On hajj, battling sin and doubt

My nephew Saleh and I put on our badges, which get us back into our camp and help us find it if we get lost, and head off. The tiny city of Mina, a valley partly enclosed by a range of mountains, is like a huge picnic ground. There's a festive air to the city, which comes alive one week out of the year, as cars compete for space on the roads and bridges and highways with the huge crowds. Families spread colored mats on the sidewalks and other open areas as they read, relax, sleep, and eat. A man on a bicycle sells blue face masks, which a lot of the police officers and hajjis are wearing this year. A peddler hawks Hajj Mats with Inflatable Pillow Made in China to passersby. I hear Urdu, Hindi, Turkish, Arabic, and English as we stroll.

After sundown prayers, mosques around the city are broadcasting Koranic verses, sermons, and information about the hajj. The message: If you make it through the next three to five days without sinning or harming yourself or anyone, you will have accomplished a successful hajj. There's an aura of anticipation in our camp; tomorrow everyone will get a chance to have their sins forgiven and have their prayers answered, and they want to get it right. In the women's lecture room, in a tent near ours, the Islamic scholar is asked about cigarettes. Harmful, she says. And men who look at you? Try to avoid their gaze, she advises.

Back in my room, I hear a preacher talking over the loudspeakers about the meaning of the Day of Standing Together Before God, or Yawm al-Wukuf, which takes place the next day. "God will forgive us all our sins. We will be as sinless as the day we were born," are the last clear words I hear before he breaks down weeping. Soon I hear a second broadcast from another mosque.

I ask Taghreed what she's going to pray for the following day, but I can hardly hear her for the cacophony of the competing sermons blaring from the loudspeakers.

The lectures are over after the final evening prayers and Taghreed finishes her list of names of family and friends she wants to pray for. Reem, who's already done, contemplates what she's going to ask for herself. "Tomorrow I'm going to forgive everyone who has ever harmed me because I expect God to forgive me everything," she says.

An Egyptian sheikh comes over to talk to us and I ask him about the significance of the Day of Standing Together Before God. "This is God's favorite time and place. He has asked us to come to Him with our prayers at Mount Mercy in Arafat on the ninth day of this month. He has said he will forgive all our sins on this day."

"Why?" I ask. "What's so special about tomorrow?"

"When you love someone, you do as he says, and we love God and follow what he asks us to do. We don't have to understand before we do it, we will understand later. It's a matter of putting faith over curiosity and human nature."

The sheikh's answer sounds familiar. You will only know once you believe.

I am hoping that despite my doubts and curiosity, I will be considered enough of a believer to reap rewards at the plain of Arafat, though I'm not sure exactly what. As an outward sign of my good intentions, I refuse to kill the large mosquitoes that are sticking their noses through my robe and biting my calves, so that I don't break my ihram.

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