men for salat.

When zuhr was over, we all took seats around a desk. A workman brought in coffee on a tray. A six-foot waterpipe was lighted. Each man smoked and passed the tube and sipped his coffee.

Saleem's father, Samir, was overjoyed to see Mardini. They questioned each other at length in Arabic. I had already lost the thread of the conversation when Mardini turned and said, “Show him the license.”

Samir had an ax-blade face, somewhat reminiscent of King Faisal's. He admitted a mild grin at the sight of my card. Shier than Saleem, he dipped his head and passed the card around, saying, “al-Hamdulillah.” A discussion began, of ten or twelve minutes, between the six men around the table, and then Saleem explained that they wanted to make an order. I was passed a pen and paper. Samir began to speak.

They wanted to have shipped to them, from any U.S. port, ten white V-8 Chevrolet Caprices, five white and five black Buick Park Ave's, and three Lincoln Town Cars in black or charcoal. The cars were all to be four-doors, five or six years old, and loaded with extras. Saleem filled in the years and model numbers.

Where cars were concerned, Samir and I spoke the same language. Though the size of his order was mildly astonishing, my head cleared quickly as I wrote, for I felt I knew where to locate these vehicles, at prices attractive to both parties. Samir knew exactly what he wanted. He apparently hoped to strike while the iron was hot. In a town as remote as Makkah, with few manufactured goods, where even fresh fruit must be shipped in, the hadj provided a peak point for many merchants. Indeed, throughout the centuries—in addition to its spiritual importance—it has always been regarded as a trade fair. Makkah might be the Middle East's most isolated city, but once every year for a few weeks several million new prospects filled its markets, depositing a flood of cash and goods.

(Profitability flowed in both directions. Hadjis poorer and far richer than myself defrayed the cost of their pilgrimage by trading. Bukharans sold fine carpets on the sidewalks. Nigerians hawked kola nuts and beads. Oil deals and building contracts were structured between prayers, at the big hotels.)

A different kind of coffee went around now, brewed with green Arabian beans. Perfumed with cardamom, strained through a twist of palm coir in the spout, the ginger-shaded drink came in thimble cups. We sat and sipped for another fifteen minutes. Then Saleem stood up and everyone shook hands. We left the shop and drove across the city.

At the hotel reception desk, I wired a price request on Samir's cars to a wholesale buyer I knew in California. I had worked with this man before and believed he could help me. After sending the fax, however, I wondered if he knew where Makkah was. I hoped he wouldn't consider the order harebrained. I went upstairs to catch a nap before ‘asr.

The telephone by my bed rang before the adhan. It was a discouraged-sounding John Muhammad. He could not believe he had come this far to be bedridden. Now, after two days’ rest, he had reached a decision to make an effort and not just lie around. If he pushed himself, he felt, things might improve. He had started slowly. Now, in spite of pain, he was managing to rise for every prayer. The muscle relaxants were helpful, he said. The other pills had run out. He needed refills.

I collected my medicines and went upstairs. John sat on the edge of the bed, his hair beaded with water from the ablutions. He had made it back from the shower stall and now was resting up before the prayer. I wasn't sure I approved of his exertions. When I'd been too sick to fast in Marrakesh, Qadisha had taught me something about religious obligations—that people were not made to carry more weight than they could bear. “The exacting faith” (Conrad's term) was full of merciful subclauses. A man in John's straits, for example, was perfectly free to say his prayers from bed.

John shrugged when I mentioned it. He said touching his forehead to the ground felt therapeutic. I counted out more pills, arranging them into fans on the bedside table. Before I left, he had me roll out a reed mat on the carpet and point it in the direction of the mosque. The first adhan was already beginning. I was saying good-bye when a tap came at the door. Sheikh Ibrahim and Fayez trooped into the bedroom.

Both men walked with a stoop and their nostrils were florid. Fayez's eyes looked worse than yesterday. His waking hours were loaded with supererogatory commitments. His catnaps in the haram were not enough. Today on the way to his grandmother's hotel he'd succumbed to sunstroke, fainting in the road. Ibrahim looked overworked and shaky. Both men complained of crashing headaches.

In the next few days prostration from exposure passed at a rapid clip through the hotel. Striking down groups of four or five, it moved from room to room and floor to floor. Soon the hotel began to resemble an infirmary, with dozens of guests in various stages of illness strewn around the lobby every night. Guides were not spared.

Every day the temperature climbed by one or two degrees. At midnight the mercury remained above one hundred Fahrenheit. Humidity at this altitude is low. The Tihama Plain walled Makkah off from the drenching coastal heat, and there were days of 10-percent relative humidity, when only a run in the sunlight produced a sweat. The night before I had washed a few thobes and hung them to dry on the balcony. The gowns weren't wet long. The desert air had done its work in minutes.

Other factors contributed to the delegation's weakness. New foods, crushing crowds, a lack of sleep combined to exhaust a lot of pilgrims. Excessive enthusiasm ran others ragged. When the right state was reached, a flu took over. The first signs of this bug were bone weariness and mild fever. If one rested at the beginning, it was possible to keep the worst at bay. A couple of hours’ nap served to restore me. The trick was restraint, and rest at the first indications. Rather than miss the buildup to the hadj, and perhaps the hadj itself, I became a little fanatical on the subject. I began taking aspirin to lower my body temperature. I carried bottled water on the street.

Sunstroke in June was so common during hadj that the Saudis, in their role as pilgrim hosts, had set up 150 centers equipped to treat it. In addition, Green Crescent nurses manned several hundred clinics in the town. The TV preached prevention every evening, and leaflets were passed out in the streets. The essential piece of advice—to avoid direct sunlight—went mostly unheeded. Visiting hadjis continued to choke the roads. Their guides had to work to keep up with them.

Our biggest adversary was the heat. Eventually it determined all my movements. To beat the sun, I began breaking up my trips to the mosque with long siestas—a three-hour nap between dawn and noon, another rest after lunch between zuhr and ’asr. Canonical hours shaped everybody's day. Rather than fall out of step, I kept to the schedule. I slept between prayers while the sun was up and visited the haram every evening. Most of my time between dusk and dawn I spent at the mosque.

I became what Mardini called a midnight hadji. In June it was a usual regime. Every summer on the weather maps Makkah, Yanbu’, and Jidda competed for the hottest spot on earth. Having spent two years in West Africa in my twenties, I arrived convinced that heat could not affect me. A few days in Makkah proved me wrong. The thermometer on the sill edged nearer 120 Fahrenheit every day. The sun, bouncing off the streets, added ten degrees. At night the buildings were radiators. Hejazi heat gave a new twist to Shabestari's famous couplet:

If the smallest atom were broken apart

You would find the sun at its very heart.

Stepping out of the air-conditioned lobby, one opened up the door on a roaring stove.

The mosque was surprisingly cool in the evening hours. A network of cold-water pipes ran under the floors, and some cloisters were air-conditioned. I often went there equipped to stay on until dawn, with a portable one-man prayer rug and my Qur'an. I found the mosque completely accommodating. There were water tanks in every hall, carpets to nap on, and food stalls on the street for midnight snacks. To simplify matters, I brought along a plastic bag to carry my foot gear. The haram had sixty-four entries, and once inside, I liked to stroll around so that exiting later by my original gate might mean a long hike across the building. Worse, the piles of shoes to be searched through became confusing. With my flip-flops bagged, I could come and go as I liked and be sure to leave wearing the pair I had come in on.

Every night the crowd and mood were different. Despite Fayez's claim, there was no best seat. The mosque, built on the round, provided countless perfect sight lines. Your view depended on time and elevation. The final prayers of a Muslim day, maghrib (just after sunset) and ‘isha’ (dusk), occurred within ninety minutes of each other. I tried to be on the roof during these hours. The crowds were smaller than on the lower levels, and oftentimes a breeze came down the hills. One could watch the tawaf wind down and hear the adhan echo through the mountains. When the microphone clicked on, the congregation rustled to its feet like wind in a wheat field.

One day I was late for ‘asr prayer. From John's room I had rushed outdoors and was coming down the hill into the hollow when the second call began and traffic stopped. All at once I saw I couldn't make it.

A mosque is the choicest place, of course, but Muslims are advised to pray wherever the hour overtakes them. The imam inside the building cleared his throat. The crowds on the road began forming up their lines. I found myself on a strip of walk, near a money changer's office. The pavement was filthy, and I spread my scarf on the ground to protect my thobe. For two or three seconds the fabric framed an open yard of ground; then a pair of Egyptians squeezed in on my left, and I was left with a foot of cloth to bow on. Hemmed in by a wall, I could not raise my other arm. Fifty thousand people surrounded the building, merging in rows that ran back up the hill. The pair beside me occupied nine tenths of my kaffiyeh. As we straightened our line, they looked apologetic.

The entire street performed salat en bloc. We bent as one body, touched our knees, rose again, then knelt down on the pavement. We only found room to move by moving together. When it came time to press my forehead on the ground, a breeze raised the edge of the scarf, flipping back the corner. I could smell the grime on the street and count the pebbles. Then a hand shot out and adjusted the cloth for me.

When the prayer was done, the man and I shook hands, and he handed me a card with a Cairo address. His partner, meanwhile, folded up my scarf. They took my arms and insisted we go into the building together. They wanted to make the tawaf with me.

The crowds began to move, and we moved with them, wading downstream toward the mosque, but before we reached the gates, we were separated. I watched the two men be carried away, holding their hands in the air like people drowning.

Coming back uphill at dawn, when the streets were less choked, I had a chance to poke around the town. The roads still lay in shadow then, and things were at their coolest. Under the porticos on Bab al-'Umrah Street, coffee vendors set up tables on the sidewalks, and small bazaars were opening for business. Offices above them sprouted signs. Their English intrigued me:

EXPERIMENTAL ESTABLISHMENT

FOR PILGRIMS FROM NON-MUSLIM COUNTRIES

NO. 7

ONLY RIYALS

SACRIFICIAL COUPONS HEAR

“Only Riyals” was a gift shop. The government-coupon dispenser sold pilgrims sacrificial sheep.

The perfumeries sparkled like bright museums with tall cases of pastel-colored scents in cut glass vials. There were delicatessens, thobe and ihram vendors, pharmacies, trinket shops, and many bookstores. My favorite bookshop had dark wood shelves and seventeen-foot ceilings. It specialized in classic Muslim texts, printed in Beirut and Riyadh. It sold posters, too, writing materials, and postcards displayed on sidewalk racks.

I was browsing here one morning when a dozen Tadjik pilgrims came into the store. (Mostopha had predicted I would see Russians.) These men were among the first post-Soviet hadjis in seventy years. They wore brown wool hats and cream-white robes belted at the waist with tasseled cords. They entered warily, elected a spokesman, and walked him to the counter. They watched his lips, to be sure he got the speech right. They did not want perfume, they wanted books. If the ruble was worthless outside Russia, they were ready to pay in Deutsche Marks. The man produced a wallet filled with both currencies.

The Qur'an had been forbidden by the Soviets so long that a copy in Tashkent currently cost a hundred dollars. Here they cost five. The Tadjiks left the shop with a dozen copies.

I tried to beat the sun on these dawn excursions. By 8:00 A.M. the streets were white with it. I always reached the hotel in time for breakfast. After, I would go upstairs to read. When the skies were right, I could tune my radio. I tried, through the BBC, to keep abreast of troubles brewing to our north. Saddam Hussein, for example, had accused the Kuwaiti emir of stealing oil from Iraq and “waging economic war.” Kuwait had walked out of a meeting on the subject. Now a second conference had been called. It would take place in Jidda, after the hadj.

Elsewhere, in the mountains of Zanjan, the earthquake toll was nearing fifty thousand. Moscow and Washington each had offered aid.

The day my fax arrived from California, Mardini phoned Samir from the hotel. Saleem drove over at noon to pick us up.

By now, due to the heat, the mayor had imposed a citywide siesta, and bazaars on the street were rolling down their doors. Hadjis did not know how to cope with heat, Saleem said. Last year a few dozen shoppers had died, among them several pregnant women.

As he spoke, he puffed a meerschaum, and cherry-scented smoke blew through the car. Coming up the Marwa Bridge, he waved at a block of homes in Qushashiyah. The home of Muhammad's first wife lay down there. The Prophet had lived in that house for years, he said. I stared down the ramp and could not isolate it. (Historic sites and their locations were often in question. Having looked for Muhammad's birthplace for several days, I was told it lay “somewhere under” the city library.) Saleem dismissed the city with a wave. “There's nothing to see here except the mosque! I live here! Believe me! If it weren't for the Ka'ba, no one would come.”

We did not use the tunnel today but continued north on Masjid al-Haram Street, taking the long way. We passed through Suleimaniyah. Construction crews were widening the road here, and Saleem had to shout over the jackhammers. A century ago this had been a quiet district full of Afghans; Burckhardt had found a hashish shop out here.

Today the intersections all wore stoplights. We were moving through fast traffic when a Range Rover nearly hit us at a crossroads. Both cars swerved. Saleem had run a red light. He waved dismissively.

“They were put up a couple of years ago,” Mardini said. “Red doesn't mean stop. It means you slow down to twenty or so and look to see what's coming.”

“You're kidding.”

“Watch.”

Mardini was scathing about Makkan roadsmanship. He called it the insha’ Allah school of driving. He had lived here long enough to say this dryly. I tried to imitate his cool. Saleem, I told myself, was an expert mechanic. Automobiles were in his blood, his genes. A majority of drivers along this road apparently lacked such experience to draw on. I began to suspect they had trained on camel saddles. Most of the pavement in Makkah looked recent, modern, its surfaces uniformly marked with yellow lines, but drivers ignored the lanes as much as the stoplights.

“It isn't like Michigan,” Mardini said.

“It isn't like anywhere,” Saleem said. “Have you seen any speed limits?”

I could not recall one sign.

The optimum rate of travel here seemed to be a mile per minute. If progress slowed, the correct response was to gain back lost ground fast, by any means, including high-speed weaving. Dropouts from the insha’ Allah school sat demolished at the curb every few blocks, but nobody noticed. Horns blared. Rubber burned. I heard no traffic sirens. Policemen drove as badly as the rest.

A quarter mile down the road Saleem's pipe fell into his lap. We were sailing into a tight left turn when this happened. We had been discussing the proposed oil conference in Jidda. Now he brushed live ashes from his trousers and pushed back his glasses.

“Perhaps the emir will walk out again,” he said. “He's in trouble at home. He's looking for a diversion.”

“From what?”

“From democracy.”

In 1986, he said, Sheikh Jabir as-Sabah had suspended the Kuwaiti constitution. Now many of his subjects wanted it back. A petition, signed by thousands, had been presented to the palace. Last winter there had been rallies every week. The police had reacted badly. To restore calm, the emir had gone on TV and promised a dialogue. These discussions had broken down in the spring.

Samir‘s shop had closed for the siesta. Our car was the only thing moving on the block. Inside the office the air felt cool, and the shades were drawn. The same six men sat talking in the office.

Coffee was served and the waterpipe went around. Pipes the size of Samir's six-footer had electric coils in the bowls, to keep them lighted. Drawn at full blast, they gurgled like bullfrogs. The ceramic mouthpiece turned on a metal swivel. The pipe itself was too big to pass around.

After a half-hour of pleasantries, Samir began to speak about my cars. When talk turned to prices, I passed Saleem my fax. He set it on the blotter before his father.

I'd had a few days to think about this moment. I was not unaware that the hadj could be turned to a profit. The surprise was to find myself participating. Samir put on a pair of reading glasses. We discussed shipping points and import duties. He knocked a few dollars off two of the cars, then questioned me briefly, through Saleem, concerning air-conditioning.

Coffee arrived. The list went around the desk for consultation. We were still discussing fine points when the shop's front door squeaked open, and two men came into the office.

The first was an Egyptian named Hameed. Saleem's right-hand man, Hameed had a radiant face and a fast sense of humor. Today he could barely contain himself. He had stopped at the Transport Office, he said, to drop off some parts to be shipped to Jidda, and he had found an American weeping on a bench there. The man had been trying to use the office telephone, but no one would let him. Hameed had driven the pilgrim back to Samir's.

At this point a German-looking man stepped up behind him. He had blond, disheveled hair and wide blue eyes. His ihram towels were sweaty and caked with filth. Apparently he had slept in them last night, lying on a sidewalk at the airport. The flight from Miami had taken eighteen hours, he said. Then he had been hassled going through customs. He had managed to locate a telephone booth, but no one could change his money. His name was Shafeeq. His story came out in pieces.

At home Shafeeq worked as a waiter in a Miami Beach hotel. A week before, he'd been serving dinner in the restaurant when a Saudi man had come in to eat and discovered Shafeeq was a Muslim. One thing had led to another, he said. Over dessert the man presented him with a ticket to Makkah. The idea had been that when his plane arrived, the man would be there to meet him at the airport. Shafeeq would not need a hotel room. He would not even need money. The man was a prince. The prince would be his sponsor.

The tale raised familiar nods around Samir's table. Royal largesse during the hadj was well-known. When Shafeeq explained the outcome, however, the men leaned back in their chairs and whispered, “Shu'ma.” Generosity was good, they said, but half a gift is nothing. The worst had happened. Shafeeq's prince had not shown up at the airport.

Shafeeq carried a bag on his arm the size of a lunch box. This and a change of clothes were all his luggage. Inside the bag were two telephone numbers: one for a palace in Jidda, one for the prince's Florida hotel suite. Saleem became determined to get some answers. He walked a telephone across the room and gave Shafeeq a desk and chair. Shafeeq made the calls himself. He spoke Arabic fluently.

The first call confirmed that the prince was not in Jidda. Next he rang the Florida hotel and learned from a clerk that the prince was not taking phone calls. Shafeeq looked down at his sandals. “I'll try tomorrow.”

“No, no,” Saleem said. “Come with us. You can stay at my place.”

Saleem's place was the family home, built by Samir in stages, on land that was barren ground in 1950. Rather than move on as his family grew, Samir had added structures, creating a compound. By now it consisted of three independent dwellings, the latest a three-story marble villa flanked by two small cottages for guests. Shafeeq was installed in a cottage. While he cleaned up, we waited in the main house.

Mardini seemed amused by what had happened. Saleem fulminated against the prince. Personally, I remained curious to hear what Shafeeq had told them on the way out here. The main discussion had been in Arabic. I could guess that Shafeeq did not have much to fall back on. I now learned that he had landed with a one-hundred-dollar bill. That was why he'd had trouble using the pay phones.

Saleem seemed impressed with Shafeeq. Mardini thought him naive to trust in princes. I sided with Saleem. When all was said, Shafeeq reminded me of the man who had ridden his horse into the sea in the pilgrim story. He had taken the plunge and ended up in Makkah. The guts of the performance justified him.

“But what if Hameed hadn't found him?” Mardini asked.

“He was found,” Saleem said, his tone suggesting larger forces at work in the matter. “He was found and brought to us. He is a pilgrim. We are Makkans. The hadjis are our guests.” Saleem was more or less quoting a hadith.

Mardini said, “Yes. He must go to the mosque now.”

Despite Shafeeq's exhaustion, an arrival tuwaf was expected of him, too. Mardini would go along to act as guide.

Saleem took a ring road back to town. On the way we passed Jabal Nur, “the Mountain of Light,” where Muhammad had often gone to fast and where the angel had first addressed him:

Recite, in the name of your Lord

Who created man from an embryo.

Recite, for your Lord is generous

Who taught man by the pen

What he did not know.

The voice had produced a spiritual crisis in Muhammad's life. In the words of Emel Esin, he

rushed home in terror. He clung to Khadijah, trembling and saying: “Hide me! Hide me!” She covered him in cloth until his fears subsided, but still he could see the vision everywhere, even when his eyes were closed. He said to his wife: “I have heard a sound and seen a light, and truly I fear that I will become insane.” But she comforted him: “. . . These are good tidings, Cousin. I hope you will be the messenger of this people.”

Since then great numbers of hadjis have trudged up Jabal Nur to see the cave. When heat makes the climb impossible, you hear regrets. It is one of the very few sites pilgrims visit in Makkah. Even the iconoclastic Saudis seemed to give way before it. From here their religion passed into the world.