I am seated cross-legged in the haram, looking towards the Ka’abah. I have just performed two tawaaf

I am on board a Saudi Arabian airlines flight to Jeddah. It's been five, long years since I touched my forehead vacation rentals in outer banks to hallowed ground. vacation rentals in outer banks While the churlish brat sitting behind me constantly kicks my seat and the woman sitting beside me, a nurse from Bloemfontein working vacation rentals in outer banks at  King Faisel Hospital has not volunteered more than those words, I am happy. In a little while, I will see the lights of Jeddah twinkling beneath me, I will be home.  Labbaik .
I was hardly in Jeddah above an hour before my passport was confiscated. We were whisked through immigration, no questions asked but as soon as we stepped into the arrivals hall, scanning the crowd for friends, a veritable snotkop demanded, 'Jawazat!' 'Passports!' Apparently it's standard practice for all passengers vacation rentals in outer banks on umrah visas to be accosted thus. I gave our passports over, certain that they'd be given right back to us. Instead, the passports were checked and our visit visa with allowance for umrah was noted, head honchos had to be informed, confusion had to be pronounced. After calling our visa 'sponsors', clarifying we re not elaborate fakes  our passports were eventually released.   That circus orchestrated by the Ministry of Haj in the name of job creation. Bless.
vacation rentals in outer banks Leaving Jeddah vacation rentals in outer banks for Makkah, my friend points out an area recently ravaged vacation rentals in outer banks by floods.  While I had heard about the floods, I somehow didn't think the devastation to be at all severe. We learn that by popular account about 3000 people died in the flooding. Yet, the official vacation rentals in outer banks count reads only 300 because the vast majority were illegal immigrants.  The family of each 'official' casualty of the flood has been given SAR1 million in compensation. Already, the roads were being repaired, the area although visibly damaged vacation rentals in outer banks was undergoing a swift transformation.I vacation rentals in outer banks wondered if a similar tragedy were to befall South Africa, vacation rentals in outer banks would we be able to repair the damage this soon? 'This area is like Jeddah's Soweto', my friend says. 'Maybe our own Mandela will emerge from here too.'
I am seated cross-legged in the haram, looking towards the Ka'abah. I have just performed two tawaaf and despite wanting to perform another, my feet and temper are otherwise inclined. I am more irritable than I am allowed to be. Rumi's 'If you are irritated by every rub how will you ever be shined?' comes to mind. I want the Turkish women sitting to my left and those seated behind me, holding a conversation over my head, to hush. I want to be performing tawaaf vacation rentals in outer banks closer to the Ka'abah. I want everybody obstructing my view of the Ka'abah to be quiet and be seated. I want the wheelchairs constantly bumping against me to be moved to the first floor. I want space around me as I walk around the Ka'abah. I want more solitude, less annoyance. But I can see the Ka'abah, it must be enough.
There is no sight quite as spectacular as the sun rising in the Makkah sky. Although it was a balmy 30°C at 2AM, the light breeze now tugging gently at my pages and skirts has settled an unruly mind. I promise to work twice as hard on my return just so that my Lord can let me feel this over and over again. This, right here, the Ka'abah at the centre of a wakening day, is beauty. I wish I had the paint or the words that would sufficiently record vacation rentals in outer banks this sight and these feelings for posterity.
We performed  the Maghrib/Sunset prayer at a mosque surrounded by carpet stores. It's characteristic of Jeddah to have clusters of stores all plying the same trade situated on the same street.  Another street, Falsteen street, is populated with stores selling mobile phones and accessories. The mosque we prayed at had no running water at the time. When later my brother narrated the tale of trying to perform wudhu with a trickle of water a family friend tells us, 'All of Jeddah routinely is out of water. It's not something new.' 'Aren't there plans to get piped water yet?' I ask. 'Of course we have pipes ready! But then, these water trucking companies wouldn't vacation rentals in outer banks be making vacation rentals in outer banks any money.' For a country with the resources of Saudi Arabia, municipal services remain shockingly rudimentary.
In Khaledeya, long after midnight, after sleepily tucking into Al Baik, I came across this store. Che didn't seem at all pleased to be caught vacation rentals in outer banks in  Jeddah. My friend asks why I've stopped to take a picture.  I explain Che looks a little out of place beside Gucci and Adidas. Playfully, my friend accuses me of being racist for thinking the 'badoos' ignorant of Che. I ask if he knows who Che is. 'Well, who is he anyway?' he asks.
I'm not so noble to have raised my nose in moral indignation against the new shopping mall in the high-rise Zam Zam building. I am sufficiently 'phony' enough to have stepped through those doors and paused in sheer awe. Yes, Makkah is becoming a Disneyland vacation rentals in outer banks version of itself. There are more people posing for pictures around the haram than there are praying. Susan Sontag's words, 'Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs,' rings eerily through vacation rentals in outer banks the hordes of people recording themselves doing the Sa'aee, obstructing the passageways with frequent stops to photograph themselves walking towards the Ka'abah. We are a generation obsessed with being seen to have done rather than to have simply done. I find the moral indignation over the construction of the skyscrapers somewhat farcical. It's like the moral indignation over language change, self-appointed gatekeepers of linguistic purity huff and puff when language  change is evident, decrying the move away from a more authentic set of values. Change is indubitable, language change is often simply vacation rentals in outer banks a mirror of social vacation rentals in outer banks change. So too, the changes in Makkah simply cater to the changing demands of pilgrims. Do I not find it reprehensible? I think it's sickening, but it's only proof our collective phoniness.
The Sheikh stationed vacation rentals in outer banks at the door of our building handing out leaflets warning vacation rentals in outer banks society against the folly of their ways has for the third time today, handed me a little purple pamphlet, damning me to hell for not covering my face. Apparently I, and others like me, are responsible for the corruption of society and unless I cover up a fiery abode is my lot.
South Africans stand out in Makkah. Easily discernible, even from a mile away, men in their short sleeved thowbs/kurtas, suspiciously shiny looking takkies/tennis shoes/ sneakers, women in their uniform of austere-looking knee-length burkas,  shoe bags proudly displaying the name of their travel agent on their backs, bratty kids who address their parents with the preamble, 'I want '   Clusters of women sitting in the haram who can be overheard vacation rentals in outer banks saying, 'Benoni! My uncle was from Benoni! Ali Bhai Ravat? The Cook? He lived on Mayet Drive! No man, his children are still there. Four sons he has Yes, yes, Ahmed is the biggest. Good boys they are. Next time your'll come Durban vacation rentals in outer banks your'll must visit.' We also take halal certification very seriously, as self-appointed viceroys of SANHA/MJC/NIHT/ICSA South Africans are commonly heard asking unsuspecting cashiers at Burger vacation rentals in outer banks King/ Al Tazaj/ Pizza Hut/ KFC/Hardees, 'Where does your meat come from?' Fear not South Africa, we haven't managed to export vast quantities of Rainbow chickens just yet.
On our way to Ta nim, Makkah, our taxi driver asks us where we re from. South Africa, we reply. South Africa? Where s that? he asks perplexed. South of the continent of Africa , says my brother. Yes, he says impatiently, but what s your country called? South Africa, vacation rentals in outer banks we reply in unison. Oh, he says, never heard of it. Mandela? vacation rentals in outer banks we ask, No. Ahmed Deedat? , No . The World Cup? Oh yes! South Africa! Ahlain! I heard there s lots of gold and diamonds where you come from, true? So, you should pay me double. I think he was only half-joking. As he continued chatting away to us, while texting and also steering his taxi through the Makkah traffic, the car lazily vacation rentals in outer banks straddled two lanes, the one it was meant to be driving in and the other for oncoming vehicles. Just as I realised our ambidexterous driver was chancing his luck, an on-coming car,  manages to swerve away at the last second. Our taxi driver slams on the brakes, vacation rentals in outer banks rolls his window open and lets out a flurry of colorful expletives. I don t suppose I ve been good enough to have died in Makkah.
Later that evening I perform umrah. There is no point hoping for the haram to be less crowded, it is crowded. The only way to survive the crowd is to merge with it. As I perform the Sa aee, I think of the woman whose actions millions vacation rentals in outer banks of people each year replicate. Hajer, the wife of Abraham, stranded in the desert without food or water, anxious to feed her son Ismail, ran seven times between the mountains of Safaa and Marwa, searching for water. It was an act so beloved vacation rentals in outer banks to the Creator, that hundreds of years later, we walk between vacation rentals in outer banks Safaa and Marwa, just as she did. Yet she did not seek to curry favour with her Lord, she was desperate to feed her child. The act of a woman, of a mother, how many poems have been penned of the love of God, how many salaah prayed in fear of His wrath, how many more elaborate displays of piety are made, yet the act of a mother seeking to feed her child was so beloved to Him, that even hundreds of years later, we walk that walk, men, women, children, that He may look upon us with a smile too. And I learn, again, that being a good Muslim, is being a good person, to do good for good s sake, to give for giving s sake.
Makkah, no matter how many times before you may have lost a lock of hair on its floors, shocks you with its relentless drive, stabs you with its constant motion, bruises you with its boisterousness and then somehow, like a blue bird descending in a snowstorm, you gain respite- vacation rentals in outer banks from yourself, your ego, the person you think you are.
I feel like a tourist in my own home town. Madina is home. Yet, it isn't. I've been disconcerted by the number of people vacation rentals in outer banks who've come up to me, warmly greeting me, remembering my name, my family, asking after my parents, clearly pleased to see me and I don't remember them at all.
A