Sacred Stone

EPILOGUE

THREE HOURS BEFORE sunrise on January 10, U.S. military crews working with Saudi military and intelligence officials finished complete sweeps of all three mosques. Any explosives found were removed and destroyed, and the area was deemed safe for the hajj.

Saud Al-Sheik stared down at the courtyard as the last of the aging prayer rugs were being fitted into place. He wished he’d found the new ones but they’d disappeared into thin air—so he had the old ones dug out from storage and used again this year.

Behind the curtain surrounding the Kaaba, Abraham’s Stone awaited the faithful.

At sunrise, a sea of white-robed pilgrims began to fill the holy spots.

The hajj would go off without a hitch.

January 10, 2006, dawned clear with a light wind blowing from the east and temperatures in the low seventies. Nearly a million pilgrims crowded into Medina, where they visited the tomb of Muhammad and then boarded the large open cars on the Hajaz Railway for the 280-mile trip to Mecca.

As the train drew nearer to the sacred city where the Kaaba was located, the pilgrims disrobed and dressed in aprons with pieces of cloth over their left shoulders. Once the train pulled to a stop, the first group climbed off and began walking toward the mosque. Once inside they began the Tawaf, or circumambulation. The pilgrims started to circle the Kaaba seven times in a counterclockwise direction then, when finished, entered the Kaaba to kiss the Sacred Stone of Abraham.

As the first group filtered out, thousands more were already entering the mosque.

During the next few days, the pilgrims would drink from Zamzam Spring, have a ceremony where they stoned the Devil, and take walks to the other sacred places nearby. Hundreds of thousands would do a route from the mosque containing the Kaaba to Mina, the Mount of Mercy, Mount Namira, Muzdalifah, and Arafat.

The areas around Mecca and Medina would swarm with white-robed pilgrims.

The days would be spent with prayer and meditation, contemplation, and the Koran. At the hajj, each person would find a meaning. And all would remember it the rest of their life.

Today was just another day of many, with thousands more to follow.