10 Hawaii Muslims
miss deadly stampedeTravelers return safely with
colorful accounts of their
pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia
A contingent of Hawaii pilgrims just escaped being caught in a stampede that killed 251 Muslims on religious pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia last week.
"It was just minutes after we were out of that place. We had just moved on," said Pearl City resident A. Karim Khan, who returned Saturday. The deaths Feb. 1 occurred as the crowd pressed forward to participate in a ritual of stoning a pillar that represents the devil.
Khan and other returning travelers shared memories of the experience as they were met at Honolulu Airport by family and friends. Ten members of the Manoa mosque made the hajj this year, fulfilling a basic tenet of the faith.
"It was a deeply spiritual experience. And it was exhausting," said Khan, a Leeward Community College history professor who made the trip with his wife, Zeenat. They were greeted with embraces by daughters Suha and Sumble.
"To find yourself among 2 million people of every race and region reminds you how global this religion is," said Khan. Despite a constant state of being packed in crowds throughout the week of making ritual visits to sacred sites, "there was not a single fight," said Khan. "There was respect for each other. I wish we could take that lesson and spread that peaceful message throughout the world."
Twenty-year-old Abdul-Aziz Ramadan beamed as he said, "I completed one of the five pillars of Islam." He and his brother Mohammed, 22, were greeted by their father, Mohsen Ramadan, who brought fast-food chicken for the weary young travelers. The boys took this semester off from college to make the trip. Their father said they will get around to comparing notes -- his hajj experience was in 1981 -- but "first they need to rest."
The returning Hawaii residents were delayed by a day because of missed flight connections that began with an air traffic jam in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at the pilgrimage's end.
The men returned with shaved heads, a traditional practice -- new friends doing the barbering honors for each other -- following completion of the hajj.
The Ramadans brought their father a small bottle of "Zamzam water" named for a spring believed to be at least 3,000 years old, which appeared in the desert to nourish Abraham's son Ishmael when the child and his mother, Hagar, wandered there.
Young and older pilgrims said the peak experience was the "tawaf," the promenade around the Kaaba, a rectangular structure believed to cover the altar that Abraham built to sacrifice his son in an act of obedience to God. When Muslims around the world pray, they face toward the Kaaba.
"It was most profound to see the Kaaba, the emotion it evokes," Khan said. "People were crying as they walked around it. It is impossible not to cry when you are there."
Khan said he expects to describe the experience to his world history classes.
"The logistics are quite something. Just to mobilize that many people is quite a feat for the Saudi government," he said. The sheer numbers of travelers translated into long waits in lines, for instance an hour's wait for a toilet. "It is an exercise in patience, which the Quran calls for in several places. I think women are better at being patient then men."
Khan said the Hawaii travelers were comfortable in hotels, and "the food in Saudi Arabia is excellent, and it was plentiful."
Some pilgrims walked between the sacred places outside Mecca, distances of 10 to 20 miles. But there was also a fleet of hundreds of Mercedes Benz buses to transport crowds.
"The help becomes a hindrance," said Khan, as travelers become enmeshed in long waits for transportation, buses that are either too cold with air conditioning or too hot without it, and "the stink of bus exhaust can make you sick.
"If you could do it as they did in medieval times on the back of a donkey, you could take the time to reflect, and you would have fresh air!"
Among those welcoming the returnees was Nasir Gazdar, who said: "We all prayed when we heard of deaths. Everyone thinks, 'It may be my loved one.'" Telephone calls were made that reassured the local families.
Gazdar, who walks with a cane, said he will be more likely to travel to Mecca during the off-season, a pilgrimage or "umrah" also permitted outside the month of hajj.
A University of Hawaii geography professor, Gazdar confesses that besides seeking the religious experience, he has the curiosity of science. He would like to see a sacred stone that is part of the Kaaba structure and is probably a meteorite. And because of extensive mineral deposits in Arabia, "I would like to test the water from the well of Zamzam."