A Season in Mecca, Abdellah Hammoudi, trans. Pascale Ghazaleh, New York: Hill & Wang, 2005. pp293 There is a string of accounts by Muslims and non-Muslims who over the last one thousand years have gone overtly or covertly to Mecca on pilgrimage ( hajj ) and have come back to talk about it. Names that come to mind include those of Nasser-e Khosrow (1050), Ibn Jubayr (1183), John Lewis Burckhardt (1814), Sir Richard Burton (1853) and many others. In those days, the only way to know what went on during the hajj was by witnessing the rituals first hand. The long road to Mecca followed by the caravans was then replete with dangers, and non-Muslims were banned from entering the holy city. Therefore, they could only do this in disguise, which required months of careful preparation, and those who went, and lived to tell the tale, were regarded with awe and admiration. However, in the 21st century the hajj has become a thoroughly commercialised affair, featuring pre-paid organised tours at various prices, and for those with the financial means it has become no more dangerous than a trip to Abu Dhabi or Thailand. This being so, why would a Moroccan Muslim, a professor of anthropology living in the USA in the year 1999, feel the need to relate his pilgrimage to Mecca as if he were Ibn Battuta living in the mediaeval period, and as if so few people knew what went on in Mecca that he felt compelled to tell all in the minutest detail? The point is that Hammoudi's "season in Mecca," recorded in this book, was essentially his own, and refers not so much to the physical aspects of the hajj as to the author's own intellectual and emotional state of mind as he accomplished the rituals he had been hearing about since childhood. Hammoudi set out to describe the experience, including the bureaucratic and preparatory procedures, with the intellectual tools provided him by his academic training, but he soon turns his observations inward, trying to make sense of his own feelings and beliefs and of how these have evolved from the blind faith of his youth to his now informed attitude towards religions in general and Islam in particular. Yet, if he is going on pilgrimage in order to solve various personal and metaphysical issues, the complex logistics that are part and parcel of moving a body of pilgrims from their place of departure to their place of arrival and back again, the problems of accommodation, the purchase of food and other necessities, and the observance of the strict regimen of daily prayer, seriously impinge on his train of thought. He ends up scrutinising the proceedings obsessively, all the while attempting to remain objective and keep an open mind. But one cannot be critical and at the same time yearn for a religious epiphany. Hammoudi decides that in order to experience the hajj in its deeper meaning it is important to perform it as most pilgrims do and in their company. Therefore, he decides on a low-budget organised tour and joins a group of Moroccans, soon being engulfed in the sea of preparations and paperwork required to obtain his visa and get ready to leave. He talks continuously about his project to friends, and he examines his reasons, hidden motives, and forgotten religious beliefs and how he will, or perhaps will not, come back transformed. The first part of the book is taken up by Hammoudi's ziyara, or visit, to Medina, where his group stops off for several days affording Hammoudi the opportunity to observe his companions. Problems of segregation from women, the obsession of the other pilgrims with purchasing suitcases to bring home purchased goods, the way the different nationals keep together and to themselves, an accident in which a number of Moroccan pilgrims lose their lives (an overcrowded elevator goes crashing to the floor), and the inadequacy of the meals get much of his attention. "Lunch was again grilled chicken," he writes. "We had already tried most of the restaurants, and we were getting tired of their menus. Many of the places copied McDonald's or Burger King; others had nothing more than some shawwerma at exorbitant prices; the most popular establishments resembled feeding troughs -- long, narrow, and always crowded." "One had to sit at a greasy table to eat the same old chicken, grilled on charcoal or on an electric range. For a change we had rice with a Pakistani stew of vegetables floating in a thick red or yellow sauce which seared the palate. There was no way to have a conversation, especially with the women around. In any case we were always in a rush to get away from the stifling heat of these places, where customers were squashed in between the grills at the front and the kitchens at the back." On the other hand, and almost without transition, he is overwhelmed by religious angst as he tries to make sense of the differences between Shiites, Sunnis and the Wahhabi brand of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. The visit to the Tomb of the Prophet, the highlight of this part of the pilgrimage, is the occasion for a digression on the way the hajj has become infected with consumerism and on the search for Wahhabi books of doctrine. This leads Hammoudi to reflect on the manner in which the Wahhabis have transformed emotional religious impulses into mortal sins, reducing Islam to a series of rules and precepts to be followed mechanically to the letter or risk punishment by the religious police. "They have brought the Qur'an and the Prophet's example down to the level of a recipe book and consigned its implementation to militias," he writes. Then he recalls another reason for his anger: "thirty years or so earlier [he was then working in the Gulf] I had watched, swallowing my rage, as bulldozers gutted much of Hufuf, once the Ottoman capital of eastern Arabia." The indifference, or rather hostility, of the Wahhabis to the monuments of the past and their objection to the veneration of saints continues to baffle and frighten him. Is this the philosophy that should permeate a Muslim nation? Is this what the future holds for observant Muslims? The combination of human needs, acquisitiveness, and the yearning for a better ever-after that he witnesses in his fellow travelers creates a malaise in him that is almost palpable. "Every time we left the covered galleries [of the souq ] we found ourselves in the stifling streets...the Egyptian voices chanting the Qur'an, spewing some doctrinal truth about this world and the thereafter, emitting morals as empty as they were sonorous." As the two weeks spent in Medina draw to a close, Hammoudi turns his attention to the ihram and its physical and moral meanings and to the way in which the word ihram relates to the mosque in Mecca called Haram, or sanctuary. Religious trepidation takes over once again, Hammoudi writing that "I felt once again that I was approaching the unknown, and I struggled against the old feeling of fear. Perhaps Mecca's Haram waiting for me at the end of the road would take me over in a way I could not predict. My body, divested of its habitual contours, might be absorbed in bits and pieces or dissolve as if sucked in by the Holy Mosque. The malaise grew sharper and sharper. Was this the delirium of a feverish man? Or was it that the delirium, already known in another setting was feeding the fever?" Later, as the group leaves Medina, Hammoudi is surprised by the passengers on the bus beginning to sob, but tries to explain this sorrow intellectually. However, in his attempts at rationalizing it he somehow ends up only feeling his own pain, which is similar to theirs but is "expressed in the spasms in [his] throat, the rasping of [his] voice, the thirst." He describes the arrival in Mecca meticulously, and the reader feels almost sorry to have seen it on television already, which of course rather blunts the impact of the written word. It is difficult to watch Hala Gorani reporting this year from Mecca on CNN and at the same time remain attuned to Hammoudi's religious experience. At this point one might wonder if A Season in Mecca does not possess an anachronistic quality. The hajj has, after all, become a very popular venture (almost a tourist destination), and whether the pilgrim can afford a five- star deal or goes on a shoestring budget it is no longer a mysterious destination involving dangers during which travelers risked their lives. This is not to say that the hajj today is not fraught with accidents, but these are mostly of a more mundane nature, very different from the ones Ibn Battuta encountered when he joined the caravans. In addition, the brisk business that takes place during the hajj season is now a part of any modern pilgrim's tale. It is enough to witness an arrival of pilgrims at Cairo airport to realise that commerce is as important for many of the hujjaj as is worship. However, one should remember that Hammoudi was educated in France, and that he then lived in the US. His religious feelings may, therefore, have been complicated by his having lived outside Muslim countries. He set out on his way in complete earnest, hoping for answers to his questions, or for new certitudes regarding the beliefs of his childhood, to which he seems to have turned as a mature adult. Yet, the experience fell short of his expectations. "The reader will understand," Hammoudi writes, "that the story told here starts with a transformation, and precisely because of this transformation the protagonist/narrator possesses neither the beginning nor the end. On the other hand, the author is trying to write a conclusion. His only consolation -- no Hollywood happy ending, this -- is that the narrative unfurls the story and presents it as the history of a possible existence. Writing on this threshold has the function of a prayer calling this possible existence into being and, when that takes too long, of a magic incantation that casts signs toward the unknown, summoning it to give a sign." More than just a season in Mecca, this book should be read as a moment in the intellectual and personal development of an eastern/western scholar in search of some unattainable truth. Reviewed by Fayza Hassan
