Word: hadj
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...with his Kentucky wife ended in divorce, and in 1947 he decided to go back to the Middle East. He bought a small house in Damascus, married again and settled down to a simple life on skimpy savings and a U.S. Army pension. This spring he prepared for the hadj to Mecca...
...professional guide who took Ahmed and 20 other Syrians under his wing for about $15 each, instructing them in the religious procedures required of a pilgrim and arranging food and lodging for the entire trip. Life used to be grim in Jidda during the ten days of the hadj, as heat-sick pilgrims squatted in the streets gathering strength for the 46-mile trek to Mecca. But newly rich Saudi Arabia has recently built a "Pilgrim City"-a roofed compound, equipped with food shops, electricity, running water and toilets. Here pilgrims wait out a three-day quarantine before inspection...
...Mount Arafat. The temperature that day was well over 100°, and the old and weak were dropping everywhere. Tubs of water were available for dunking heat-exhaustion victims. "Even if they don't recover," said one veteran, "they are perfectly happy, because they have died on a hadj.'' The death rate for this year's pilgrimage was more than a thousand. Many were buried within twelve hours in unmarked graves in one of two vast cemeteries near Mecca and Jidda...
...tenth day of the hadj began the joyous feast of El Idha, commemorating Abraham's near sacrifice of his son Isaac, and Ahmed walked with his fellow pilgrims to the nearby village of Mina, where each must sacrifice an animal. Some 500,000 beasts are imported each year; ordinary pilgrims cut the throat of a goat for about $20; the rich may kill a cow or even a camel. The meat is supposed to be distributed to the poor, but for want of transport, thousands of carcasses are left rotting on the ground. The Saudi Arabian government is considering...
Last week, Ahmed Murad still glowed with the grace his hadj had brought him. "It was a gift of God to see all those people around Mount Arafat," he said. "There was no me and no you, no Abraham, no Jesus, no Mohammed. Just God alone...