As soon as my mother and I got home from our summer in Kashmir I was going through an old drawer of special things so I could add to it, and I found an old 3-D viewfinder with slides of the Hajj. I can’t remember where I got it but it’s one of the most beautiful things in the drawer, along with my 3-D viewfinder of dinosaurs, and my illustrated book about birds. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that my father announced that he would be taking my mother for the Hajj and my brother suggested that I go with them and I agreed that I should go because I had a dream about it a few months before, and also several daydreams after I found that old viewfinder.

We left for Medina on October 24th, 2012 and completed the pilgrimage on November 7th, 2012.

They say that a thing counts as the whole thing if it is at least most of the thing. So a headscarf should count even if part of unnamed-woman’s bangs are peeking out like a dog sticking his head out of the window letting the wind run through his hair and calm his heart. And in prayer you don’t say a prostration for forgetfulness if you only slightly rise to stand when you are actually supposed to sit.

If most of a thing means more than half, I would only have to be a little more than half-bad to be all-bad, but generally I’m considered to be not-half-bad.

On the way to Medinah everyone on the plane was trying to sleep because we were going to visit the masjid first thing in the morning. I can’t remember all the rules and steps and get nervous thinking I’m bound to do something wrong. An elderly woman was getting nauseous and they asked if there was a doctor on board the bus and my father pretended he was asleep and slumped in his chair a little bit like he was hiding. He had been finishing his dictations up until the moment we boarded the plane.

I sat separately from my parents and the Nigerian woman sitting next to me called me Sheef and took my notebook from my tray table so she could read it. “Noth. Ef. Bad.”

I acted immediately. “Oh, Gosh, sorry that’s mine.”

She didn’t give it back until she felt she was done with it.

People do this a lot and it is strange to me. How can people not consider handwriting in a notebook to be personal? Is a notebook with writing an invitation to open up and start reading?

It happens with people of all ages in all countries and contexts and I never say anything about it even though every ounce of me thinks it is awful. I have actually been forced to divide people into two categories because of it. Is it because you think I’m writing about you? Just because you’re sitting beside me? You’re so vain.

But yes, nine times out of ten, I am writing about you.

 This is what we did on the way to the Hajj, “the journey of a lifetime,” as it is called. Sleeping and eating and reading and thinking about what I’m supposed to be thinking and feeling.

During the Hajj no Muslims taking part are allowed to do harm unto another Muslim. This includes speaking ill of anyone behind their back or hurting their feelings to their face. Like many of the rules, this is something we are supposed to generally be doing all the time, but on Hajj you are especially careful not to do anything wrong and hopefully that carries on into your life afterwards. 

The pilgrims come from every possible place on earth, and all of us have learned our religion through different channels and all of us have prepared for the Hajj in different ways, and in every direction there is someone doing something you were told not to do but you can’t let it bother you or distract you, especially if it involves someone pushing you or holding their wife in front of them like a shield and using her body to push you and bulldoze through the crowd, or if it involves tiny Malaysian women moving in a train with their hands on each other’s shoulders and the first woman tries to latch onto a random oversized man in the crowd to lead the way, and they usually find one.

It doesn’t make sense to criticize other people because to be a good person is in and of itself considered a blessing from God, and at any moment you could be tested with moral bankruptcy, and that guy you were criticizing could, out of nowhere, be elevated to the highest spiritual ranks. Wouldn’t that be crazy?

In Arabic there are special dual endings for words and conjugations of verbs. If you add “ayn” it makes it two. The Masjid Kiblatayn is named as such because it is where the Prophet peace be upon him changed the direction of his prayer from Jerusalem towards the Kaaba. This was amazing to me, and when we visited we only had a few minutes to say a prayer and the masjid was overflowing with women falling over each other trying to get in. It seemed impossible but I made it through and by my standards in good spirits, in this special place in the city of Medinah, where mid-prayer, our Prophet peace be upon him changed his direction and regarding the rows behind him, the first row became the last row and the last row became the first row. 

They say the Hajj pilgrimage is the Journey of a Lifetime. And when they talk about the Final Journey they are talking about death.

Hajj is a preparation for the Final Journey.

They say a lot of people secretly or not-secretly hope to die during the pilgrimage because it is a blessing and you would be buried in Mecca which means you were created from the dirt of that holy city originally because we are all buried in the same dirt from where we were created. It is considered blessed if you die anywhere along the journey of Hajj, so you might die at your layover in the Istanbul Airport and you would still be especially blessed, but you would be buried in Istanbul.

And of course, there are always some people that actively try to die.

So the journey was the only time in my life I was not scared to die, but anything lesser than that was still on the table, like being maimed or contracting a disease or getting otherwise seriously injured. I don’t think those things get you into heaven.

This might actually be my cat. He might have secretly transported himself so he could be purified and return home like a newborn kitten.