by Shadab Zeest Hashmi
Note: This is Part 2 of my Umrah Travelogue. Link to Part 1: “Here I Am, Labbayk”: A Travelogue
Everywhere you turn there is the face of God (Surah al-Baqarah, 2:115)
At the Ka’ba, you spiral the great Oneness, now drifting closer, now farther, keeping your gaze centered, raising your hands to your lips and sending a kiss in the direction of “Hajar-e-Aswad” or the “black stone” when you turn its corner. You understand that this stone or any other stone is as much in service of the One as every single being in creation— from an atom to a galaxy-cluster, that the Ka’ba’s alignment with the sacred throne (“bayt al mamoor”), and your alignment with it when you offer prayers far away, is but a mercy that aids your faith, for God’s face is everywhere. You are asked to witness Oneness here as a Oneness of faithful hearts. In the millions. Yes, here you are sublimely inseparable, and sublimely solitary, much as you were in the womb. This is the land of spiritual gestation and birth; it teaches you the meaning of faith via the exiled heart, first in the tradition of Hajar/Hagar (AS), then, Muhammad (PBUH). Your teachers— men and women among them—gather insights into these Prophetic bearers of Divine “Rahma” (Merciful Love), a corollary of “Rahm” (womb), and you learn to discern the imprint of the sacred feminine in all beings.
Makkah feels every bit the desert you imagined, despite modern conveniences such as air-conditioning, shuttles and cold water. Not much vegetation as far as the eye can see, only some hodge-podge Western-style buildings that rim the holy sanctuary, bringing to focus your own exiled heart, exhausted body, and a mind that fails to compute the brutality of the times. Everywhere you turn: a Quranic verse that holds you in its embrace. What embrace could be wider, more majestic or comforting than the Divine mirror that is reflected in all creation, even in its harshest, most confounding, painful aspects. The ayat points to the Cosmic Qur’an; everything in time, space and dimensions beyond perception, is an “ayat,” a “verse”, a “sign.”
You contemplate signs of hidden mercies in the lore of this very desert, how “Rahma” is folded into travails, how the vulnerability of the human body, as the Qura’nic narrations show, can become a threshold for the greatest gifts of faith. An emblematic moment for the faithful is Hajar’s (AS) arrival in the vicinity, with her infant Isma’il, the prophet whose bloodline is destined to produce the seal of the prophethood in Muhammad (PBUH), born twenty-five generations later, in this same vicinity.
Toward its Divine origins all creation turns, all time turns; in every turning, a witness, but the witness in you asks to be refreshed and refined with every turning, because your soul is prone to being overpowered by sleep— some say, one of the roots of “insaan,” the word for “human,” is “nisya” or forgetfulness, another is “uns” or intimate love— you turn away from one, toward the other. Tawaf, a counterclockwise turning, locks your heart into turning constantly toward love.
At the Ka’ba, you join the orbit of intentional witness of the faithful, you yearn for its fullest meaning; you have been primed for it in the company of your cohort that gathers for teachings and contemplation. Seven times the Hajar-e-Aswad appears in tawaf, seven times you send a kiss in its direction (“Maqam e Ibrahim”) following the Prophetic tradition of Muhammad (PBUH), which, by extension, honors Prophets Ibrahim (AS) and his son Isma’il (AS), the fathers of the faith, builders of the Ka’ba. But “Hajar” is also sonically reminiscent of “Hajar/Hagar,” as S. Omid explains in his eloquent, detailed teaching of how the beauty of our path is closely linked with the mothers. The noble mother of Isma’il, the dark-skinned child of Egypt, Hajar (AS), is no less a builder than her husband or son, he says. We honor her as part of the very foundation of the faith.
If Tawaf is a circling en masse in service of the One, a reminder of our heavenly alignment, our expression of Oneness as a community of the faithful, “saee” is a reminder that worldly life is an individual’s test of faith. Long before Isma’il AS built the Ka’ba with his father as a sanctuary for the faithful, he arrived here as a baby in his mother Hajar’s arms— hungry and thirsty in the unbearable heat of the desert. His mother ran between the two mountains of Safa and Marwa, looking for water. The Archangel Gabriel appeared, as he would appear later to Maryam AS in similar distress, bearing alone the pain of childbirth. In the second instance, a stream and a date-laden palm appear as a result, in the first, the miraculous spring of Zam Zam.
As a child you loved the retelling of this narration, imagining the infant Isma’il kicking the ground with his tiny heels until the cool water of Zam Zam burst forth from the desert sand. You were too young to ponder the profundity of miracle as response to a test of faith— his mother’s. Without Hajar, there would be no Saee, Zam Zam, no Ka’ba, no Umrah, S. Omid reminds. You drink Zam Zam now, facing the Ka’ba, repeating Ibn Abbas’s prayer that lists beneficial knowledge above all else. Zam Zam is the perfect refreshment between the strenuous inner focus of Tawaf, which you equate with deen, the path of faith, and Saee, which evokes wordly duties or dunya. You are grateful for Zam Zam and the prayer for knowledge to bridge deen and dunya.
When you make Saee, you find yourself walking alongside Seemi Ghazi, esteemed scholar, but more importantly, a refined soul whose influence you cherish. You are inspired to hasten your pace as she begins to jog. On some website you had read that for women, there is only walking, no running. As Seemi jogs in the area identified for pilgrims to pick up their pace during Saee, it occurs to you that both men and women here are following in Hajar’s footsteps to express submission to faith, as she did while searching for water; why pay mind to a website, you realize, that excludes women from fully performing a ritual honoring the act of our blessed mother Hajar, herself a woman? “Saee” or the “spirit of struggle” or dedication to a cause in response to “Rahma” is best understood in the heightened maternal instinct of a mother in the act of trying to save her child from distress. Women know it in our bodies and spirit; men are in the position to emulate the feminine here, by Divine command.
In the Islamic tradition, Ibrahim AS accompanies Hajar through part of her desert journey; she is confused at first as to why her husband is leading her far away from home, but then she utters words that show the might of her faith in the Merciful One: “O Ibrahim. Where are you going, leaving us in this valley where there is no one nor is there anything else around (a barren land)?” She repeatedly asked (him), but he did not turn (to respond). She then asked him: “Did Allah commanded you to do so?” He said: “Yes.” She said: “Then He will not leave us (to be lost).”(Sahih Al-Bukhari). Hajar’s test of faith precedes that of her husband and son’s test of faith, when Ibrahim (AS) would be commanded to sacrifice his son, an event at the center of all Abrahamic faiths, variations on which of the two sons notwithstanding.
The Almighty’s Rahma is reflected in the legacy of the mothers who model faith through merciful love in the utmost— As Hajar’s faith gives her the capability of protecting and nurturing Isma’il alone in the intense conditions of the desert, Maryam is likewise, alone, and fully capable of bearing and rearing her child, the prophet Isa (AS). Another mother that is honored in the Islamic tradition is Asiya AS, the wife of the Pharoah who raises Musa (AS), not a mother in the conventional sense, not even a believer at first, or related through blood, but as fine an example of mothering as any in the sacred tradition. One of the most unforgettable teachings you receive in Makkah has to do with Amina (AS) who gave birth to the Beloved Prophet after she had been widowed for six months. She too, was alone, but only in the worldly sense. She was in supreme Rahma, surrounded by the Almighty’s loving protection, as she gave birth to the “Rahmat ul lil Aalamin” the “mercy of all the worlds.”
You sit on the carpeted floor of the hotel room hours after the Umrah, for a teaching session; your fatigue, elation, sense of peace are mirrored in this beautiful company, everywhere you turn, you are a particle of the infinitude of the One. In preparation for visiting some of the local sites associated with the Ummahaat, the mothers of the faithful, S. Sadiyya recites a powerful invocation. As the women of the tradition are named, whether part of the prophetic realm or the ones whose learning and ma’arifat are essential in our understanding of the faith, you feel enriched by the commemoration of feminine valor and spiritual leadership, particularly in your times when the world witnesses the butchering of innocents, when women are called to bury generations of loved ones, or care for the largest population of amputated children ever in history, or build anew from the rubble of survival, or enter into exile.
“Behold, Safa and Marwa are among the symbols of Allah” (Qura’n 2:158): You begin to read faith in the signs of separation and union as you learn to embody “Labbayk,” (or “at Your service” as S. Hamza teaches), a turning toward ultimate peace, sourced from submission, Islam, in Hajar’s Saee between Safa and Marwa. It strikes you that the mother of the tradition, Hajar’s (AS) exile brings her to Makkah, Muhammad’s (PBUH) takes him out of Makkah, that Makkah is Balad al Amin, the “trustworthy city,” despite the harshness of its history, that embedded in Amin (trustworthy) is Aman, Peace, Amin being the Prophet’s honorific, used even by those who drove him into exile. It occurs to you that the tradition not only welcomes the exile, the stranger, but has a place for her as one of its original builders— Hajar literally meaning “stranger,” and Amina the other great mother, likewise a daughter from a different tribe, like her son, the feminine epitome of “trustworthiness,” as reflected in her name.
You are terrestrial, in exile, a sojourner in the desert of life, turning toward the celestial within; you, a woman, no less a builder of a civilization that dignifies humanity by insisting on turning only toward Merciful Love.