Standing Alone (9 page)

As he circled the Ka'bah, the prophet Muhammad kept saying, “Our Lord, give us goodness in this world and goodness in the Hereafter, and keep us safe from the fire of Hell.” I could only repeat the first half of the prayer. I just couldn't get motivated by fear of this concept called hell.

Men jogged around the Ka'bah in the first three rounds in a practice called
ramal
. Women weren't allowed to run, an edict I didn't like but wasn't about to defy. The runner in me wanted to break into full stride. The courtyard was packed with women in black nikab and batons. The nikab is the most hard-core covering that Muslim women use; here, it was black and shrouded women from head to toe in fabric and full-face veils with netting over their eyes. They looked like ninjas. In Afghanistan, under the Taliban and after, the women were shrouded in similar coverings, made up in blue fabric with veils styled slightly differently. I wasn't about to mess with them. One of them, a Saudi policewoman, came to life, playing with Shibli.

I saw the
burka
, or “veil,” that was the curtain that covered the door of the Ka'bah. As we rounded the corner I eyed a green light and, standing near it, turned and faced the Ka'bah. So did, it seemed, just about everybody else. Shibli dangled his feet in the crowd. This was the point that marked the beginning of each round of the tawaf, and this was where we were supposed to do a ritual called
istilam
—kissing the Ka'bah, touching it, or simply facing it to honor its divine history.

Around me, pilgrims pressed hard up against each other trying to get to the stone. It's said that the prophet kissed the stone during his last hajj, so among pilgrims it's considered blessed to kiss the stone if possible, or to
just give it a flying kiss otherwise. The tribe of Muhammad, the Quraysh, rebuilt the Ka'bah in the seventh century, and the prophet put the black stone into the structure with his own hands.

I tried to eye the stone, but in the crush of the crowd I couldn't see it. Anyway, I wasn't about to even symbolically express affection to this rock. To me, it represented mythology used to secure our physical connection to the divine. I only had to feel the softness of Shibli's fingers wrapped around my index finger to know that the chord was not cut. With this revelation, I was coming to terms with what I believed rather than simply embracing what I was
supposed
to believe. It seemed to me that all of us, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, have to challenge our faiths. As I traveled in India I was told, often in adulating tones, about a Sanskrit concept of blind faith. I felt that our world and our religions would be better served by conscious, mindful faith.

It was madness near the Ka'bah as pilgrims threw themselves against its walls to try to kiss the stone. It took such faith and devotion to fling forward. The situation at the Ka'bah reminded me of the time I wiggled my way into the mosh pit at a No Doubt concert to sing along with Gwen Stefani, “I'm just a girl.” I loved mosh pits, but I didn't get the scene in front of me. The journalist in me kicked into high gear.

Crazy
, I whispered to myself, crushed by the press of pilgrims.

The frenzy was not very different from the rush that filled the air when I'd watched Buddhist pilgrims stampede the stairs of the Ki monastery in the Himalayan mountains of India just to set their eyes on a holy mandala, a circular creation of geometric designs that symbolize a blessed circle of protection. When I closed my eyes, I could see the dust storm kicked up by two hundred naked Hindu yogis, called
naga babas
, as they bolted for their holy ritual bathing in the Ganges River during the Maha Kumbha Mela. It was the same devotion that sent Jews and Christians to their pilgrimage sites. I had to admit that I didn't feel the surrender to my faith that I was told I should feel at a moment like that. I somehow wished that I could be like them. But I wasn't.

In this crowd, I felt as if I was going through the motions of something I couldn't fully understand. The real awe came in seeing the unity of a people in one act. The African men gliding through the inner circle held my attention. They were dark and muscular with glistening sweat trickling down their bare torsos. With four of them carrying one pilgrim, they held wooden stretchers overhead, and elderly pilgrims sat in a leisurely way against the stretchers' short walls, like pharaohs of yesterday. They
bobbed so fiercely through the crowd that they virtually danced around the Ka'bah.

We wound around and around. At the end of the last round we found a corner in the courtyard, and I offered the requisite prayer at Maqam Ibrahim, or the “standing place of the prophet Abraham,” marked by a small golden kiosk. This was the spot in Mecca toward which, in a world of about six billion people, about one in five people turned for their daily worship. Women from Indonesia walked briskly inside a protective phalanx of men. Men and women with the flag of Turkey sewn onto their jackets scampered by us, trying not to lose each other. Some of the women in black burkas seemed to wear visors beneath their veils. This convergence of humanity was amazing. A Turkish woman saw Shibli and smiled.

“Ma sha Allah!” she shouted. “This is according to Allah's will!”

Another woman, wearing a scarf printed with hearts, bounced in front of us and smiled at Shibli as I thought about this phrase. I had always thought that it was an expression of simple praise to God for anything that seemed attractive, desirable, or admirable. It was Muslim insider language to protect someone from the evil effects of envy. But its literal meaning had extra resonance for me. I believed Shibli's conception was God's will. I appreciated every utterance of this invocation because I was also very aware that I had to protect Shibli from the negativity of judgment in our community.

With the image from tapestries in front of me, I started rethinking the mythology that was passed down through the ages about the Ka'bah. I understood why outsiders looked at this rite and equated it with pagan worship. This devotion to the physical structure of the Ka'bah struck me as contradictory to Islam's teachings prohibiting idolatry.

It is true that before the prophet Muhammad started preaching Islam, pagans revered the black stone that was the Ka'bah. They circled the Ka'bah in white robes and called out the names of the pagan gods
and
goddesses. The chief pagan god was the god of Mecca and Ka'bah, Hubal, or “al-Lah,” “the God.” Our modern-day Muslim way of referring to God as Allah came from this ancient name, but the Qur'an doesn't even mention him. It talks about his three daughters: the goddesses al-Uzza, Manat, and, most significantly, al-Lat, the fertility goddess, or “the Goddess.” Like most religions, Islam came from a pagan tradition that revered the power of a feminine divine. I had learned this while studying Tantra, a philosophy rooted in goddess worship. From Egypt to Babylonia, Greece, Rome, Asia, Africa, and the ancient cultures of the Americas, ancient people
related to God in feminine as well as masculine terms. Some Jewish scholars and followers of the Kabbalah Jewish spiritual tradition even believe that Yahweh, the Hebrew God, can be traced to a goddess, Shekhina. Some historians say it is very likely that the Ka'bah was originally a source of astral worship, a common theme in goddess traditions. The symbol of Islam in the modern day—a crescent and star—captures the spirit of that early devotion to the heavens.

As we stood in front of the Ka'bah, Sheikh Alshareef read my mind. “It may seem weird to pray at the rock.” It did. “The Ka'bah is the direction where we pray,” he said. “That's all.”

       
And God heard the voice of the lad;

       
And the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven,

       
And said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar?

       
Fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.

MECCA
—There is a place in this sacred city that is even more important to me than the Ka'bah. It is a path between two hills where the most remarkable woman once ran in desperation, searching for water for her son. She is Hajar, or Hagar in the Bible and Jewish history. Her name, which means “to take flight” in Arabic, is the linguistic root for
hijrah
, but nowhere in Mecca can you see her name. I had never heard the story of Hajar until I started getting ready to go on the hajj. She is one of the forgotten heroines of Islam. Her life is overshadowed by the story of a man, Abraham.

The Old Testament story from Genesis says that Abraham could not father any children with his wife Sarah. On a trip to Egypt they bought a young slave woman and returned to their home in Palestine with her. She was Hajar. In Islamic history, Abraham married her as his second wife, a co-wife. Unable to have a child, Sarah told Abraham to have sex with Hajar so that he could have a child, making her an early surrogate mother. It was apparently a practice of that time. A son was born of this union between Abraham and Hajar, and Abraham named him Ishmael. Mothers in the Arab world got their identity from their children, and Hajar became Umm Ishmael, or “mother of Ishmael.” (Abraham would have been “Abu Ishmael” or “father of Ishmael.”) The tale continues like
a script from a 2000
B.C
. soap opera. Hajar's fertility tormented Sarah. The Qur'an doesn't speak about this rivalry, but maybe God could predict what would happen next in the story, having after all created human nature. Jealous of Hajar, Sarah ordered Abraham to banish the servant to the desert. Abraham complied.

According to the Qur'an, Allah ordered Abraham, in a test of faith, to take Hajar and Ishmael to the parched desert in the valley of Mecca, then called Bakkah. Hajar placed Ishmael on the same ground that now lies beneath the marble floors of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca. Abraham walked away from her after placing a bag of dates and a skin full of water beside Ishmael. Hajar turned to him and asked, “Abraham! Where are you going? Why have you left me in the wilderness where none is to take pity on us? Nothing is available here to eat and drink.”

She kept repeating herself, but Abraham didn't listen. Then she asked him, “Has God commanded you to do so?”

He replied that God had indeed so commanded him. She protested no longer. “Then God will cause no harm to me.” In Islamic history, Hajar made the choice to accept Abraham's decision. She could have clung to him. Instead, she chose to turn her back on Abraham and walk away from him. Clinging to faith in both God and herself, Hajar was the image of strength. Four thousand years ago, she was standing alone in Mecca.

According to the Qur'an, as Abraham left Hajar and his son, he said, “Oh Lord! I have made some of my offspring settle in this barren valley near the sacred house so that they may keep up prayer.” When Abraham got out of Hajar's sight, he turned toward Ka'bah and prayed: “Oh Lord! Grant that the hearts of some men may be affected with kindness toward them and bestow upon them all sorts of fruit so that they may be thankful.”

With those words, he left Hajar and Ishmael. He returned to the life he had built with Sarah. Hajar, meanwhile, struggled, like every mother, to give her child a good life. She was subjected to one of the most difficult trials God sent down to earth. In her place of isolation, Hajar began to suckle her child and drink water out of the skin Abraham had left them. Finally, the water ran dry and she ran dry. Ishmael started crying for milk. At the time of Hajar, there was no Ka'bah drawing millions of pilgrims to it every year. Desperate, Hajar ran seven times between this place called Safa and another hill called Marwah, searching for water.

As she ran she yelled, “Oh Lord, forgive, have mercy. Ignore our sins. Of course, You know what we know not—only You are the Holy, Merciful.”

Hajar was about to start the eighth trip between Safa and Marwah when she collapsed next to Ishmael. Her eyes turned to her crying son,
who was kicking the ground in agony from thirst. It's said that the angel Jibril, or Gabriel, caused water to spring forth from the earth where he kicked. Hajar saw the water oozing out of a hole in the ground near her child.

Seeing the precious water escaping into the surrounding sand, she cried, “Zumi, ya Mubaraka!” (Stop there, O Blessed water!)

A pool formed as she approached it, and this wellspring of holy water was from that moment called
zamzam
, meaning “to stop.” Hajar drank the water, and Ishmael nursed from her, both their lives saved.

Through her strength of character, Hajar became mother to a new civilization. With Abraham building a life for himself with Sarah, Hajar raised Ishmael alone near the spring of water that had sprung up, an early single mother. One day some people from a tribe called Jurhum passed through. Seeing a bird that had the habit of staying near water, they sent a messenger, who discovered the source of the water in the zamzam spring. They became the first people to settle in the area after Hajar. Hajar arranged her son's marriage to a daughter of the tribe. According to Muslim lore, Abraham returned one day and interrogated the young woman chosen by Hajar. Disapproving of her, he sent a message to Ishmael that he should divorce her and marry the daughter of the tribe's chief. Ishmael complied. That union spawned the Quraysh, the Arab tribe into which the prophet Muhammad was born centuries later.

Meanwhile, in the city of Hebron outside Jerusalem, Sarah conceived a child with Abraham, a son named Isaac. Their son Isaac married Rebecca, and from them were spawned the Jewish tribes of the Middle East.

Hajar should have had a revered place in Islam. Instead, even her choice of a bride for the son she raised was rejected. She is not mentioned by name in the Qur'an. And the history books have always identified her as her son's mother. The prophet Muhammad said, “May Allah bestow mercy on Ishmael's mother!” He didn't mention her by name, but he did at least honor her. The credit for the hajj and the building of the Ka'bah goes to Abraham, the man who abandoned Hajar and Ishmael. Abraham returned to the desert, the Qur'an says, and with his son Ishmael rebuilt the Ka'bah, originally constructed by Adam but destroyed in the great floods that saw Noah's ark travel the world.

It is said that when Abraham finished building the Ka'bah, Allah told him to beckon people to hajj. Abraham responded, “Oh Allah! How shall my voice reach all of those people?” Allah assured him that his duty was to simply make the call, and God would make sure that it reached people.

Abraham then climbed a place called Mount Arafat and called out: “Oh people! Verily Allah has prescribed upon you hajj, so perform hajj.”

The source of zamzam is even called the Well of Ishmael, with no mention of Hajar. Christians, Jews, and Muslims are known as the sons and daughters of Abraham. According to matriarchal lineage, Jews and Christians are the sons and daughters of Sarah. Muslims are the symbolic sons and daughters of Hajar. Centuries separated Hajar from me. In her time, Mecca was uninhabited and without water. Today it has a McDonald's, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the Mecca Sheraton. Hajar marked her day by the sunrise and sunset. We have Swatches that digitally tick off the seconds.

It was past 3:00
A
.
M
. as we ascended the stairs to the third story, marking the path where Hajar ran. I stared at Shibli and felt a profound empathy toward Hajar as I stepped into the space where she once ran.

The stars twinkled above me in the clear dark sky. I seemed to dance on the cool ocean floor in a sea of white foam. My son stirred against my breasts and brought me back to earth. I was in the place where the mother of Islam once ran between the two hills of Safa and Marwah, desperately trying to find water for her crying baby. Of all the stories in the Qur'an, this one is the most significant to women in Islam.

What is so important to me about her story is that this woman didn't crumble when the father of her baby took her to the desert to leave her there alone with her son. She had the courage to decide to raise her son by herself and to experience the wonderful love between a mother and a child. Her life story had special meaning to me, abandoned by my baby's father. She gave me courage in my decision to raise my son alone. She didn't even have water. I had Wal-Mart. Her story is timeless and universal and gives strength to all women and men who make lonely choices in life and who face alienation for those choices.

I stood at Safa where Hajar once stood. At the time of Hajar, Safa was a hill. She had the desert sand beneath her feet. I had cool marble. I had wanted my feet to touch the ground where Hajar stood. But I felt closer to her on the roof of the opulent, three-story grand mosque in which her path was enclosed. On the roof I felt I was closer to the spirit of Hajar released to the heavens. I gazed at the dark sky, the stars winking at me, and I breathed in the spirit of this noble woman who lived centuries before me. The Ka'bah sat in its open-air courtyard below us.

The markings of modern culture surrounded me. A man passed by with a deep piercing above his eyebrow where a ring was supposed to go. A woman swept by with henna painted in traditional ornate design on her hands. Shibli was awake in his Baby Bjorn carrier, its straps crisscrossing my back. Millennia separated Hajar and me. But so much connected us.

Like so many of us, Hajar was a desperate woman, scrambling to quench her thirst, frantically looking for the water of life. I remembered something I had been told by a scholar, Alan Godlas, a professor of religious studies at the University of Georgia and a convert to Islam. A California native, he received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and followed a global path of inquiry that I much admired, studying Persian literature at the University of Tehran, advanced Arabic in Cairo, and Turkish and Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, in Turkey. I first talked to him after Shibli's birth as I struggled to know my place within Islam as an unwed mother. He had created an informative and award-winning Islamic website. I knew I could trust him because he had the perfect name for a professor of religion: Godlas. “When we finally surrender,” he had told me, “we find the source of life within our own hearts. Hajar's child, Ishmael, is like the birth of awakened consciousness.” When he told me this, I could not help but think of what Shibli did for my awakening. I reflected on my struggles in relationships, the meaning of Danny's death, the impact on my life of my pregnancy, and what the future held. I realized that I felt so much more awake after Shibli's birth than before, when, like many people, I was sleepwalking through life.

It's a vital part of the pilgrimage to go the one and a quarter miles between Safa and Marwah in the footsteps of Hajar. This run is called
sa'y
and represents the struggle we all endure over faith and life. At Safa, Sheikh Alshareef led us through a recitation from a pocket-sized hajj rule-book. “Surely, the Safa and Marwah are among the Symbols of Allah.” The rulebook reminded me of the dogmatism bred in Saudi Arabia. Titled
A Guide to Hajj, Umra, and Visiting the Prophet's Mosque
, it was written by “The Agency of Islamic Enlightenment in Hajj,” approved by “The
Permanent Committee of Islamic Research and Fatwa” and Sheikh Muhammad Bin Saleh al-Uthaimin, and printed and distributed by “The Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Dawah and Guidance, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Dawah
means to invite others to Islam either literally or through preaching. It irritated me that books in Saudi Arabia communicated such a sense of moral authority, using words like
enlightenment
and
guidance
when they were nothing more than ideological polemics of a branch of Islam that was divisive, intolerant, and sexist. Without acknowledging any of the scholarly debate on interpretations of the Qur'an, the traditions of the prophet, and the sharia, the rulebook alleged that any who didn't believe in these precepts were nonbelievers destined for hell. The precepts were, conveniently, the tenets of Wahhabism, including face veils for women, the stoning sentence for adultery, the cutting off of hands for theft, and the classification of Muslims, not to mention non-Muslims, who didn't follow the rulebook as “unbelievers.”

What especially offended me was that as the gatekeepers to this act of the pilgrimage—required of all Muslims—Saudi religious clerics had a captive audience and a specific window of opportunity in their mission to convert Muslims to their Wahhabi ideology. I had met so many Muslims who believed that if a point of view came out of Saudi Arabia it had to be theologically correct. After all, the logic went, the Saudis are direct descendants of the prophet and the closest in the Muslim world geographically to his teachings. So often in Pakistan after 9/11 I had heard educated Muslims proclaim that the Saudis and the Taliban were practicing the most authentic Islam in the world. That gullibility both saddened and horrified me. What I suspected was that in fact, as an ideology, the Wahhabi school had departed more than most from the original teachings of the prophet.