The Haj - Leon Uris [68]
Once I got the courage to ask Mr. Salmi if the Shi’ites, Alawites, Druzes, and Kurds were really Moslems and he managed to mumble, ‘Well, just barely.’
The fifth and final pillar of Islam says that every Moslem must make the pilgrimage, or Haj, to Mecca once in his life. In Mecca there is a Black Stone in a shrine called the Ka’aba. This is the most sacred place in the world. It is said that our father, Abraham, whom we all know was a Moslem and not a Jew, gave the mission to his son, Ishmael, to found the Arab race. I am named after Ishmael, just as my father, Haj Ibrahim, is named after Abraham.
The Ka’aba had once been a pagan shrine but Mohammed changed all that after he got his message from Allah and when he got mad at the Jews. In the beginning all Moslems faced Jerusalem when they prayed. When Mohammed made the Ka’aba the center of Islam he ordered everyone to pray facing Mecca instead because the Jews had not accepted him.
The final thing I will say about Islam concerns jinn, which are very important to us. They are evil spirits capable of looking like an animal or a person and have supernatural influence. The Koran says that ‘We have created man from potter’s clay, of mud ground down; the jinn we created previously of fire of burning heat.’ The Sunna has taught us to fear jinn because once one of these spirits gets inside a person it can cause all the illnesses in man. Once a person is afflicted, nothing but the will of Allah can make that person well again.
All Moslems realize they have no control over their own lives and destinies. Illness, death, drought, pestilence, earthquakes, any disasters must be fatalistically accepted as the will of Allah. Only by being a believer, accepting Mohammed’s word, accepting Allah’s will, can we get into paradise. So life on this earth is really not to be enjoyed, but it merely makes us prove ourselves worthy of joining Mohammed forever in heaven.
I am a devout Moslem, but sometimes some things are hard to understand. If Allah is merciful and compassionate why is He so consumed with horrible punishments and why must Moslems be committed to a holy war to destroy other people who are nonbelievers? Why can’t Islam share the world with other people?
19
HAGAR OFTEN COMPLAINED that she dreaded the day her sons would marry and bring wives into our house because she didn’t want to share the kitchen with anyone. Haj Ibrahim changed all that when he took Ramiza as a second wife.
In the beginning we were very cold to Ramiza, particularly after my father banished my mother to the marketplace stalls. The only person in our house who seemed truly happy was Haj Ibrahim, but he was oblivious to our feelings. My mother’s humiliation had devastated her and made us very wary of our father.
Change toward Ramiza came slowly. She was so beautiful alongside my mother it made it even easier to hate her. At first we thought she was arrogant because she was so quiet. Little by little we realized that she was very shy and not terribly smart. Haj Ibrahim wondered aloud, from time to time, if the old Sheik Walid Azziz had duped him in selling him Ramiza. The chances were that Ramiza had never sat down with her father and had a conversation with him. The old sheik had no way of knowing if Ramiza was clever or stupid. He had so many daughters he scarcely knew all their names and the only criteria by which they were judged were their appearance, obedience, the preservation of their virginity, and the bride price they would bring.
Ramiza had lived as a nomad all her life. With so many women about to do the sheik’s bidding, a lazy girl could slip out of many duties. It became clear that Ramiza had not been sufficiently trained. She had a miserable time trying to fill in for my mother in the kitchen. We had many more kinds of foods and spices than the Bedouin and she botched most of the meals she prepared. Nada was the first to take pity on her. Although Nada was only ten,