Word: hajji
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Actually, the elders - as opposed to the people of Senjaray - seemed more interested in the irrigation canals than anything else. In fact, the two most important leaders - the rather flaccid local warlord who was named Hajji Lala, and the police chief, whose 40 cops were dedicated to the protection of Hajji Lala - were interested in one specific canal. Unfortunately, it was not the canal Ellis wanted to refurbish on the poorer, north side of town. It was on the south side. "O.K., let's walk down there and check it out," Ellis said...
...walk," the local police chief told him. "We have to drive." And so they drove - 20 km west of Senjaray and then south. They were nowhere near town. "You might well ask, Why there?" Ellis says. Well, as it happened both Hajji Lala and the police chief owned farmland just south of the proposed canal. "But who was I to stand in the way of progress?" Ellis adds, dryly. "I could put hundreds of people to work, pay them 600 Afghans [$3] a day." It was the beginning of a partnership. Ellis wanted to prove he could produce. The project...
...logistics were a killer. To reopen the school, Ellis needed to purchase some of the adjacent land to build an access road and the police station he had proposed. Hajji Lala, the local warlord, insisted he had that covered. "I kept asking him for the names of the landowners," Ellis says. "He kept saying, 'No problem.' " But it was a problem. Most of the property in the Zhari district is owned by absentee landlords. When Ellis pressed Hajji Lala for names yet again in late February, he was told, "You're going to have to find out who owns that...
...helmet and deftly, gently, always smiling, questioned Rahman. He didn't ask anything very direct, like how Rahman - who said he was 17 - earned a living, and the boy didn't volunteer any information. Ellis asked who the most powerful person in town was, and Rahman answered, "Hajji Lala." He asked who the most powerful Taliban in town was, and the boy said he didn't know. "Yeah, I wouldn't know, either, if I were you," Ellis said. (See TIME's photo-essay "A Soldier's Final Journey Home...
...center of the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Mecca. During the Hajj, vast swells of worshippers seeking forgiveness circle the Kaaba counter-clockwise, seven times. Completion of all of the mandated rituals is believed the guarantee the pilgrim a place in heaven as well as the title of hajji (literally, one who has performed the Hajj) - coveted and admired in Muslim communities around the world...