With the pilgrims to Mecca: The great pilgrimage of A.H. 1319; A.D. 1902

by Hadji Khan; Wilfrid Sparroy

“If the cholera fiend should not drive us hence in search of refuge,” I interpolated. “The epidemic is on the increase. The sacrifices slain, we shall be only too glad to make good our escape to the sea.”

“True,” said Seyyid ’Alí, grimly, “if the cholera fiend should not choose for us an underground route to a city of eternal rest! If it please God, I shall conduct your Excellency to Jiddah so soon as the sun shall set on Youm-ul-Nahre. For I have no wish to fall a victim to the fell disease, Sheykh Eissa.”

With the foregoing words my guide bade us good-bye and went about his business in my service. He came back, however, almost immediately. “May it please your Excellency,” he said, addressing Ardashir Morad Khan, “Khalil is fallen sick of the cholera and is even now at the point of death.” Now, Khalil was our host’s steward and had set out for the Hill of Arafat in charge of the tents and baggage. Ardashir Morad Khan looked extremely grave. “God have mercy on his soul!” he cried. Then, “Where is he now?” he asked; “and who has taken his place?” Seyyid ’Alí replied that the man had been brought back on a bier to Mecca, and was then lying in a cellar attached to the kitchen of the house in which we were. A panic would have followed this statement had not our host cried out in a voice of sternest command: “I must request you all to be calm. We must set the servants an example of courage. Are we not the slaves of God?... Well, Seyyid ’Alí, who has taken over the control of our caravan?” “The cook of your Excellency’s household,” replied my guide, “assumed the direction of affairs. I have done my best to restore the confidence of your Excellency’s household. The servants need a firm hand to keep them from running away.”

So Ardashir Morad Khan left the room, and when he came back I requested permission to see the sick man. The other guests, who were sitting round the room with their backs to the walls, jumped up at once and made a low bow to me as I passed by to the servant’s quarters. The Meccan houses are generally lower than the surface of the street without, and when this is the case a flight of stone steps leads from the first floor into the court round which the apartments range. I found Khalil in the cellar. He was sinking fast. Nobody had dared to stay with him. His eyes were dried up in the sockets and blackened all round the rims. Not an ounce of flesh remained on his body. The stench was unendurable. The bearers, having stretched his legs in the direction of the Ka’bah and given him a cup of sour milk wherewith to quench his thirst, had gone away, leaving him a prey to the fell disease. Compassion rent my heart, but I could do nothing: remedy I had none. I saw, moreover, that he was too far gone to recover, and, indeed, scarcely was he aware of my presence than his new-born hope was strangled by death. “Yá—Allah!” he muttered, and that was the last time he drew breath. Having rejoined my host, I went with him into the city.

The streets were packed with camels, brought in thousands by the Bedouins and by the Syrian and the Egyptian drivers. Round about the Harem the moghavems tried our endurance to the utmost. These are the men who conduct the pilgrims by camel caravan to the Hill of Arafat and back, supplying all their needs on the journey. There is no fixed price for the hiring of a camel, but by dint of persistent bargaining it is possible to get one for five shillings, and each moghavem may have as many as fifty pilgrims under him. We were tormented by these contractors more than I had ever been tormented by the Indian jugglers outside the gates of any hotel in Bombay. They were as plentiful as flies in Egypt and not less irritating. Perhaps that is the fault of the pilgrims themselves. They begin by feigning indifference, and when they have reduced the moghavems to a haughty silence they assume an air of eager business. Thus the moghavems have learned from experience never to take no for an answer.

Out of the madding crowd the talk was all of the cholera epidemic. On my way to a coffee-house I happened to meet a Turkish official, an acquaintance of mine, and he gave it as his conviction that the death-rate had risen to over five hundred victims a day. He advised me to leave the Valley of Mina at sunset on the tenth of the moon. In the coffee-house a Syrian pilgrim entered into conversation with me. He told many stories of his pilgrimage across the desert: of the discomforts and the perils of the road, of the cruelties of the drivers, and the almost inconceivable presumption of his own moghavem. With the immense caravan had come the Syrian Mahmil, in the charge of a Pasha, and the Surreh, in the care of another Turkish dignitary. This Surreh is the pension sent from Constantinople to the officials of the Harem. It was formerly the accumulated hoard of centuries of legacies. It is now managed by the Imperial Treasury. A strong force of cavalry accompanied the caravan, which, according to the pilgrim in question, counted some eighteen thousand camels.

The number stated was, perhaps, an exaggeration, though a pardonable one, for the string which I saw on reaching the Plain of Sheykh Mahmud, where the caravan had been encamped, and which was now on the move, extended for miles and miles. I determined then and there to avoid the crush on the road by remaining in Mecca until the day was far spent. It was four hours before sunset ere I could tear myself away from the Plain of Sheykh Mahmud. The endless string of camels and of pilgrim wayfarers was an unforgettable sight, and on my return to my host’s house I met crowds of Syrian and Egyptian stragglers, mounted and on foot, proceeding up the Moalla to rejoin the immense caravan which was already threading its way to the mountains.

Seyyid ’Alí gave me a hearty welcome when I entered the house. He had scoured the city, he said, in search of me, and had given me up for dead. I found everything in readiness for our journey, and when we had smoked a kalyán or two and quenched our thirst we got astride our ambling mules and made for the Hill of Arafat.

Now, when my friends and I left Mecca for the Hill of Arafat it was about four o’clock in the afternoon of Youm-ul-Tarvih. Late as it was, the streets were still packed with men and beasts. In the indescribable confusion steady progress was impossible, and to the universal disorder was added the danger of a general stampede on the part of our mules. The uncertain tempers of those animals of ours taxed our patience to the utmost. We had hired them in the belief that they were tractable creatures trained to amble. We rode them in terror of our lives, conscious of our impotence to control their paces. Now they would charge through a crowd in a panic blind and headlong, and next they would stand stock-still in a sweat of suspicion at the mere sight of a straw or a splash of water on the road. Our moghavem, having a lively inkling of our rising indignation, assured us with haughty unconcern that we had been wiser to have followed his advice and ridden camels. With one thing and another it took us quite an hour to reach the outskirts of the city. All the people we had met wore íhram except the drivers and the servants, who were in their ordinary clothes.