Winifred Stegar
Australia
1927
Winifred Stegar’s Hajj account was composed in her eighties, a few years before she died. The memoir in which it appears is less concerned with Mecca than with the arduous trip that brought her there. Her record proves the proverb that a Hajj begins with the first step from one’s door. In its central chapters, Stegar narrates a journey across half the world as she, her husband, Ali, and three young children trek west from Australia by cart, train, and freighter over the Indian Ocean to the Hijaz. This account is representative of the difficult, often prosaic lives of millions of hardworking men and women who have scrimped and saved, sometimes for decades, until in middle life they become pilgrims—people detached and called away from daily life by sheer devotion, frequently at great expense and risk. This is not careerist travel writing. Stegar did not observe these people; she married one; she became one herself. In that sense, her book is not a literary product. Set down for pleasure in old age, it is a feat of memory, a summing up.
Stegar’s life was unique from start to finish. A green-eyed Caucasian foundling born in China, she was raised by Catholic Sisters who named her Win (for winsome) Strange. She lived in their care until she was sixteen, when an epidemic swept the church mission. For the next three years, she clung to a clerical job in a cotton factory. In a chapter called “A Knock at the Door,” she encounters an English seeker named Alice Blake, a devotee of Tibetan Buddhism. This chance meeting at age nineteen drew Stegar into her first pilgrimage, a mountain trek to a Buddhist lamasery, where she stayed seven months. Accompanying Blake back to Beijing, she next took a job in a silk factory. Here she had her own office and learned accounting. Here she met her future husband, Ali, a dapper, magnetic Hindi Muslim with a taste for cream silk suits and gold-fringed turbans. His family was well-off. He had studied at Oxford.
When Ali chose Stegar over an arranged marriage, his father disinherited him, leaving the couple just enough cash for two tickets to Australia. “To me it seemed a fine idea,” Stegar writes. “What had we to lose? We were both young and strong, and even in that strange land we ought to be able to earn our keep.” They settled down in the hardscrabble Northern Territory, in a land Stegar compares to the Dead Sea. Ali joined a group of Hindi and Syrian cameleers, freighting goods on long trips through the desert. Gradually the couple acquired their own livestock; Stegar balanced the books and on occasion traveled with her husband. It was a hard existence, but, she adds, “I had eaten my fill of lonely years before I met him, so I thrived on this rough, romantic life.” For fourteen years, they lived at Oodnadatta, South Australia, and Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory. Then one night Ali brought up the Hajj, telling her that he must go and that his only worry was where and with whom to leave her while he traveled. The mere suggestion of leaving her made Stegar furious. She insisted on coming along and taking the children. A few weeks passed before Ali gave in.
The following excerpts track the family from Australia to India, then through the Red Sea to the Hijaz. They depict the tedium of such a journey, with its flashes of trouble and painful turning points: the officious inspectors at quarantine stations, the decision to leave two sons behind, the difficult choice to take along a daughter. We ride with them on a Hajj train from Lucknow, where every station is bedecked with flowers. We see what conditions were like aboard a typically overcrowded pilgrim steamer more broken down than Conrad’s Patna. Grueling experiences like these remain common for thousands of hajjis even now. Subsequent excerpts provide a realistic view of the Jidda-Mecca caravan by a hajja who had lived too long with camels to romanticize them. The landscape they pass through she registers as mythic—Abraham’s wells, the mines of Solomon, are on the way. In her depiction of the pilgrims on the night before they entered Mecca, we see the devotion of the travelers as they wait at the border to a sacred world.
Stegar’s book presents the realities of travel as endured by a scrappy survivor without connections or much money. Cast in the simplifying accents of a woman thinking back decades, it first appeared in 1969. “If it should seem at all disjointed,” she remarks, “just sigh and say, ‘Oh, but she was eighty-seven when she wrote it.’ “ Winifred Stegar’s whole life was a journey.
from Winifred Stegar’s Always Bells
OODNADATTA, AUSTRALIA. 1926 Though I made light of the [Hajj] journey, I knew it would not be child’s play. I had met so many pilgrims in my younger days and listened to so many stories that I had quite a grim idea of the future journey and of the very real dangers. For me there was a danger in addition to those usually encountered by pilgrims. I had never become an expert in the recital of the prayers. They were long and many, and the language used was Arabic, with all the different gestures at their appointed place. Keen eyes would be watching if there was any suspicion of my being an infidel, and it would mean my life and Ali’s also for profaning the Holy Land of the Hijaz. I admit I was a coward at heart and deeply afraid, but I was more afraid of letting him go alone and remaining behind with the anguished fears that I might never see him again. That would be too much to face; if there was danger for him then my place was beside him. . . .
LUCKNOW We were to join the first pilgrim train of the season at Lucknow. When we arrived there, we found it would not arrive till the next day, which meant that we must sleep overnight on the asphalt of the platform. . . . The gaslight flickered, making weird shadows over the many sleepers, and the night was noisy with the raucous coughing of aged travellers. And all night vans and pedestrians came in, adding to the great throng, all intent on catching the first pilgrim train of the season. Pariah dogs on the ceaseless hunt for food circled about among the sleepers, afraid of none, for no one hurts them.
With the cool, damp dawn—for it had rained the night before— women began to twine flowers round pillars and posts. Many sat in groups making garlands with great mounds of flowers before them. Blossoms were hung from the vaulted roof over trestles, doors, and windows—even the wheelbarrows were decked. One wondered where all the roses and jasmine could have come from. . . .
Just before noon the old train rolled in—I call her old because she was decrepit with her years. Her whistle seemed the strongest thing about her. The paint on the carriages had long gone, the engine was rusty, and when she let off steam, it sounded as if she were coughing with a galloping consumption. But through her rust there came a powerful rumble; maybe she was stronger than she looked. Or perhaps it was skittishness from the feeling of all the flowers that wreathed her humps and smokestack.
Every knob, door, and handle of the carriage dangled flowers, every crack or cranny was used to hold a flower. The uproar was deafening, pilgrims bidding relatives farewell, vendors shrieking, children crying, the old engine sending off intermittent blasts like a foghorn at sea.
The passengers swarmed into the carriages, many so eager to get in first that they pushed themselves in through the windows. The doors were choked with bodies as they shoved together.
Ali secured a seat for me and the children. Then more decorating began. Women scrambled in and decked the passengers’ necks with garlands. I and mine received far more than our share; I felt that these darling women knew I was both strange and scared almost sick. They literally buried me in flowers up to my chin and I had to rescue the children to get them breathing space from the blossoms. Yes, it was a day in my life to remember. I, the abandoned baby, left to die in a Chinese temple garden, was today a queen in a royal garment of rose and jasmine. . . .
A full hour later the engine gave out three wheezy blasts. The onlookers moved back from the platform edge. The vendors stopped shrieking, and as one body the mass on the platform turned to the east. The wheels moved as the thunder of “Allahu akbar!” shook the rafters—the salute to God as the train pulled out into the open, the engine still hoarsely blasting and the rickety carriages swaying with the prayers and movement of a thousand Muslim passengers on their sacred journey to Mecca. . . .
PREPARATIONS AT KARACHI Ali had arranged with a wealthy family, whom he had known in earlier days, to take charge of our sons whilst we were away. Janey, my girl, was only four and, I felt, too young to leave, yet it was more than possible she would be far safer left behind in Karachi. I was torn both ways, and it did not add to my confidence that all pilgrims were required to make their wills and leave them with the authorities before embarking. . . . One dear old man never got the chance—he was murdered and robbed almost within sight of the gates. There was quite a lot of robbery with violence going on out in the city. Ali insisted I always bolt the door during his absences, not that I could see that there was anything in our room worth stealing. There were a few items of the children’s clothing, three rugs, my daughter’s big doll, some dried peas, some whole-meal flour, curry, and spices, with a gallon tin of ghee, which is really melted butter.
I eyed those dried peas gloomily. They were to be the bulk of our fare on the ship. Every passenger must carry his own supplies. We would be allowed three gallons of water and fifteen pounds of wood for cooking, a head—no allowance for children. That limited water supply hit us hard in the Red Sea.
Ali finally, after a lot of trouble, secured the tickets, which rose in price with the demand. Then our names had to be changed for the duration, so that they would be strictly Muslim. Ali’s name was right, but Janey’s and mine were wrong. As for my new name, I didn’t wear it long enough to get it shop soiled, for it was changed again not long after.
It was in Karachi that Ali’s brother rejoined us. Lubu was of the thoughtful, introspective type; you really felt the calm assurance of the man and knew that he would stand beside you firmly in a crisis. He was always good to me, but at heart I wondered what he really thought of his unpredictable sister-in-law. . . .
THE MEDICAL EXAMINATION The day came for us to board the ship. Onehorse gharries were to carry us to the wharf. I thought that we would be going straight on board, but the pilgrim authorities had other ideas. In relays we were carried to a sandy patch on the beach, on which was one long, cool shed made of bamboos and thatched roof, with great crocks of cool drinking water within. This fine shed was solely for the male pilgrims; in it they would be medically examined in cool comfort.
The rest of us, four hundred women, were led to the roofless ruins of an old building of which but three walls remained. By now it was midday, and without hats or other shelter we were lined round the three walls, Janey back to the wall beside me. When it was considered we were in position, a lady doctor, a Eurasian, came across the sand to us, followed by her ayah bearing an inkwell with red and black ink, pens, and paper.
I could not help wondering what our sex had done that we might not enjoy the comfort of shelter and cool water as did the men. Before we had left the home of Ali’s parents, I had contracted malaria, and attacks came on every second day at about the same hour. Standing by the old wall, I felt the first cold shudders of the usual attack coming on; also in the midday sun my prickly heat was torturing me.
The lady doctor swept in upon us, in white linen coat and skirt with topee and silk puggaree complete. She was, I judged, in her late thirties. For a minute she stood still and eyed us off, then snapped out a command like a whiplash, to the effect that we must lift up our shirts and expose chests and stomachs. Then she slapped each sweaty stomach with the back of her hand, one after the other. I gasped. I knew this was wrong. If there was any contagious disease she was spreading it to all. Apart from this, the women of India are extremely modest. If any had malformations she was exposing them, and in Indian eyes, this thing was a gross indignity. The women showed they felt it as such, their dark eyes looking helplessly round them.
The few who resisted had their heads banged on the brick wall behind them, to the accompaniment of moans, shrieks, and sobs. I was aghast at the vicious, sadistic cruelty of the doctor—all done in the name of medical examination.
By this time my malaria had taken firm hold and I was shaking like an angry jelly. Rapidly, with ayah following, the doctor circled the building, coming now to the third and last wall. Four women down from where Janey and I were standing, a tiny little mother from the Punjab was literally crouching in terror of she hardly knew what.
Blind with fear, she did not seem to grasp the doctor’s vicious order of “Up with your shirt!” The poor thing only crouched lower against the wall, her face wrapped between her hands and her chador. With a wrench the doctor tore at the woman’s shirt. My sight was hidden for a moment; the next I saw, the doctor had her by the neck and was banging her head mercilessly on the wall behind her. The woman fell sobbing to the ground. The ayah said something to her mistress, but was answered with a slap that sent her bangles and anklets jangling.
The doctor came to Janey. “Up with her shirt,” she snapped at me.
“No you don’t! You keep your dirty hands off my child! Don’t you dare to touch her!” I had barely got the words out before she reached down for the child’s garment, but Janey, terrified, slipped behind my legs and evaded her. “You,” she snapped turning back on me, “up with your shirt— don’t be all day. I’ve no time to waste if you have.”
“No, doctor, I won’t. What you are doing is not examining, but spreading disease.”
“How dare you say such a thing? I can have you punished for that, but I don’t want trouble, so pull up your shirt at once.”
“Never! Your filthy hands shall never touch me!”
It was at this point that she made the mistake of tearing at my shirt herself, and I saw red. I sprang on her with all my strength and rage; she fell with me on top of her. One wrench and away came a hunk of her silk blouse. I wrenched and tore her clothing in a delirium of rage. It’s years ago now, but I can still quiver with the unholy joy of ripping that woman’s garments to bits.
Oh yes, she squealed and wriggled, but I was the stronger; I rolled on her and kept her down. The ayah came to her mistress’s aid and, forgetting she held the double glass inkwell, she let it run all over us. That once white costume of my enemy was now a mass of dirt, mingled with black and red ink, giving the effect of gallons of gore. Her screams and my angry gasps were added to by a choir of screeching women. If you have ever heard four hundred women scream, then you have heard something. The uproar brought the men and doctors running from their hut. The doctor and I were torn apart and upended. It was too soon; I was not half-finished with all I meant to do to her. I was too shaky to stand alone, and someone plumped me into a chair. A squad of police moved into position. The male pilgrims were ordered to stand back, and doctors demanded an explanation from me. I opened my mouth to answer, then with a shudder of disgust dropped to the ground a handful of hair I was still clutching.
Those men were aghast as I described the so-called medical examination, the brutality the women had experienced, the bashing of their heads against the wall, the viciously slapped faces. Then and there they questioned many of the women, some of whom showed their sore heads. Someone snapped out a command and the police moved forward and two of them took the lady doctor into custody. It was, I heard later, the end of her doctoring.
Poor Ali had been watching, indeed he had been one of the group who had interfered and dragged the doctor from my clutches. Poor man, he was terribly upset.
“You’ve done it now,” he whispered hoarsely to me. “The very least you’ll get is jail. Oh, it’s the end of us—dear God, the bitter end.”
More gentlemen hurriedly arrived; they were the pilgrimage officials. I felt ready to die; indeed I wished I was dead, what with malaria, prickly heat, a violent headache, and tension. Why could not I faint and so find release like other women? And beyond all the bodily discomfort was what I had done to Ali. No pilgrimage now for him. I had torn that precious thing from him—my man would hate me forever. Oh yes, death at that moment would have been infinitely sweet.
I grew conscious that strange words were being addressed to me. They were saying that the authorities could not be grateful enough to me for exposing the woman, and much more in the same strain. Then they called a carriage and in a few minutes Ali, Janey, and I were being driven to a sumptuous hotel, where we were given the use of a bathroom and bedroom, followed by a truly gorgeous lunch—but not till after one doctor had given me a sedative and a stiff dose of quinine. Later we were taken to the wharf, but before that, with many more gracious words and thanks, the pilgrimage authorities asked me to virtually take charge of the four hundred women on board and to report on how they fared, because on other voyages there had been rumours of ill treatment. I was too bewildered to do more than agree, but, thinking over it later, I thought a husband, three children, and four hundred women were quite a load for one pair of shoulders. . . .
THE FREIGHTER ISTOPHAN “Are you very tired, little one?” Ali asked me tenderly as he took Janey from my shoulder.
“Oh, Ali, where have you been all this time? Yes, very tired, let’s go to our cabin.”
“Here, wait on a minute, who said anything about a cabin? Do you think this is a P. & O. liner?”
“But—but—why haven’t we got a cabin?” Then a wild hope arose. “Aren’t we going on this ship?”
“Of course we are going on this ship, why not? But no one on board has a cabin except the Captain and his officers.”
“But where do we sleep and dress?”
“Don’t worry your little head; I’ve got a beautiful spot for us. It’s three decks down, right on top of a hatch.”
“But that must be very near the bottom of the ship.” . . .
AT SEA The ship was fairly steady, but I guessed by the throbbing and vibration of my rug wall that we must be very close to the engine. It was also very dark. The one little hurricane lamp swinging below the iron stairs gave only a dim light. Neither was it by any means quiet down there. At times the noise was appalling, what with the raucous coughing, spitting, and shouting of the pilgrims. Every inch of the third deck round my hatch was filled with passengers, both male and female. To reach the stairs, you had to hurdle over the sleeping or lounging bodies. Each pilgrim had seized himself just room to lie down and pack his gear at his feet.
Our cooking arrangements left much to be desired. On either side of the top deck was a sheet of heavy iron, clamped to the deck, and on this were seven little spaces, about eighteen inches long by eight inches wide, each walled with two bricks and quite open to the sky. You built your little wood fire in one of these spaces and rammed your pot on it the best way you could, for there were no bars to hold it. Only one person could cook at a time in each space. If you allow one hour to cook a curry and make bread, then remember that some thousand others were awaiting their turn to use the fourteen tiny fireplaces, you can understand why we always seemed hungry, for my Ali was not of the pushing type. I had a few extra little things in stock for Janey, such as tins of milk, some biscuits, and a few dates. But for this the child might have suffered.
There were other things, too, not as well arranged as might be. On the top deck, at the stern, were two red ship’s tanks some six feet square, one embellished with a man’s head wearing a turban, the other with a woman’s in a chador.
A door was cut in the side of each, a great hefty creaking thing of solid iron, and within, on the bottom, lay a trough similar to those used for feeding pigs. In this you relieved yourself. A lascar cleaned them out each evening.
Shut within, it was an inferno, especially when we reached the Red Sea. The same tanks were also the bathing place. The women were provided with a bucket tied to a long rope, which you let down into the sea and hauled up full of water. Then, shut in the smelly tank, you ladled the water over yourself with a jam tin—that is, if you were prepared to take such a bath, and believe me, you were, even though the salt dried on you and stung. The men had things a bit easier in that they had an old pump with a hose attachment which sucked up the water from the ocean. I loathed the trips up to the top deck—the heat, the smell, and the rust from the tank roof getting in your hair.
The Istophan had a sister ship; they had been built long years ago as convict hulks and later they had sunk. After being in the water several years, they had been salvaged and sold cheaply. An enterprising man decided they would do for the pilgrim trade, so new engines had been installed and the hulls patched up with brown paper or some such thing.
All the upper ironwork on the Istophan was riddled with rust holes. Four small boats dangled above the upper deck; I hoped that they, like the engines, were trustworthy, but there were times—quite often, in fact—when I speculated as to how eleven hundred passengers, not to mention the crew, could be fitted into them. There were no such luxuries as life belts, neither was there any boat drill. If you got the wild idea of a constitutional, then you had to do it leapfrog fashion, for nowhere was there any empty deck. I don’t remember what the ship’s tonnage was, but I’m sure she was no bigger than an Australian coaster.
That very first night on board my prescribed duty of looking after my sister women’s interests began. I felt the urgent need of a breath of fresh air and climbed down off my hatch, almost falling over an aged and bearded pilgrim who had made his residence at the edge of my footplate.
Scrambling over sleeper after sleeper, I came at last to the foot of the stairs, then stopped in surprise. On the floor right under them lay two very young girls asleep. Huddled on the very edges of their rugs stood five sheep, meat for the lascar crew, and that bilgewater Ali had spoken of was seeping into the edge of their bedding and washing through an adjacent fowl house. The fowls were the Captain’s perquisites.
I looked round, but there was not another inch of either dry or wet space. Something had to be done about the girls. I climbed the other stairs, but there was no room anywhere. Right up to the very top deck under the stars it was the same. Oh well! Girding myself up for battle, I hauled on my shalwar strings. The fore part of the deck was cut completely off from the stern end by a solid iron grille with a small gate let into it, which could only be approached by climbing a few stairs. This heavy, high grille was the remains of protection provided in the convict days against mutiny. The wind was rough and the ship not as steady up here as down below. I rattled on the gate till at last an officer appeared.
“What the hell are you doing here? Get down below where you belong,” he barked.
“Would you please listen to me for a minute?” I said courteously.
“Well, what is it?”
In a few words I told him about the plight of the young girls lying in the bilgewater.
“Well, it’s not my fault. Nothing to do with me. Why didn’t they camp on one of the upper decks? And now you get below.”
“Not till you come and do something about it,” I said quietly.
“I tell you it’s not my business, and now are you going down below, or must I make you?”
“Look here, Mr. Officer, I happen to be representing your owners. These people are passengers, and your wages come from them. Will I have to report that you gave no care to the people in your charge?”
“It’s not my business—anyway, they are little better than cattle. To be on board should be enough for them.”
“Look, young man, I happen also to be one of them. Are you deliberately insulting me?”
I don’t know what reply he would have made, but just then another officer stepped up asking, “What is the trouble?”
I quickly explained. He unlocked the gate and came with me right down to the third deck, saying as he did so, “It’s really difficult, memsahib, but I’ll come and have a look.”
We found the girls asleep as I had left them.
“Poor little devils,” he said pityingly as he stared down at them. “They should not be here, but at home with their parents. Wait here.” And he leapt over the pilgrims till he reached a small door leading from number 3 deck into what looked the forward part of the ship, only it wasn’t. It was a small cupboard affair some six or seven feet square, which seemed to be a holdall for ropes, chains, and so on, with a couple of deck brooms added. In a few minutes, disregarding his white clothing, he had shot the stuff out and made room for the girls.
“This ought to do them,” he said. I thanked him and he left, saying, “I leave you to fix them up.” Then, turning back, he said, “I overheard you say something about representing the owners—was that true?”
“Well, yes, I suppose it is, in a way. I was asked by the pilgrimage officials to report on the treatment of the women on this ship.”
“I see,” he said thoughtfully, then said, “Would it be possible to forget Mr. Harvard’s rudeness up above? He didn’t really mean it; he was feeling a bit sore because the old man had just been grilling him for something or the other.”
“Sir, your kindness and cooperation have washed the memory out. You have made those girls comfortable—or at least they will be when I’ve finished with them.”
“Fine. Good night.”
I heard the history of the girls later. They and an elder brother had come down from Peshawar, sent by their parents to join the pilgrimage to Mecca. All had gone well till two days before the ship was to leave; then the brother was knocked down and killed by a heavy lorry. But before he died, he told the girls that their parents must not be disappointed; they must continue the journey alone—truly an ordeal for two young country girls totally unused to crowds or cities. The elder girl was perhaps sixteen years old and her sister a couple of years younger.
It’s an odd thing, but many aged people will try to be represented at the Hajj by younger relations, thinking thus to find favour with Allah. . . .
I remember one day I had been lying dozing with Janey beside me in the stench of heat, tobacco, and bilgewater, and awoke to look straight up into a full forty pairs of down-staring eyes. It was too much. In a second some devil within me caused me to make a series of the most hideous grimaces I could possibly screw my face into. There came a startled calling of “Allah!” then I heard racing footsteps above gone to find Ali and tell him that his woman was having fits. Poor lad, he came tearing down those stairs, anxiously inquiring what it was all about.
Indignantly I told him, but did he sympathize? Not a bit of it. He turned a heavy barrage on me for daring to make faces at the poor innocent onlookers. For a few minutes there was wordy shrapnel flying—again to the great interest of the spectators upstairs. Finally, worn out with heat and frustration, I began to cry. Now usually when we had our little spats, we would kiss and make up, so, weary of fighting, I said I was sorry, that I would not make faces at them again—and I held up my arms and face for his forgiving kiss. He gasped, looking upward, “Oh Lord, no!” and with a shudder he was gone and up those stairs as if someone was chasing him. Of course I should have known better. The very first instruction you get from the molvis, or priests, is that once you set foot on the ship, both men and women are sexless, just one kind of humanity before Allah. Not even one little innocent kiss can be allowed. All women’s face coverings must come off, because they proclaim sex. No longer were there married couples in the sexual sense. A whitewashed wall was not more chaste than we. . . .
The water in our petrol tin was hot and brackish. The bilgewater smelt worse, and oh, how those pilgrims coughed! The raucous noise never ceased. One thing I noticed was that Ali’s brother, Lubu, seemed to have taken the two young girls under his protection. If ever there was a good man, Lubu was one. I had told him of the girls in the broom closet, and he saw how they were likely to suffer through the scanty cooking arrangements. I saw him often take and share his own scant pot of curry with them.
Those little fires on the top deck were never out. Those who could not get near them in the daytime tried to cook at night, and there was always a crowd of cooks and would-be cooks about them. On windy days the flying sparks made me uneasy; the thought of our overcrowded ship catching fire was too horrible to contemplate. . . .
JIDDA The sea around Jidda is surely the bluest [I have] ever seen. It was midday when we dropped anchor in the bay, and the colours of water and sky, yellow sand and white buildings, were dazzling. From the shore, winding a mile or more out to sea, was a line of white posts to mark the channel, along which the usual lateen boats were starting to race towards us. The water was so clear that we plainly watched the sharks circling us. Maybe the fish were used to the incoming ships and were waiting for garbage to be flung overboard. . . .
Ibn Saʿud had decreed that every pilgrim landing on shore should pay a tax of seven rupees. This had not been charged before, though, learning the cause of the tax, Ali and I felt it was fair enough. Ibn Saʿud had taken it upon himself to protect the pilgrims this year from the Bedu. They are usually called Bedouins in books, but as far as I could make out, they were called Bedu—actually it sounded more like “Budoo”—in their homeland. In other years these men came down from the hills, preying upon the pilgrims with robbery and violence. It was considered a sin to retaliate against them, since they are regarded as direct descendants from the Prophet’s mother. Ibn Saʿud, attempting to curb some of this cruelty and brutality, told the Bedu to refrain from molesting the travellers and he would provide free supplies for them during the Hajj. This proclamation was the cause of the extralarge pilgrimage that year. There were several other ships in the bay, bringing pilgrims from all over the world. We met people from Malaya, Java, Africa— even Thursday Island.
Thinking it over, I cannot see that His Majesty was at all out of pocket by the deal. Seven rupees multiplied by tens of thousands comes to quite a lot; in addition, he placed a half-rupee tax on every date tree in his dominion. Moreover, at the great sacrifice, when thousands of beasts were slaughtered, he claimed all hides and skins, which were sent away in shiploads to America—or so I was told.
Naturally there was no escape from the seven-rupee tax, and everyone had to pay up and like it. Once passed through the door on the city side, our various agents took over again by arrangement with the authorities, so many pilgrims in the charge of each agent. It was their duty to find us accommodation in the city, and later camels, and to arrange all matters of travel. We had to hand over our passports to the agent in charge of our group; he was supposed to keep them till the Hajj was over and we embarked again. Some of the rooms allotted us had as many as twenty people in them, and each person paid one rupee. Ali and I were singularly lucky in that we got a small room to ourselves at the top of a five-storey house.
We had to buy wood and water, also foodstuffs. Water, . . . was at that time very scarce in Jidda, with the population swollen to at least three times its normal size by the influx of pilgrims. It was carried on donkeys by means of four petrol tins, two to each side of the beast. It also cost a rupee a tin, and was hard to get even at that. Sometimes it took Ali a whole day to get hold of a tin. . . .
DEPARTURE FOR MECCA The days raced by. All too soon for me it was time to move on again. We found our camels beside the town hall, in a scene of sheer bedlam—choking dust, shouts, arguing agents and camel drivers, camels loose and camels held in check.
Don’t ever tell me of love between camel and owner. The camels loathe their drivers, their passengers, and anything connected with them. They snarl and show their filthy black teeth at all and sundry. I have been amongst camels the greater part of my life, have known them from their birth to their death. That animal scorns the human race.
In this batch there were old beasts and young ones, many of the latter tossing their loads sky-high, for with such a mighty influx of pilgrims thousands of beasts not yet properly broken were pressed into service. If you have never heard a thousand or so camels squealing in rage as they are being loaded, then you have something yet to hear. . . .
It was sundown when, finally mounted on our animals, we passed through the city wall and out into the great desert beyond. Once clear of the wall the beasts were stopped and everyone dismounted and prepared for prayers. These were barely finished when there came a sudden rush to hoosh down the camels and take refuge beside them with covered heads from a great red wall of choking sand advancing on us, but it only lasted a few minutes, then was gone.
Two pilgrims rode on each camel; there was an arrangement of two string beds, one hanging on each side of the animal, with his hump running up between them. They were very lightly fastened and one passenger, the first up, had to balance himself on the hairy hump till the other party arrived; otherwise one bed went earthwards and the other aspired to heaven. I learnt my lessons of ascent and descent the hard way.
The camels could not be properly hooshed down because of these beds. Some agents had short ladders to help pilgrims mount, but of course they were a drop in a bucket for such a crowd. The usual way to mount was to place your foot on the camel’s neck, then leap backwards onto your bed contraption. The first time I did it, as I reached the creature’s neck, he snarled angrily and looked back at me. I missed the hump in my fright and shot back to earth. Ali said he was sure that scream was heard back in Australia.
Over and covering both beds was erected a beehive cover of jute, its centre prop in a direct line with the animal’s neck. On this upright stick you lashed your red crock water bottle. Your spare gear rode at the back of your pillow. When weary you could lie down full stretch. This then was your home—a home on a camel’s back. In assigning pilgrims to the camels, the drivers tried to match the weight on either side; thus Janey and I rode on one side and Ali on the other. Two fat men would be allotted to a stronger beast, probably a bull camel, and lighter weights to lighter camels.
The long camel trains ran snake-like, tied tail to nose, maybe thirty or forty to a string. Two drivers walked alongside with sharply pointed sticks.
It was a frightening land we travelled through—stark, bare, inhospitable with its collars of dead volcanoes and naked mountains dotted with black basalt boulders, a land of hunger and fear—yet perhaps today, since oil has been given to it, the people may be better off. I certainly hope so. The emaciated Arabs who ran out begging to the camel trains were terrible to see. All the long night the beasts plodded almost silently along, and Ali and Janey slept soundly. It grew very cold towards morning, a peculiarity of that land, where you can scorch by day and freeze by night. At dawn there was a break of ten minutes for prayers, then on again till midday. It was good to “get on shore,” as I called it, to buy some wood and make curry and bake chapatis. But there were days when we did no cooking at all, but had to subsist on a handful of dates. . . .
ARRIVAL IN MECCA It was good to sit under the date palms when we were camped at some oasis. Sometimes you could buy the dates straight from the tree, oozing with their creamy juice, and eaten thus they are delicious. Those trees seem to be as useful to the Arabs as the bamboo is to the Chinese. I saw that the date stones were kept and crushed into a brownish flour, then fed to the camels. The Arabs also fed their beasts on long plaits of grass coiled into rings, but where that grass came from, I cannot say, for I can almost swear I never saw a blade growing anywhere during the whole trip, though in Jidda I had seen grass bunched like carrots and sold as a vegetable. . . .
As we travelled, the land took on a weird familiarity; to my eyes it was strange, but to my mind it was not. Trained at a Christian mission in China, I had a vivid memory of the stories of the Old Testament, and it gradually seemed to me that I was living with Abraham and almost back in his days. For in that desert the days of Abraham were still present, and his name was everywhere.
Jewish and Christian traditions placed many of these Old Testament sites farther north, but those we were shown also had long traditions behind them, and certainly it was easy to visualize the prophets and patriarchs wandering through this ancient land. One morning, casually pointed out to us, were the old gold diggings which provided most of the gold for Solomon’s temple. There was still gold there, we were told, but none might work it lest it bring trouble from the greed of invaders. Again, our track winding across a small plateau, to the right lay a narrow stony valley, awesome, stark, and forbidding. This, we were told, was the place where God fed Elijah by means of birds. . . .
The map tells me that Mecca lies forty odd miles from Jidda; I don’t know how that can be, for memory tells me it took us a good ten days to reach it. The camels were hooshed down early one afternoon. We were told that we were close to the Holy City, but that we could not go in till morning. The news ran through our hosts like a wild breeze, then an awesome silence fell as each pilgrim paused to realize the great fact. They seemed to all but hold their breath. The silence was broken then by a concerted shout of “Labayk!” That was what it sounded like to me, but I have been told it really has three syllables—“Lab-bay-yak.” It is an all-encompassing word of praise and gratitude and submission to the divine will.
That night the molvis prayed and instructed the faithful till nearly dawn. We were told we must not fight amongst ourselves, covet, or wish harm to anyone. We must enter the city clean of heart and clean in action. No oils or scents were to be used at ablutions. Should we break any one of these laws, we must sacrifice an extra sheep or goat. Should anyone harm us we must not retaliate, even if it meant our death, always remembering that the ground we walked upon was holy in Allah’s sight. I fell asleep at about midnight, and when I woke in the dawning, Ali was still at his devotions on his prayer rug.
Most of our Indian pilgrims were very old; some even tottered on crutches and sticks. We all knew that hundreds of our company would not return again to their homeland, and many of them did not even wish to, for they deemed themselves doubly fortunate if their weary bodies could lie down in eternal rest in this, their Holy of Holies. So very many were weak and ill, coughing their lungs away, but still deep in the rheumy old eyes was the glint of a peace their souls longed for, a gleam of joy at something at last attempted but yet by no means done. For this coming to Mecca was not by a long way the end of their journey; it would not give them the right to wear the green turban of the hajji. The grand culmination would not come for many weeks yet.
A short while after dawn—fasting, of course, [for it was Ramadan]—we mounted our camels again. As the light grew stronger, we were descending what looked like a steep basin. The mountains ringed the depression in the earth all around; and then as the sun rose, we saw the city far down below us—saw right into the heart of the Great Mosque itself. Racing up the mountainsides were the houses of Mecca. We caught glimpses as we went down of the large black Kaʿba, the five minarets with their onion domes, and the gilded dome over the Zamzam waters.