❝AT TWENTY-FOUR DEGREES NORTH LATITUDE, Leaving Saudi Medina Airport in an Uber taxi turned out to be easier than expected, although inside the car it was possible to see the two Google maps —the taxi driver's and mine— the fact that the cars converged on the same point, my destination, a small B&B residence outside the downtown, while the driver accelerated resolutely on the asphalt, brought some complications. After convincing him to stop and finding on the way a petrol station where he was a regular, which he must have been, given his way of addressing the workers by their names, I was able to talk to a young Sudanese guy and get even the sun that bounced and jumped in front of us to accompany us to the very door, synchronized and gentle.
That day when I arrived, in the middle of the morning, me, zair (pilgrim in Medina, so he proclaimed Richard Burton in the biographical account of his pilgrimage), I headed without stopping to think how and where I would enter and crossed the main door that faces the avenue of King Fahad (promoter of the great monumental extension with the famous parasols) and I walked around the entire north side of the Prophet's Mosque. Al Haram A couple of Muslim families beckoned me to join them for lunch, which they were enjoying on the carpets, and I shared some sweets with them. I then chatted casually with pilgrims from Canada and Great Britain. I took photos while sitting on the floor. Later, they provided me with black folding chairs, which are stacked everywhere, to make me feel more comfortable, unable to appreciate them for myself with the level of nervousness I still felt. After a couple of hours of walking up and down (at that point, I had the camera on my shoulder, not in my backpack like I had when I entered, which was not premeditated), a cleaning employee, a Pakistani national, almost a foot away from leaving the same way I had entered, stopped me and called one of the mosque security guards to have me thrown out after I told him no, I wasn't Muslim. But he insisted that I was American (a North American), and I had to clarify that I was neither Muslim, nor American, nor a believer.
Along the perimeter of the great mosque and its numerous doors there is no sign warning the non-muslims —infidels— that it is forbidden to enter the premises. Nor is there any written and legible warning at the entrances from the underground car parks below the Haram site that you are not welcome. But I discovered that the next day when I entered through one of the car park exits, which lead directly into the mosque, and walked in the cool of the early hours, with the parasols already up, without intending to walk along the western side of Al Haram because the taxi driver left me there and not somewhere further away. After a short walk I went out to visit the old historic and small mosques in the area, survivors of urban destruction in favour of a pilgrimage as massive as it was overflowing. The traces of future extensions both to the mosque itself and to the hotel network are dizzying.
A skeptical foreigner may be able to appreciate better than a devout person the hijacking of the sacred geography of Islam by the Wahhabi officialdom, an irrefutable desire to impose their own creed and refound the city of the Prophet, without labyrinths or courtyards or gardens or birds. However, nothing changes to affirm that it is undeniable the atmosphere of peace that runs through the entire city of Mohammed from one end to the other, except during the magnetic calls to prayer when the faithful, as if automated, like at the end of a chess game where the valuable pawns are called to occupy the board, move at a good pace, advancing their right foot, with the same regular step, as from white to black, like the rhythmic voice that from the main minaret overlaps and invades every corner and gathers all the winds, exhorting with a «Go to prayer, go to salvation!», to occupy and pray in the Prophet's Mosque in unison, without intervals, powerfully.
The city then comes to a standstill, businesses close, cafes close. Even the cats disappear from sight, waiting for the moment to camp on the terraces and take advantage of the opportunity to then cross between the legs of the pilgrims and find caresses and food or climb on the table. Pilgrims carrying boxes or bags give away dates or rosaries to those who pass in front of them or approach them directly to offer them in hand. The shops in the area resume their operations.
An countless succession of images, unformed forms associated with Islam run through the space in front of you, especially the men's clothing, their headdresses in particular, rather than the women's veils - although I did not distinguish a single one. burka, naquib blacks were frequent and boring—and so, in stages, they emerge:
songkoks of black felt or velvet that characterizes the Muslims of Southeast Asia as far as The Philippines, tubeteika From the regions of Central Asia, the characteristic wool caps pakul from Pakistan, base short white or green crocheted Africans or kalpak Caucasian high-top felt hats, the white turbans or kufias with egal so common among Bedouins and Saudis in general, all of them like nowhere else, in no other religious pilgrimage, do they parade without comparison.
The feeling of calm remains. Not only because you are just another stranger and you can observe thousands of different faces in very different outfits passing by without seeing each other, but because you experience the magical effect of being teleported back to the first readings of your childhood and to the voices of Verne and Strogoff: “Open your eyes wide, look…”●
