Day 11 – Rollercoaster to Mecca

11/1/11

This is awesome, I filled up the whole first book & we haven’t even started the actual Hajj rituals yet. There’s still 3 or 4 more days to go before it really starts.

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There was a big throwdown at breakfast between our group leaders & all the uncles. They’ve been complaining for days behind his back, but to his face they would barely speak a word. Whatever the case, I would highly recommend going along with a group, where you buy the full package & everything is pre-arranged and planned out in advance at each step. Apparently, there are groups some of the guys learned about where people have full packages, where they get everything, and at good quality, for $3,800. Much better than us, who paid around the same amount & did stuff individually & have so much entropy to deal with. We essentially bought our own ticket and latched onto a smaller group for our housing and transportation arrangements. There’s some guy they found here from Abu Dhabi who paid $10,000 for his package & got put in the same hotel as us. What a screw. He didn’t complain though, not as far as I could tell – just got used as fuel for our group members’ complaints about how messed up the system is. May Allah accept his Hajj, ours too.

Bus is here, 11:40am, heading back to Mecca, iA.

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It’s past 1pm, still in Medina, waiting to load the whole group in & head out soon iA.

So, I’m not sure exactly, but I think gas is stupid cheap here. Like, the bus driver we had that took us to Medina, filled up his bus with diesel fuel for 10 riyals. That’s like $3-4. Maybe he just didn’t fill up? Either way, it’s retardedly cheap. It’s no wonder they love these big, gas-guzzling American SUV’s here. There’s so many Saudi’s pushing Toyota 2400 pickup trucks like they’re Civics & Corollas in America. Suburbans, Yukons, Land Rovers, all that.

Problem we’re having now is that we are jam-packed in this bus. We actually have so much luggage that the cargo compartments are all full, so the whole back row of seats has excess luggage on it. That leaves 4 ladies with no seats. Our group arranged for a 52-seat bus for 54 people, then 4 seats have suitcases stacked to the ceiling. Dang. We’ll see how this works out.

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2pm, we finally started to leave Medina. We’re headed to the Meeqat (entry way to Mecca) to put on our ihram, so we can perform ‘Umrah upon entering the city of Mecca. I’m thinking of doing it for someone else – maybe my brother if I can do it for someone living. Otherwise, my grandmother maybe, on my mom’s side. I never really knew her while she was alive, but she seemed like such a sweet woman. I am at a loss for not having the opportunity to have known her better & think I would like to do this for her.

Before we left, there was a little scuffle. Someone shoved our group leader, one of the Hajj officials I think, to keep him off the bus. This fired up alot of the men on the bus, who immediately shot up out of their seats and almost bolted out of the door. Our group leader tried to stop the bus from leaving too, which went on without him & the 4 women he tried to get on. They were refused by the official because apparently they weren’t on the final list he had. Our group leader said he paid extra to have them added later. No dice. All this messy stuffs, I’m just chillin though, dikrin’ it up iA.

We just got to the Meeqat Dhul Hulaifah. It’s a nice masjid. It’s about 2:20pm. Will return in ihram, iA.

Meeqat Dhul Hulaifah

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We’re on the bus, driving for the past hour. I’m in ihram and trying, trying, TRYING not to flip out on this bus and start getting reckless. The old Persian man next to me, for SOME reason, chooses to hold all of his ginormous shopping bags in his lap. I asked him if he was planning on setting the bags down in the aisle. “Yes, soon.” Continues cradling his bags. I’m all crammed in the corner here, against the window, with no space. On top of that, the driver’s been blasting this all-Arabic, angry-man khutbah over the speaker system for God knows how long. I woke up and the speaker, directly above my head, was blaring & I got so pissed. Alhamdulillah, other people said something & he turned it down. Soon as I started writing, we randomly started hitting bumpy patches of road. NO, it’s ok, I’m gonna stay cool, no worries iA. Let’s see what else gets thrown at me.