Word: jeddah
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...world. The King and Queen of Malaysia chartered a plane for the hajj; from the U.S. came the widow of Malcolm X. Also on hand was a group of Senegalese who in January began a 3,400-mile walk across the African desert to the Red Sea. At Jeddah on the Red Sea, gateway to Mecca and starting point for the pilgrimage, hajj flights landed every ten minutes round the clock at an airport that normally sees only a dozen commercial flights a day. In and near Jeddah's harbor, more than 100 pilgrim-bearing steamers anchored among hundreds...
...year could do so. Egypt's President Nasser, who made the pilgrimage himself in 1955, allowed only 17,000 hajj passports for his people; there were fist fights in Cairo as devout Moslems elbowed their way into queues to get the necessary documentation. In Jordan, airline space to Jeddah was at such a premium that one group of rich pilgrims flew to London, caught a BOAC flight to Dhahran near the Persian Gulf, then chartered a bus to cross 780 miles of desert...
Some, of course, came to prey as well as pray. Sixty Nigerian Moslems were arrested for smuggling kola nuts, an illegal stimulant, into Saudi Arabia; police thoughtfully escorted the offenders through the hajj ritual, then brought them back to Jeddah for prosecution...
...little more than skin-deep. Morocco still fines men caught smoking during Ramadan, and Malaya's Moslem courts zealously crack down on khalwat (close association of the sexes). Saudi Arabia has neither alcohol nor movies, but even here faith is succumbing to the influences of modernism: this year Jeddah will have a TV station...
Lebanon's tourist influx from 89,000 in 1951 to 400,000 last year. It does a big business in carrying Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem, yearly flies Moslem pilgrims from all over the Middle East to Jeddah, the closest airport to Mecca. Though the Koran forbids liquor, Sheik Alamuddin provides it on most flights. Parched Moslem passengers can often be seen downing Scotch or cognac as soon as the planes take to the air on Middle East's early-morning flights from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia...