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Cam Diary: Inside the heart of Islam

Sir Cam

Racing between Safa and Marwa, a distance of over half a mile, can be a little tiring, especially immediately following the tawaf. Umrah completed and noon prayer offered it was time to exit the Mosque. It was time for lunch and time for a little well-deserved rest

We had reached our destination — there it was in all its glory, there was our Qiblah, there was our Islamic fount. This was the House towards which the Believers turned in prayer, this was their international focus, the sacred Ka’aba. This was the square around which was the global Ummah’s halqa (circle) for prayer and devotion to the One.

Herein was the Islamic powerhouse: to the eye, just a “stone and mortar” cube-shaped building, about three storeys high — higher than you expect it to be — covered in black cloth, with a door on one side and the Hajr-e-Aswad (blackstone) embedded in one corner. Outwardly, it is nothing more than an object which serves as the symbol for Muslim unity and their physical as well as spiritual) point of concentration.

Like the heart within a body, with its blood, tissues and nerves, so, too, was the physical Ka’aba within the “body” of the Ummah. But it would be foolish to consider the physical, outward, to be everything and to ignore the spiritual, inward, dimension. Here, right in front of me, was the Bait-Allah (House), that Islamic lamp radiating nur (light) in the world, generating a force like no other.

As I stood gaping at the Ka’aba, I saw a sea of humankind of every description and from all parts of the world — united in faith — flowing around it. Here was manifest the magnitude of the blessing that is Islam, which was the cement binding the diverse multitude. Herein was triumphant the Haq (Truth) over the Batil (falsehood) as humankind turned to Allah in worship. Eat your heart out, if you’ve got one, Shaitan!

Round and round the Ka’aba whirled the crowd, glorifying and supplicating the Lord. I raised my hands and made a long and deep du’a (supplication): my heart fluttered like a butterfly, my complexion became flushed, and an electric shudder ran through me. I could resist the call no more and plunged into the spiritual ocean. I was carried off my feet and began floating along with the revolving mass of humankind, oblivious of all else except God. I was a mere speck, a blood cell, so to speak, being sucked and pumped around the Islamic heart. Can you hear the heart-beat: Allah! Allah! Allah?

As I orbited the Islamic nucleus, I caught odd glimpses of fellow travellers, including my group: my mum, and an aunt and uncle. Though diverse in composition, the mass of people looked the same: the men clad in the white sheets of Ihram, and the women in their loose clothes and hijab, mostly also white. Here was a sea of white gushing around a black ship.

As the noon sun shone above us, it lit up the white mass so brightly that it hurt my eyes! After completing the seven rounds of tawaf, I emerged from the crowd and said my prayers opposite the golden door of the House. Take it from me; there is no greater sense of pleasure, or love if you may, than the experience of feeling the nearness of God. Ah, relish the moment.

Having satiated some of my spiritual thirst, I was now in dire need of replenishing bodily fluids. Zam Zam water is what quenched my thirst. And I drank gallons of it! Uncle had joined me and together we went to Mount Safa, a rocky hill in its earlier days, but now a tiled slope at one end of a covered passage next to the Mosque. At the other end of the passage is a similar slope, which is the site of the hill Marwa.

It’s between these two hills that Hajrah, the wife of Prophet Ibrahim (AS), ran seven times looking desperately for water for the infant Ismael (AS) in the dry and barren Makkan valley. The spring of Zam Zam burst forth as little Ismael was digging his feet into the ground and his mother ran to it shouting joyfully, “Zam, zam” (“Stop, stop”). That spring, which is a few feet away from the Ka’aba itself, has been flowing ever since, but the water has been re-routed to underneath the open area of the Mosque.

Racing between Safa and Marwa, a distance of over half a mile, can be a little tiring, especially immediately following the tawaf. Umrah completed and noon prayer offered it was time to exit the Mosque. It was time for lunch and time for a little well-deserved rest. Ouch! The legs were aching a bit, and ye olde stomach was rumbling.

—Sir Cam, Cambridge, England

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