01-01-2007, 02:20 AM
Hajj an Adventure for Young Americans
By LEE KEATH
The Associated Press
Sunday, December 31, 2006; 6:14 PM
MINA, Saudi Arabia -- The 20-year-old American tells his hajj pilgrimage stories a mile a minute, his hands moving in excitement _ about how he arrived in Mecca days ago, lost amid the massive crowds, and saw a man drop dead while circling the Kaaba.
"Dude, I saw it, the guy had the most peaceful smile on his face," Adil Muschelewicz, performing the pilgrimage for the first time, said Sunday, his head shaved bald after a ritual a day earlier.
An aerial view of two of three huge stone pillars as Muslim pilgrims seen cast stones at it in the symbolic stoning of the devil for the second day in Mina, near Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Sunday, Dec. 31, 2006. Some threw with fury, others just tossed their stones quietly cursing evil and temptation as some 3 million Muslims performed a symbolic stoning of the devil Sunday in one of the most dramatic _ and dangerous _ rites of the hajj pilgrimage. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra) (Khalil Hamra - AP)
The young man from Easley, S.C., had arrived alone in Mecca because of a travel agent screw-up that prevented his family from arriving for three days. He was with hundreds of thousands of others circling the Kaaba, the black stone cube that is Islam's holiest site, when he saw the elderly man fall dead. The body was quickly lifted out of the crowd.
Muschelewicz didn't know the cause of the man's death _ exhaustion maybe, he said _ but it became one of the many powerful religious moments that have shaken him during the trip.
"I looked at his face and I looked at the Kaaba, and it was like he was happy, he'd gotten close to God. It just went boom, like this deep bass line in my heart," he said. "It was so emotional. I was by myself, in this wild place I'd never been before."
For young American Muslims far from home, the hajj pilgrimage is an awesome adventure that they say deepens their faith and connects them with the wide range of Muslim peoples.
The annual hajj is overwhelming even for those who have done it before.
Some 3 million pilgrims from all over the world move between the holiest sites of Islam, in and around Mecca, over the course of five days, tracing the steps of the Prophet Muhammad and Ibrahim _ or Abraham to Christians and Jews _ considered in Islam as the first Muslim.
Traffic jams are epic _ it can take more than an hour for a bus to drive 200 yards.
Amid the hundreds of thousands of people moving on foot for miles, you can turn and find the friend by your side has disappeared. Pilgrims often go days on only a few hours sleep, snatched whenever possible amid the constant movement.
It is also a sensory overload, with a soundtrack in languages from around the world _ Arabic, English, Turkish, Malay and Bahasa, Urdu and Hindi. Intense poverty collides with wealth, with some pilgrims sleeping on the garbage-strewn pavement and others staying in "five-star" tents with meals and other facilities provided.
More than 20,000 Americans are participating in this year's hajj, a higher number than usual because the pilgrimage, which began Thursday and ends Monday, coincides with Christmas and New Year's holidays.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6123100438.html