Hamza Bogary
Mecca
ca. 1947
Hamza Bogary published The Sheltered Quarter in 1983. It is a short book about growing up in Mecca, presenting youth’s usual trials and joys as experienced there by a teenager in the 1930s and 1940s. Few cities on Earth changed more than Mecca in the forty years between Bogary’s youth and the publication of this lightly fictionalized memoir. Except for the streetlamps he read by as a boy, the author looks back on a premodern city and on a story that might have occurred anytime in the past four centuries. His descriptions of school and family life resemble closely what we know of a male student’s rounds in eighteenth-century Mecca. The book is a Meccan bildungsroman, calling up those final days before the oil boom that transformed Saudi Arabia and the Hajj.
The excerpts brought together here present two journeys. In the first, a boy of ten or twelve accompanies his mother and a redoubtable Aunt Asma to Medina. As the trip unfolds, we see how simply a caravan could form. The Bogary family’s long ride to Medina took twelve days. Although the raiding tribes of the Hijaz had by then been subdued, “Auntie” Asma’s nightmare encounter with “the Terror of the Night” attests to the gruesome risks faced by pilgrim travelers within her lifetime. In this same selection, we also glimpse the vestiges of traditions already being suppressed by the prevailing Wahhabi puritanism of the day. Once again, much of this conflict is embodied in Bogary’s aunt, a local shaman and fortuneteller who hires singing ascetics (a dying breed) to bless her journey, then hears the ghosts of martyred soldiers drumming in the desert. With examples like these, Bogary draws attention to the irrational clash between spiritualism, music, and religion that has troubled Semitic reformers for millennia.
Our second excerpt concerns a long day’s trip to Mina during the Hajj. As Arthur Wavell has already pointed out, the inhabitants of Mecca are by no means exempted from making the pilgrimage every year. They have to go forth with the rest, so that for two days the city is practically deserted. Philby, too, hints at the special case of performing the Hajj for resident Meccans, but Bogary takes us much further in this direction. He is that invaluable thing in a reporter, a born and active participant in the culture he describes. In some cases, he preserves aspects of the Hajj that are otherwise unrecorded. His recollection of the women’s torch-lit Qays festival, held when most male pilgrims were out of town, shows us Mecca’s version of a seriocomic rite that once mitigated sex-segregated societies around the world. Of special interest, too, is Bogary’s seasonal employment in the Hajj service industry, a common source of pocket money among Meccan scholars and a practice that continues today.
Hamza Muhammad Bogary was born in Mecca in 1932. As a young man, he completed his university studies in Cairo, then started to work for the nascent Saudi radio and television system, rising to Director General of Broadcasting in 1962. He also served as Deputy Minister of Information and later helped to co-found King Abd al-Aziz University in Jidda. Bogary published stories and essays in periodicals. The Sheltered Quarter appeared when he was fifty-two. It is based on his own experiences in Mecca during the Great Depression and World War II. Although a dramatization of the work has yet to appear on Saudi television, the many domestic insights in his story have about them a certain serial potential—creating a Meccan version of Upstairs, Downstairs that cuts across classes and age groups in Bogary’s neighborhood. Published a year before Bogary’s death, the book appeared at the last possible moment to bear witness to a way of life that had already vanished.
About five years after his camel ride to Medina, the government started expanding its national airline, Saudia. In 1952, it purchased six used Convair Skymasters from TWA and some Bristol air freighters from Britain. These became the core of an in-country system that was already flying pilgrims from Mecca to Medina in the middle 1950s. The popular flights reduced Bogary’s twelve-day trek to a two-hour hop over killing deserts. Soon after, Saudia began to fly abroad. In the early 1960s, the airline established international routes throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and India. By 1970, air travel had opened the Haram Territory to the major Muslim populations of the world, bringing the Hajj within reach for millions of people. Forty percent of foreign hajjis arrived by air that year, about 150,000 people.
Later accounts in this section reflect the pervasive effects of mass air travel, but Bogary’s book is sublimely free of hindsight. Rather than the voice of a media mogul, we have a naïf narration that in some ways resembles Huckleberry Finn. The period described here sits just the other side of the brink we call modern. Today it seems, like Twain’s Mississippi, many centuries away.
from The Sheltered Quarter: A Tale of a Boyhood in Mecca by Hamza Bogary
A JOURNEY FROM MECCA TO MEDINA As soon as the necessary legal period after my uncle’s death had expired,230 during which she had been prohibited from going out or traveling, my mother decided to take me on a visit to Medina and the Prophet’s shrine. As usual, my mother consulted Auntie Asma, who decided to accompany us on the journey. As camels were the only accommodative form of transport, Auntie Asma decided to locate a family in our quarter which was intent on visiting the holy shrine and append our camel to their caravan. Our first inquiry met with success, and we planned to join a large family intent on traveling in a caravan of five camels; but for some inexplicable reason Auntie Asma had by this time lost interest in the scheme. Her search started all over again until she located another caravan whose time of departure coincided with her own. Since both Auntie Asma and my mother conformed to the traditions and customs of the time, Auntie Asma, in accordance with custom, brought a man to our house on the day we were due to depart. At first I couldn’t make out what he was supposed to do, particularly as he withdrew to one of the remoter rooms in the house. After he had settled down and accepted tea, he began chanting, while Auntie Asma directed her movements between the window overlooking the street and the long corridor that terminated in the room in which the man was chanting. As I grew accustomed to it, the voice appeared more pleasing, and I was able to recognize the words he was chanting, all of which either related to our anticipated voyage to Medina or were prayers invoking peace on the Prophet. When I eventually found the courage, I asked Auntie Asma to explain the relationship between her frequent visits to the window and the room in which this stranger to the house was chanting. Those familiar with the customs of the time will know that the ceremonial chanter was the muzahhid, the resonance of whose voice induced people to discredit earthly things and generated in them a longing to visit Medina. Auntie Asma’s frequent alternations between the window and the corridor were to ensure that no one who disapproved of such unorthodox religious practices would hear the muzahhid’s melodious voice.
Later, on coming of age, I was to ask God forgiveness for the many unorthodox religious practices I had followed while under the guidance of my mother and Auntie Asma. But I have never forgotten, and never will, and I hope to be forgiven for this, the beauty of the muzahhid ‘s voice as he chanted—”God’s prayers and peace on you, Prophet.”
That afternoon our camel driver, Atiyya, led out our camel while I sat in the shugduf between the two women. Our first few anxious moments were spent earnestly praying against the devil, for we were unaccustomed to the dizzy heights of a camel’s back and expected at any moment to fall. But after traveling for a short distance, we grew calmer; our camel was even tempered, and we appeared to be in no immediate danger. Our feeling of confidence was enhanced when we caught sight of the rest of the caravan on the outskirts of Mecca. What I hadn’t counted on was that the muzahhid would be waiting for us there, oblivious to possible observation, bidding us farewell with melodious chants and wishing the pilgrims acceptance by God and his Prophet.
Although I was to journey often through those same plains and hills, the smell of the caravan at twilight was never sweeter to me than during those initial twelve days of travel between Mecca and Medina. Suhail and I, who were the only two boys undertaking the journey, would romp around behind the camels before night fell and we were constrained to take our places in the shugduf. Trailing the camels, running through the dry grasses, and observing flying locusts was to us an experience comparable to the best adventures of youth. Of course, we all suffered the occupational hazards of caravan travel, the inescapable mosquito bites, bruises on our sides from sleeping on the backs of camels, but these were small things to pilgrims on their way to visit the best of all mankind.
During the course of the journey Auntie Asma was to tell me about “the Terror of the Night.” It was he who would intercept caravans at nightfall and, on the pretext of offering friendly advice to the drivers, would lead them astray and ultimately to their death. A characteristic decoy of his was to set up illusory cafés in the desert stretches, the lights of which would attract the drivers in the same way as a lost Bedouin will head toward a mirage in the expectation of finding water. The caravans would never be seen again, and nothing survived of the people, camels, and goods they were conveying.
Auntie Asma was full of stories about those who had met their deaths at the hands of the notorious Terror of the Night. As a safeguard, she remained awake while the caravan was in motion, ready to warn the drivers, lest they be lured astray and all of us lost.
It must have been when we were between al-Safra and the Nar Valley that, one evening, I heard Auntie Asma’s protracted, frantic screams ring through the last vestiges of the night. “The Terror of the Night! The Terror of the Night! Don’t be misled by him; he comes to lie!” Startled out of sleep, I almost jumped off the camel in fright. Without effect my mother and the camel driver tried to calm her down, but all the while she continued screaming “the Terror of the Night.” And what a commotion! She continued until the drivers brought the caravan to a halt, made our camel kneel, took the trembling Auntie Asma down, and poured a jug of water over her head. Having regained her composure, she was then in a state to listen to them and learn that her imagined “Terror of the Night” was only the figure of the café owner where we had put up the previous night. He had pursued us on a camel after discovering that one of our party had left a blanket on a chair in the café. Anxious, lest on our discovery of the missing item we had suspected that it was he who had stolen it, he had followed us to return it to its rightful owner.
After that Auntie Asma’s obsession with the Terror of the Night diminished, but her imagination proved irrepressibly fertile in the collection of exciting narratives she was to have in store for me.
We had been traveling for eight nights, and, after eight stations, our caravan arrived at Badr.231 No one anticipated any improbable occurrence that evening, and, arriving just before sunset, the camels were made to kneel by one of the shacks along the road, mats were spread on the sand, and preparations for our meal began as usual. Our supper consisted of a kind of tharid made of dry bread we had carried with us from Mecca, cooked with a small quantity of dry meat and water. After supper, Auntie Asma untied her clothes bundle, took out a few requirements, and then sat alone at a distance from the hut. There she began her cosmetic ritual, first of all combing her hair and then proceeding to rub coconut oil mixed with herbs on it. Satisfied with the remedial arrangements for her hair, she then placed a triangular strip of white cloth over it and tied the two attached strings at the back of her head. This white cloth was called a shanbar. She then wrapped her braid in a handkerchief called a mahrama and covered her head with a white shawl with embroidered ends called a mudawwara. And, as a final act of embellishment, she penciled her eyebrows and applied kohl eyeliner to her eyelids. One would have thought she was making herself up for a wedding.
When the others were preparing to retire for the night, Auntie Asma led me by the hand toward the desert. When we were sufficiently far away from the encampment, she sat down on a small dune and motioned me to take a place next to her. As the night deepened, she began those gestures which were to develop into a quiet dance and then by degrees into a frenzied one. It seemed to me that she was dancing to a tune coming to us from far away, a drum or tambourine beat. She continued whirling while I sat terrified on the sand, wondering whether Auntie Asma had lost her mind or whether I was dreaming. Only after she was exhausted and the night was waning did she return to her place and rest. Taking my hand, she walked me back to the caravan. Mother showed no surprise at our late arrival, seeing the perspiration that beaded Auntie Asma. I was curious to know at once the nature of this dance, but my mother signaled to me to wait until Auntie Asma had gone to sleep; then she would explain all to me. She asked me first of all whether I had heard drums, to which I replied that I had heard reverberant noises whose source I couldn’t identify. In reply she explained to me that these notes came from the drums of the warriors at Badr, martyrs who had fallen in that battle, and that at certain times of the year when the moon is full, their drums are heard again sounding in the desert. According to my mother, Auntie Asma was one of the few who knew when and where to intersect with this phenomenon. And this explained why she had refused to take the first caravan, for its arrival at Badr would have failed to coincide with the return of the martyred drummers. She then requested that I keep the incident secret, as the more orthodox expressed misgivings about the existence of those drums and had people refrain from dancing to their beat.
I can’t properly recall now whether my reactions to what I had heard were negative or positive. But I did continue to give the matter thought until I was considerably older and had come to read the ode of Dhu al-Rumma232 that speaks of jinn playing tunes in the desert: “The soft humming of the jinn by night on the desert fringes.” Poor deluded Dhu al-Rumma and Auntie Asma; they knew nothing of the movement of sand in the desert and the undulating drifts that the wind mapped out at night.
After the fevered pitch of her dance, Auntie Asma grew calm. She ceased to express anxiety, and her face showed the same serene countenance as those of the other women who, in the days to come, would sit in the circle of the zar233 held in our house in Mecca. I was to see that same expression later on in the faces of young European women and men whom I saw on weekends, New Years, weddings, and whenever they grew excited by the beat of drums and flute. If I had wished to discourage those young people, I could have done so by informing them that the primitive African tribes I had met in the course of my travels arrived at the same psychological state of gratification after a night of dancing to rhythmic drums—and to songs that were not so very different from those of the Badr or the Latin Quarter. Man is probably as much a rhythmic musical animal as he is a thinking one.
Not that Auntie Asma’s newfound serenity stopped her from telling her customary exciting stories or from making decisions that had the air of being sudden but which were in fact studied with care. It was for my benefit alone that she told the story of the people of al-Furaysh. “Al-Furaysh,” she explained, “is a village situated between al-Mesajid and Abyar Ali. And today the Meccans still refer to someone who overcharges as being from al-Furaysh, a custom that derives from these people being the last highway robbers on the road to Medina. So even if the pilgrims had escaped the brigands at Mastura or al-Safra, they still had to confront those of al-Furaysh.” Although I never attributed lies to Auntie Asma, I did wonder at her telling me about the Bedouin whose head she had crushed, many years ago, against the bottom half of the tent pole, after she had caught him scouting while they were camping at al-Furaysh. She had hit him impulsively on the head with the nearest object at hand, a picture that had me imagine her brawny armed, although nothing in her appearance suggested the likelihood of such strength.
Her last decision before our entry into Medina, the City of Light, after having completed the detailed proceedings required by the police at the Anbariyya Gate, was to order the camel driver to pull our camel out of the caravan and to go in the opposite direction from the others. On reaching the area to the south of the Prophet’s Mosque, we realized the wisdom of that move. Having ordered the camel driver to stop, she untied a knot in her head shawl and took out a folded letter. Then, alighting from the camel, she proceeded to saunter into the vestibule of a large palace. She returned for us shortly, and it was there that we took up residence for our stay in Medina.
Adopting my usual method of gesturing with my finger when I wanted to inquire about something I didn’t understand, I asked my mother to explain the incident. I learned that Auntie Asma, with characteristic foresight, had visited a notable of our quarter, a property owner in Medina, to ask of him permission for us to use one of his houses during our sojourn. As his properties stood empty for most of the year, being in demand only at the time of religious festivals, he readily consented to her request and provided her with a letter to present to the guard at the house. He had granted us the use of the upper sitting room overlooking the date grove, the waterwheel, and small fountain. All of these were new discoveries for me. I had never before seen a fountain, nor heard of a waterwheel. I knew of the latter only through the story of “The Peacock That Stood Beside the Waterwheel” in The Rashida Reader.234 For the record, it was this visit which had generated my infatuation with Medina and resolutely determined me to go there each year once I gained my independence.
On the last day of our sojourn, after paying the Farewell Visit to the holy shrine together with a large number of fellow pilgrims, Auntie Asma fainted, or at least that is what I presumed at the time. Her cloaked body went down in front of the railing surrounding the holy shrine. Her sudden fall shook the grillwork that protected the tomb and caused an uproar that soon had worshipers and the mosque guards in attendance. Auntie Asma just lay there, her hands clasped to the railing, while those nearest to her tried to lift her up. Throughout the incident, I found myself repeating the hawqala235—”There is no power or might except in God”—and reciting the Fatiha236 over and over, asking God inwardly not to let Auntie Asma die here, far from her home and the rest of her family.
When at last she attempted to stand, I thanked God for granting my supplications and for protecting us from a possible tragedy. I was not aware at the time that what had taken place was nothing more than dramatics on the part of Auntie Asma. She had conceived of staging a fainting fit in order to come into contact with the railing surrounding the holy tomb. She herself told me later that she was renowned for collapsing there and that she could never contemplate returning to Mecca without first resting her hand on that green grille. . . .
THE HAJJ Without exception, all of the families in Mecca at this time undertook the pilgrimage year after year. They all had some involvement with the pilgrimage or the pilgrims, as agents, vendors, or participants in the ceremony for its own sake. How easy it was at that time—all you had to do was to pray one prescribed prayer or another in the Holy Mosque, then go to al-Mudda’a, where you would find a file of cameleers and donkey drivers waiting for you, crying out “Ride for hire!” and advertising their conveyance. For a few piastres you would find yourself mounted on the back of one of them, alone or riding behind someone else if you so desired. You would thus be on your way to Arafat if you had delayed until the ninth day or to Mina if you were performing the pilgrimage of the Prophet. On the ninth day of the pilgrimage there was scarcely a male to be found in Mecca, excepting the night watchmen and the khullaif237 thieves, as we called them. This band of thieves was insignificant in comparison with the pilgrimage thieves. The latter were notorious for sneaking into the pilgrims’ tents on the evening of Yawm al-Tarwiyya, after everyone had retired for the night on the evening prior to reaching the Arafat station. From time to time you would hear intermittent cries of “Thieves, thieves!”—and then you would see the torchlit forms of the guides running in pursuit of their elusive suspects, without knowing who they were or where they had gone. The night would always be dark, that wonderful invention, electricity, not having been heard of yet, while torches and lanterns were confined to projecting over a limited radius.
On these particular nights, those who had stayed behind, largely the women who had elected not to undertake the pilgrimage that year for one reason or another, would gather together in an open space in the quarter, usually the Utaybiyya Quarter, to celebrate the Qays festival until late at night. Crowds of women, unaccompanied by men, would be seen there shouting and chanting folk songs pertaining to this particular festival.
Although it is accepted that God has delivered us from this heresy, nonetheless our women in the earlier part of the last century were anxious to attend that festival in order to participate in the songs and to mitigate the loneliness of their staying behind in Mecca. As a child, it came about that on several occasions I had the opportunity to attend these Qays festivals. I helped carry the torches, walking in front of the women as they danced holding wooden swords in their hands. Although Mother never actually participated in the dance, she watched the festival and carried a bag full of candied fruits and nuts, into which she repeatedly dipped her hand, and you could see her jaws moving constantly.
Although the last Qays festival occurred a long time ago, the ambiguous nature of its ceremony left a permanent indelible impression on me. Various mythic elements were interwoven into this women’s festival, all of them associated with how they had discovered a male intruder in their midst, wearing female clothes, carrying a sword, and convinced that his identity wouldn’t be discovered. As always, the unpredictable happened, and the culprit was discovered and punished, either by slapping or with the instrument of his wooden sword, and was further disgraced by the shame of his exposure in front of his family and relatives immediately after the feast. The matter invariably ended with the chief of the quarter heaping ridicule and rebuke on the offender and demanding that he solemnly swear that he would never commit such an aberration again.
Even before I had taken up the responsibilities of a teaching profession, the Qays celebration had long lost its appeal for me. The desire to participate in the activities of the pilgrimage assumed a strong affection. One opportunity open to me, and those like me, was to participate in guiding pilgrims at the Holy Mosque, as did dozens of boys of my age, either as helpers to the agents or as single operators hunting down those without Bedouin guides or those who wished to make additional circumambulations outside of the hours prescribed by the agents. This was a form of employment common to many of my generation. Participation in the Hajj festival in this way contributed toward our subsistence throughout the remaining months of the year. Even teachers took a part in it, offering their services to one of the agents. This category of teacher was regarded by people as being of a higher order than the freelancers who lay in wait at the many entrances to the Holy Mosque for pilgrims or those making the Umra.
After examining most aspects of the tradition, I decided to adopt a different course, though one which was still connected with the pilgrimage and its celebration. I decided to work for the leading agent of our quarter as the secretary to his organization, bookkeeping, recording the names of the pilgrims, their steamship, and the possessions they left in trust, as well as supervising the number of writs authorized for “substitutes,” that is, listing the names of those absent for whom the pilgrimage was to be made, the sums devoted to this purpose, and whether or not sacrificial animals were to be a part of the ceremony. We also kept a record of their general expenses, which included the rental of housing, camel litters, tents, and campsites at Mina, the meals provided for pilgrim guests, which were most often a banquet on the night of arrival from Jidda, and food supplied during the course of the pilgrimage, which included the farewell dinner after each group had made the final circumambulation in preparation for their departure.
The writs regarding “substitutes” formed an additional source of income, shrinking or expanding in accordance with the conscientiousness of the agent. The less honest would lock the money in their steel boxes without endeavoring to give any of it to anyone but themselves. Others would pick out some of the substitute documents for pilgrims, especially the richer ones—and from them give generously to themselves, their families, and their top employees, distributing the rest to their servants, neighbors, and some inhabitants of the quarter. Some of the writs would incur deficits less than the amounts designated and thus contribute a profit to the agents. This was regarded as acceptable legal practice as long as the pilgrimage had been carried out in the name of the intended pilgrim who had not been able to perform the pilgrimage. If, for example, he or she had died and missed the opportunity of performing the pilgrimage and therefore it devolved upon his or her relatives and heirs to either perform the pilgrimage for the deceased or hire someone else to do so.
As it turned out, I didn’t undertake the pilgrimage that year as a surrogate pilgrim, for this, according to the books of jurisprudence, is disallowed for one who has not performed the rite. This did not prevent me, however, from taking one of the documents in the name of my mother, who, it had been decided, would make the pilgrimage in the agent’s caravan. In my naïveté, I decided to show one of these credit letters to the ustadh,238 who, far from expressing interest, looked at me intently before saying in a dry, disinterested tone: “I do not make the pilgrimage for anyone else, nor have I any need to do so.”
At the time I had not realized that those who accepted writs were generally simple folk with barely enough to live on, and not the sophists or the rich.
The day of ascent to Mina was an industrious one. The preparations made for it were not unlike those utilized for a military expedition, with the detailed regulations representing the accumulated experiences of over a thousand years. Preceding the caravan came the camels belonging to the “native Meccans,” then the agent’s family, who were mounted on four camels, then my own family. The camel litters, or shugdufs, of the native Meccans were distinguished from those of the other pilgrims in that the former were covered with smooth rugs, while the latter were covered with gunnysack. The former sported brightly colored railings in addition to having the fringes dyed red, while the other litters were of bare wood without the enhancement of any aesthetic detail. Even the camels chosen for the native Meccans seemed to be larger and of a more dignified bearing than those of the other pilgrims.
Once the shugdufs had been fastened to the camels, the latter were arranged in a long column, with the camel drivers strategically distributed so that the halter of the leading camel was taken by the oldest and most experienced cameleer. The other drivers were spread out along both sides of the caravan, each of them responsible for several camels, while two walked at the rear. Since the caravan was made up of Egyptian pilgrims, their native ululations were heard as soon as the leading camel was set in motion, to be followed by singing and chanting until we had left the houses of Mecca behind, heading eastward on the road to al-Masha’ir, or the Holy Places outside of Mecca.239
The practical reason for the strategic distribution of camel drivers was the fear that an assailant might have the temerity, when the congestion increased, to split off a portion of the caravan by detaching the guide rope, thus separating the rear of the caravan from the front. The rear section could thus become lost for hours or possibly days without anyone knowing its fate. This was a common occurrence, unless an experienced person noticed quickly and set up a cry: “Brigands, O camel drivers, brigands!” This would then lead to the reunion of the separated halves.
Those of us who operated as employees of an agent, whom we called Amm, equipped ourselves with a Bedouin bag, in place of the elegant attaché cases carried by businessmen today, and a belt worn over the gown. We also carried a curved cudgel, given to us by our employer, with which to defend ourselves in case of emergency.
Although I walked most of the way to Mina and Arafat, I was so intoxicated by the mission that I was oblivious of the fatigue induced by walking so far. I persisted in walking despite Mother’s calling out from time to time: “Get onto the shugduf, son, and have a rest. Are you a camel driver?” But I resisted her entreaty as I enjoyed walking with the cameleers and the servants. I asked the head camel driver how many times he had made the pilgrimage and about his experiences. He had a lively memory, rich with accounts of the terrors that he and the pilgrims had endured either on the pilgrimage to Mecca or when visiting Medina.
One of the most disturbing things he related was the phenomenon of those camel drivers who used to conspire with the brigands against the pilgrims instead of rightfully defending them. He told me of how he had lost a son during a raid in which the visiting pilgrims resisted with force instead of surrendering. They fought the raiders at one of the stations on the road to Medina, using staves, stones, and whatever came to hand, with the result that the thieves were defeated, leaving two dead, one of them his son. After this the camel driver reformed his ways and began to defend his caravan if need be, instead of handing it over to the hungry Bedouin and marauding cutthroats. He had an extraordinary ability to talk incessantly, as though his narrations were a prerecorded tape or as though he were reading from the written page. His stories followed on without any interruption, and, judging by the avidity with which he chattered, it was clear that he rarely found so receptive an ear.
At intervals, he would take off toward the rear to check on his camels and their riders, issuing instructions to his team of drivers to watch a certain camel because it was unreliable or to treat another gently because it was ailing. He kept a constant count of the camels, and only when satisfied that everything was proceeding as it should would he return to the head of the caravan and resume talking where he had left off. He would invariably begin his stories with the same sentence: “Once when we were on a visit to Medina” or “One time we were on a pilgrimage” and proceed from there. If I had possessed the facilities at the time, I would have recorded all of his stories and published them. They were a remarkable mixture of the comic and terrifying and included a great deal of information about camels, the maladies to which they were susceptible, their life span, the stations on this or that route which provided water and those that provided none, incidents of death by thirst, the constant fighting between al-Safra and al-Furaysh tribes along the way to Medina, the tribes most notorious for raiding the caravans, and the most illustrious and courageous cameleers of his day.
During the narration of these stories, one or more wayside beggars would appear, armed with a long stick, to the end of which was nailed an empty tomato-paste can which rattled. This he would raise in front of one of the litters, calling out, “O pilgrims, may God accept your pilgrimage.” From time to time one would hear the clatter of a coin as it struck the brandished can. Upon this the beggar would move on to the next camel and the next . . .
Mother was determined to treat me as a juvenile on the occasion of the big feast day at the end of the pilgrimage. Collecting together a number of small children from the encampment, she produced a bag of candied fruits and nuts which she threw over me and laughingly sang out: “They went on a pilgrimage and came back.” The children grabbed the scattered pieces, while the agent and his family laughed and shouted at this singular sight. The game ended with her draping a qilada round my neck, resembling a necklace and composed of dried dates sold during the pilgrimage season for this very purpose. They are sold also before the sacred feast at the end of Ramadan for the making of dibyaza.240 It seems unnecessary for me to relate here how this substance is formed, for most of the Meccan families and some of those in Jidda are still expert in its composition, despite its unpopularity with the present generation.
The nights spent at Mina were truly happy ones, full of jubilation, in which we strolled about the Arab bazaar, observing the itinerants and the women “who had not made the pilgrimage simply from a desire to obtain merit with God.” The atmosphere exalted one, as did the various evening celebrations, such as gathering round a Quranic reciter seated on an agent’s bench or around a group of Arab tribesmen chanting and dancing as though at a wedding. All of this was an important part of the sights of Mina.
230 Bogary refers to his stepfather as an uncle. Under Sharia law, a period of one hundred days is required to determine whether a woman has become pregnant by her deceased husband. [Ed.]
231 Site of an early Muslim victory over the Quraysh, at the junction of a road between Mecca and Syria, 624 c.e. [Ed.]
232 Dhu al-Rumma (696–735): foundational Umayyad poet famous for verse about the desert. [Ed.]
233 zar: the term applies to spirit possession as a cause of physical illness; to the evil spirit itself; to the exorcism process, usually involving dance and music; and (as here) to the company that attends the exorcism. In traditional Mecca, this was almost always a woman’s occasion—part festivity, part curative ceremony. The word’s Ethiopian origin links the practice to similar psychotherapeutic meetings popular throughout much of Africa. [Ed.]
234 The Raschida Reader: a popular children’s collection of the time.
235 hawqala: any of numerous verses from the Quran uttered in difficult situations to ward off evil. [Ed.]
236 al-Fatiha: the “opening,” first chapter of the Quran, a short strophe memorized by all Muslims. [Ed.]
237 Khullaif: thieves who remain in Mecca when the Hajj empties the town, to take advantage of the situation. [Ed.]
238 ustadh: a professor or learned man; in this case, the narrator’s principle instructor. [Ed.]
239 Mina, Arafat, and Muzdalifa. [Ed.]
240 dibyaza: a sweet, thick drink made of dates, apricots, sugar, nuts, and water. [Ed.]