c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Whatever you bring to Mecca, bring patience. That’s what travel agents, Islamic scholars and veterans of the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest city, tell Muslims preparing for the journey.
When 1.5 million people from abroad descend on Saudi Arabia for this annual rite, the possibilities of what can go wrong _ lost visas, canceled flights, overbooked hotels _ are endless. In addition, there are dirty bathrooms, heat, and throngs of pilgrims running, pushing and driving to complete an arduous circuit of rituals. If ever there was an opportunity to test one’s patience, the Hajj is it.
But patience, Alia Ahmed acknowledges, is not one of her strong suits.
“I’m very hyper. I don’t walk, I run. I don’t talk, I scream,” said the 5-foot Pakistani-American, who did her first Hajj in January 2005.
The Hajj is a six-day pilgrimage which this year, according to the Islamic lunar calendar, runs Jan. 8-13. It is one of the five pillars of Islam, and is required of all Muslims who are physically and financially able to go.
Pilgrims exchange their worldly clothing for simple white cloth, underscoring the equality of humanity, then set off on a series of rites, including circling the Kaaba, the small square shrine located in the heart of Mecca’s Great Mosque, symbolizing the centrality of God in one’s life; asking for forgiveness on the Plain of Arafat; and throwing stones at pillars representing the devil.
Most pilgrims who come spend two to three weeks in Saudi Arabia, spending several days in Medina, where Muhammad is buried, and in Mecca.
The Hajj has spawned a niche travel market that caters to Muslims like Alia Ahmed and her husband Hassan, the CEO of a technology company near Boston, who paid about $14,000 to have an agency secure their visas, flights and hotels and provide guides, food and other amenities.
The Saudi government has a special Hajj Visa category, and issued about 12,750 such visas to American Muslims who made the Hajj in 2005, up from 8,980 in 2002. The same number or slightly more are expected to go this year, according to the Saudi embassy in Washington.
Most packages are priced between $2,500 and $5,500, which translates into an estimated $50 million-a-year industry in the United States.
Abdo Ibrahim, the CEO of Boston-based Adam Travel, took 22 pilgrims when his company first started offering Hajj tours in the early 1990s. This year, Ibrahim, 57, estimates he has about 1,000 pilgrims. Tours are priced between $3,100 to $6,300, and account for about 5 percent of Adam Travel’s annual sales.
“It may be 5 percent of the profit, but it’s 25 percent of the headache,” he says. “There are too many unknowns.”
Hotel bookings are one of them. At the end of last year’s Hajj, for example, the first sighting of the new moon that marks the start of the new month on the Muslim calendar came early. That meant Ibrahim had to give up dozens of hotel rooms in Mecca to make room for guests who had the rooms reserved according to the lunar calendar dates. Ibrahim said he then paid $90,000 to house his customers for two nights in a hotel in Jeddah.
More common problems are late applications that leave agents little time to meet the one-month window when Hajj visas are issued, combined with problems with partners on the ground who provide guides, buses, drivers, caterers, luggage handlers and other services.
It’s also an industry vulnerable to fly-by-night businesses that take advantage of unsuspecting travelers. In 2002, Egyptian police uncovered a scheme to sell forged visas to would-be Hajj participants, seizing money and fake documents. More than 100 Turkish pilgrims were left stranded in 2000 in Amman, Jordan, where they were supposed to obtain their entry visas for Saudi Arabia, but learned that the Ankara travel agency that arranged the package was a fraud.
In recent years, government officials in Nigeria, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and other countries have been accused of charging pilgrims illegal fees, while some pilgrims have reportedly been stranded for days in Saudi Arabia, waiting for their planes to arrive days after the Hajj is over.
Such schemes and fiascos are rare in the United States, travel agents here say, in part because of a relatively new registry of approved travel agents maintained by the Saudi embassy.
Still, pilgrims are vulnerable to the unexpected.
After completing the first part of their Hajj in Mecca, Amin Rathore of Harvard, Mass., and his group of about 40 pilgrims headed for the Mina Valley, a desert plain turned tent-city where pilgrims spend the night before heading to the Plain of Arafat, where Muslims believe Adam and Eve were reunited after leaving Eden. But the tents were overcrowded, leaving pilgrims with “no room to turn” when they slept, he said. Because of the close quarters, many in the group caught the flu, leaving Rathore, a physician, to take care of the sick pilgrims. As a result, he said, “I couldn’t fulfill my religious duties.”
There were other problems. A flight that was supposed to take Rathore’s group from Mecca to see sites in Medina was canceled. They took a nine-hour overnight bus ride before arriving at overcrowded hotel rooms. The return flights were canceled as well. The guide wasn’t always forthright with bad news.
“What they promised, they could not deliver. And in some ways, I can understand. It’s chaos over there. And they’re at the mercy of their Saudi co-partners,” Rathore, 65, said.
The agency, Dar El-Eiman, with offices in Jersey City, N.J., and Glendale, Calif., tried to make amends with a small refund. “But the money didn’t matter. I wanted the comfort. And that’s what I paid for,” Rathore said, estimating the package cost about $5,000. “You’re not supposed to lose your cool, but that did happen to quite a few people.”
The Ahmeds had a more comfortable experience. Their hotel room on the 22nd floor had a view of the Kaaba. In Medina, their 14th floor room looked out on The Prophet’s Mosque, where Prophet Muhammad is buried. In the Mina Valley, their group of 25 had a huge air-conditioned tent, with oriental carpets on the ground, and sleeping areas with cots, lounge areas with couches and dining areas with catered food.
“These tents are no ordinary tents,” Ahmed said with a laugh. “You wouldn’t even know you were in a tent.”
Overcrowding and flight cancellations are part of the Hajj experience, said Saidi Gaddoor, West Coast manager for Dar El-Eiman California travel agency. “You just can’t do anything about it.”
“The problem with customers is expectations. Customers, especially from America, have high expectations,” Gaddor said. “Customers come to me and say `can you promise me a trouble-free Hajj?’ And I say no, I would be lying. But that’s part of Hajj _ sacrifice, patience.”
KRE/JL END SACIRBEY
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