HOUSTON – Every Muslim strives to one day travel to Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj, an obligatory pilgrimage in Mecca.
The Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, and all Muslims are required to make it at least once in their lives if they are physically and financially able to do so. It is a moving spiritual experience for pilgrims who believe it absolves sins and brings them closer to God. It also only happens yearly and the time to perform the Hajj varies because Islam follows a lunar calendar.
EXPLAINER: What’s the Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage, and why is it significant for Muslims?
For some Muslims, they spend years saving money, and waiting for a permit and don’t get to make the Hajj until their in their 50s or 60s after raising their children. My 70-year-old mother is fortunate to say she’s performed Hajj twice: the first in August 1984 - 11 years before I was born - and the second time in June 2024, when several hundreds of Muslims died due to the sweltering temperatures.
2024 Death Toll
Saudi Health Minister Fahd bin Abdurrahman Al-Jalajel said 83% of the 1,301 fatalities were “unauthorized pilgrims.” Deaths aren’t uncommon, however, as the pilgrimage’s history has also seen deadly stampedes and epidemics.
But this year’s tally was unusually high, suggesting exceptional circumstances. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths also included 165 pilgrims from Indonesia, 98 from India, and dozens more from Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and Malaysia. Only two U.S. citizens (a couple in Maryland) were reported dead.
Fortunately, my mother got authorization to perform the Hajj on a whim but went alone. She has some family friends there, but no direct relatives to accompany her during the five-day pilgrimage. She also Alhamdulillah (thanks to God) survived the extremely high temperatures despite her serious pre-existing medical conditions.
Full Disclosure
For starters, she has survived breast cancer twice, battled (and won) a lung infection, but still has inflammatory rheumatoid arthritis, so it hurts for her to get up and walk.
“I cannot move my knees or legs behind. It can go forward, but I can’t put them back,” my mom explained. “And the swelling gets worse and worse. Sometimes I feel like it’s going to burst.”
So yeah, the perfect cocktail for a five-day journey that includes mostly walking, right? She also (coincidentally) forgot to bring her medication, and went without it for at least five days.
There was also an incident where when reports were coming out that hundreds of people had died from heat exhaustion in Saudi Arabia, one of my siblings noted they couldn’t reach our mom and hadn’t heard from her in about two days. We were able to get a hold of her and were relieved to know she was OK.
I’m the youngest of my siblings so it was fair to say I was being the most dramatic because in researching the story, I read that historically, deaths are not uncommon at the Hajj, which has seen at times over 2 million people travel to Saudi Arabia for a five-day pilgrimage.
I should also mention my mother went to Mecca for Umrah, a “visit” to the Islamic holy site that’s a lesser pilgrimage, with my oldest brother, Meraj, in February 2024. So curiously and concerning everything previously discussed, I couldn’t understand why she still decided to go.
My mom’s reasoning for performing the Hajj
I picked my mother up from the airport on Tuesday and took her home, but the next day, I sat down to talk with her for this story so she’d have *some* time to recover from the jetlag.
This way I could find out, and low-key admonish her with all due respect, why she put herself through such a physically taxing experience. She told me it was a Hajj e Badal, which basically means performing Hajj for someone else. And who was she performing the Hajj for? Her sister and my late aunt, Sultana, who died from liver cirrhosis in 2011.
“She passed away about 12 years ago and I was trying for the past two years to go, but every time something happened, and I was unable to go,” she told me. “But this time I made up my mind. I said, I’m getting older and older and I don’t know. Next year I will be able to walk or not. So it’s better that now I can at least do it in the wheelchair. So I decided to go by myself; my children were not happy, they said no, no, no but I didn’t listen to anybody; I made up my mind.”
My siblings and I would do a lot for each other but naturally, we still groan when it comes to things ordinary people would dread doing like picking up or dropping off someone at the airport. And I’m sure a lot of people with siblings would agree.
“She was not only my sister; she was a friend and a very good friend. And when I was young, I gave her a lot of trouble,” my mother explained. “So I would not say that I was very good. I would give her a tough time.”
“My dad used to love me more than her,” she said with an embarrassed smile. “It was our custom that girls wash their dad’s hands when they, sit at the table to eat. So my dad would say to her ‘wash her hands also, and I would wash my hands and I would look at her sarcastically but she still loved me always. So I always tried to help her.”
I asked, “Do you think now that you’ve done this that you and her are even now?”
“I think I am not even,” my mom said. “She was so good to my children. Also, she would keep them when I came to America 33 years back, and I left Meraj behind, she would keep him on weekends at her place and take care of him.”
This wasn’t a very satisfying response, but it is sweet nonetheless. My mother has always been about taking care of others and putting their needs before her own - even if it impacts her health, much to my (and my sibling’s) chagrin.
Her Hajj experience
Traditionally, the Hajj involves a lot of walking but because of my mother’s health, she was able to make it through most of the journey in a wheelchair but noted seeing many people struggling, and collapsing from heat exhaustion. She even told me the story of a young man who was sitting near her, looking weakly, and made sure he was drinking water. But that positive energy was returned immediately she explained by others.
Despite not knowing anyone in the crowd of people performing the Hajj, strangers came to her aid.
That is unsurprising as in Islam, it’s common for people to form familial bonds through faith referring to one another as “brother” or “sister.” People were affectionately calling my mother “auntie,” which is like calling her “ma’am.”
“Young girls would come around me and even the aged ladies will come, ‘Auntie, do you need help? Do you want me to give you a hand?’ I would say ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to pull your hand or anything, I’ll try myself,’” my mother said. “So I would struggle myself, but the young girls would come with their friends or sisters and say, ‘Now we are two, you can’t say anything to us,’ and they would help me out and it was so nice of them that they don’t know me and most of the people were like that. They were helping each other. Very helpful.”
Some reports say there was a tight law enforcement presence there, but it was mostly people helping one another. This wasn’t always the case though as she did notice how sweltering temperatures got the better of people’s attitudes and witnessed one man dying before her very eyes. It was conflicting because it’s not easy to witness something like that, but on the other hand, she (and arguably many Muslims) view the Hajj as a religious experience meant to bring you closer to your creator, so could this serve as a demonstration of true faith?
Ultimately and miraculously, it’s not lost on me that I could share this moment and hear about her experience. I may not be as religious as her but it does make me reflect on the blessings to come out of this, so how would I prepare myself when and if inshallah (God willing) I can make the Hajj?
Conclusion
More than 1.83 million Muslims performed the Hajj in 2024, including more than 1.6 million from 22 countries, and around 222,000 Saudi citizens and residents, according to the Saudi Hajj authorities. The country has spent billions of dollars for pilgrims, but the growing number of participants can make it difficult to ensure safety.
During this year’s Hajj period, daily high temperatures ranged between 46 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit) and 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) in Mecca and sacred sites in and around the city, according to the Saudi National Center for Meteorology.
Climate change could make the risk even greater. Not just in Saudi Arabia, but even in my mother’s home country, Pakistan, where the temperatures matched Saudi Arabia’s during the Hajj period - making Texas’ summer heat more tolerable. At least my mother thought so.
“Oh it’s better here,” she said without hesitation.
A 2019 study by experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that even if the world succeeds in mitigating the worst effects of climate change, the Hajj would be held in temperatures exceeding an “extreme danger threshold” from 2047 to 2052, and from 2079 to 2086.
Islam follows a lunar calendar, so the Hajj comes around 11 days earlier each year. By 2029, the Hajj will occur in April, and for several years after that, it will fall in the winter, when temperatures are milder. But even then, the big takeaway from all this seems to be the importance of spreading kindness, generosity, and understanding - even in the face of sweltering heat, death, or just general paranoia.
“America is a good place, but we need to understand that we get so many good things,” she concluded. “But what we need to do is give back to the people, what God has given us here.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.