Looking around in frustration, I suddenly saw a hint of blue in a corner. I ran over, my crimson hair flying behind me. There they were! My Yemeni sandals were tucked behind an intricate vase that my mother said was made in a faraway city called Damascus. I paused to admire the swirling floral designs in carnelian, citrine, and olive that circled the ivory vase in crisscrossing patterns.
Umm Ruman had taught me the names of the different blooms depicted on the vase-hyacinths, jasmine and lotus-flowers that grew in faraway cities with mysterious names like Aksum, Babylon, and Persepolis. I loved flowers, but so few grew in the hot desert sun. I had yelped with delight a month before when I had found a small abal bush growing in a gulley just outside the perimeter of the holy precinct, at the base of the sacred hill of Safa. I had plucked its red, lantern-shaped blooms, which I had seen the older girls use to rouge their cheeks, but its thorns had torn into my tiny palm and I had run home crying.
My mother had gently removed the needles from my hand and salved the little wounds with dried sap from the thornbushes that grew in our courtyard. After drying my tears, Umm Ruman had gently chided me for wandering so far away from home. From now on, I was to play only within sight of their house. Mecca was a dangerous city for little girls…especially girls whose families supported the heretic Prophet in its midst.
I remembered her words as I grabbed the sandals and slipped them on. They were pretty enough, with little white stars woven though the tiny blue throngs, but I didn’t like them. Although other girls were obsessed with shoes, spending hours in silly talk about the merits of various designs, the newest fashions arriving on caravans from north and south, I found shoes to be an irritant. Instead, I loved the tingly feeling of the warm sand on my bare feet, even the tiny pricks caused by the pebbles that littered the streets of the ancient city. Shoes made me feel restricted and caged, like one of the goats my father had kept in a pen behind the old stone house in preparation for the sacrifice at the apex of the Pilgrimage.
I ran back to my father, who was still waiting by the gate. Seeing the look of mild irritation on his face at the delay, I quickly kicked up my feet and showed off the little shoes, and then danced an excited jig around him, until his stern face broke into an exasperated smile. I always knew how to melt Abu Bakr’s serious mood. I was too full of life to allow others the luxury of gloom.
My father took my hand and together we walked through the dusty streets of Mecca. Smoke rose from the chimneys of hundreds of small stone cottages and mud-brick huts, clustered together in expanding concentric circles around the central plaza known as Al-Haram-the Sanctuary. As we walked toward the heart of the city I saw children racing through the streets, chasing one another or a variety of animals-goats, lambs, and a few wayward chickens-that had escaped their pens.
I also saw dozens of beggars, mainly women and bastard children who had been abandoned by their fathers. They held out their hands, their pathetic cries for compassion largely ignored. My father handed an old woman a gold dirham. Her eyes went wide in shock at his generosity, for she had come to expect little more than a copper piece accompanied by a grudging look. We were suddenly surrounded by what appeared to be every beggar in town, their hands reaching out for this source of bounty. I was frightened by this excited crowd of young and old, dressed in rags and smelling worse than the rabid dogs that prowled the streets at night. But Abu Bakr was patient with them, handing to each a single gold coin from his leather purse until he had nothing left.
They followed him through the streets, pleading for more, but my father simply smiled and shook his head.
“I will be back tomorrow with more, insha-Allah,” he said, using the phrase “if God wills” that was a signature of the Muslims. The Messenger had taught us that we should say insha-Allah whenever we spoke of the future, even if referring to events only an hour away. It kept man humble and forced him to acknowledge that he was not solely the master of his destiny.
My father managed to slip away from the more persistent and aggressive of the beggars, pulling me into a side alley and taking a circuitous route to the Sanctuary. We were now in the oldest section of the city, whose buildings were said to have stood for hundreds of years, since the earliest tribes had settled the valley. The ancient houses looked like grand towers to me, but in truth most were ramshackle constructions of wood and stone, few rising higher than a second story. I could see people standing on rooftop terraces, their eyes on the horizon as the steady stream of Bedouin pilgrims emerged from the dead hills in search of Mecca ’s gods-and its life-giving wells. My eyes went wide as I watched the strangers ride by, their camels covered in colorful mats of wool and leather, their faces cracked and blackened by years of harsh work under the unforgiving sun.
My father sensed I was dawdling and he pulled forward with a gentle tug until we had cleared the narrow stone alleys and stepped onto the red sand that marked the boundaries of the Sanctuary. The plaza was spread open in a wide circle and my eyes immediately fell on the Kaaba, the grand temple that was the heart of Mecca and all of Arabia. Shaped like a majestic cube, it towered forty feet above the ground and was the tallest building in the settlement. The granite walls were covered in a variety of rich curtains of wool, cotton, even silk-crimson, emerald, and sky blue-that were brought by tribes from every corner of Arabia to mark their Pilgrimage to the sacred house.
As we approached the Kaaba, I saw my father frown. The plaza was covered with a bewildering collection of idols, stone and wood icons that represented the various gods of the desert tribes. There were 360 in all, one for each day of the year. Some were elegantly fashioned, chiseled in marble to an almost lifelike representation of a man or an animal-lions, wolves, and jackals seemed particularly popular. But others were little more than misshapen clumps of rock that required much imagination before any semblance of recognizable form could be imputed to them.
My eyes fell on two large rocks that looked vaguely like a man and woman entwined in the act of love. My friends had giggled and told me that they were once two romantics named Isaf and Naila who had consummated their lust in the Kaaba and had been turned to stone for defiling the Sanctuary. I was not sure why these two sinners who had been punished for their indiscretion should now be worshiped as gods, but they were apparently quite popular, and many young men and women bowed before them and tied tiny strings in the nooks and crannies, praying for the deities to win them the heart of their beloved, or at least bring ill fortune to their rivals in the game of love.
“Barbarism,” my father uttered under his breath. He grimaced at the sight of middle-aged women kneeling before a red-flecked rock shaped like a pregnant woman with bulbous breasts and hips. This was Uzza, one of three “daughters of Allah” who were worshiped by the pagans. She was said to be the goddess of fertility, and her favor was much sought after by those who wished to conceive. The women, their eyes brimming with hope and despair, tore open their tunics and rubbed their naked breasts against the cold stone, pleading in loud wails for Uzza to reverse the course of time, to begin their cycles again so that they could bear the children that had been denied them.
I was fascinated by these strange rituals, but my father pulled me away and led me toward the Kaaba. A crowd of hundreds of pilgrims was steadily circumambulating the House of God, moving like the stars around the earth, circling seven times while praising Allah, the Creator of the Universe. The pilgrims were dressed in a variety of robes reflecting their wealth and social power, with the tribal chiefs wrapped in silk and endowed with glittering jewels commanding the right to walk closest to the temple, while others encircled at the outskirts in filthy rags-and a few even danced around the Kaaba naked.