Word: jidda
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...Arab world from Cairo to Damascus to Jidda broke into shrill cries of rage. Hurriedly calling delegates from many Mideast countries for an emergency meeting, the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (membership: 2,000,000) gave the New York pickets a week to halt their boycott. "Unless they unload Cleopatra by that time, we will do the same thing to American ships in all Arab ports," said a top official. Sure enough, at the zero hour, Alexandria dockers resoundingly proclaimed, "In the name of Allah and Arabism, we Arab workers by Allah's blessing start our boycott...
...obtained a certificate of good conduct. Then he went to the Saudi Arabian consulate for a free visa (before 1951, when Saudi Arabia was not yet oil-rich, the government taxed pilgrims $72 a head). Then Ahmed paid $144 for a round-trip airplane ticket from Beirut to Jidda on the Red Sea, 1,000 miles away...
...Jidda he met his mutawwif-a 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...
...Jidda to Mecca. When his day of departure finally arrived, Ahmed set out on the road through the mountains clogged with thousands of pilgrims ("White, brown, black, yellow people, all moving together"). As they streamed along the road together-a few in cars and buses, some on mules, but most on foot-a steady chant rose in unison from the column: "Labbaika Allahumma labbaika! [Here we are, Lord, here...
...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...