The Road To Be Taken

When we thought we were going to be doing the Umrah, the minor pilgrimage to Makkah, in June I decided to reread Michael Wolfe's collection of various accounts by pilgrims related to the Hajj, One Thousand Roads To Mecca. It feels strange to finish it after the date that we would have returned by, had we gone. But at least we've got a plan for making the journey in December, insy'allah, and reading the accounts of past experiences from many centuries in Wolfe's compendium, has certainly whetted the appetite and furthered the understanding.

Initially I found the book quite heavy-going. Previously I had just dipped in where I pleased and that worked well, though it meant that picking it up again I was aware of quite a bit I hadn't really looked at, hence the sense of a need to read in sequence. But reading in sequence meant persevering through some pretty dry stuff. The travellers had their understandably pressing concerns, but these didn't always translate for the twenty-first century reader into concerns relevant to a trip in June 2014.

The solution lay in an act of empathy, or rather a series of these. Each account demanded an active engagement in the concerns of the writer. That way I avoided just heading for the stuff that had immediate appeal - like the sequence from Malcolm X's autobiography. That way I came to an understanding of just how important each pilgrim's experience is to the individual experience of the journey. It isn't your journey - it's the process of the pilgrimage unfolding in the collective that makes the Hajj what it is and has been for so many.

Curiously even though the predominant feeling was of how little the individuals counted for in the great sum of things, the picture given of outstanding, indeed fascinating individuals making the journey was striking. I found it tricky at times to pull myself out of one world of thought in order to enter into another as one account followed another. It was useful to pause between contributors to get the sense of separation needed, especially when non-Muslim and Muslim were juxtaposed, or female against male, or well-heeled against the needy (not that any writer really represented those pilgrims who are very poor indeed, and who, somehow or other, are always there as a reminder of the full range of humanity and the ordeals that so many face.) But there was a lot to be gained in terms of a feeling of completeness upon making the effort and I'm glad I did.

It's extraordinary how many aspects of Islam successfully act as a reminder of the importance of the collective.