Braving the scorching summer season warmth, Mecca resident Amer Abdullah distributed free tea and bread to worshippers performing the annual hajj pilgrimage, honoring a long-standing custom in Islam’s holiest metropolis.
Joined by his 5 sons, the 45-year-old Saudi man who spends his evenings serving heat drinks to worn-out Muslim pilgrims, mentioned hajj hospitality runs in his blood.
“For the people of Mecca, there is no higher honor than serving pilgrims,” Abdullah advised Agence France-Presse (AFP) forward of the beginning of hajj rituals Sunday.
“My father did it as did his forefathers before him and now I am trying to pass it down to my sons,” he added, pearls of sweat forming on his face.
Before lodges and high-rises sprang up in Mecca, locals used to host pilgrims of their houses.
Now, whereas the holy metropolis is dotted with luxurious lodging and air-conditioned purchasing malls, these haven’t changed the deeply ingrained tradition of hospitality.
Every day at round midday, Abdullah and his sons begin filling vacuum flasks with tea and sizzling milk.
They pack lots of of loaves of bread into tightly sealed plastic luggage earlier than heading out for the evening.
They arrange close to the Grand Mosque, which is overflowing with worshippers, a few of whom survive solely on handouts all through the four-day pilgrimage.
“This is an honor passed down through generations here,” Abdullah mentioned, pouring tea right into a paper cup.
‘Racing to assist’
Hospitality, already firmly rooted in Saudi tradition, positive factors much more forex throughout hajj – one of many 5 pillars of Islam that each one Muslims with the means should undertake not less than as soon as of their lives.
More than 2 million pilgrims from greater than 160 international locations made the pilgrimage this 12 months.
According to Muslim custom, they’re “guests of God,” which means they have to be supplied with lodging, food and drinks even when they can not afford it.
Across Mecca, younger males distribute free meals consisting of rice, rooster, or meat to pilgrims who line up in lengthy queues.
Faisal al-Husseini, a Pakistani businessman residing in Mecca, has been distributing sizzling meals every single day for weeks.
“It is a great honor to serve God’s guests,” he mentioned, handing meals in a blue plastic bag to a pilgrim.
For 47-year-old Egyptian customer Mahmoud Talaat, the handouts are his sole supply of sustenance.
“I depend on these meals because I am unable to afford them,” he mentioned.
This 12 months’s summer season timing for the hajj, which follows the lunar calendar, will check the endurance of worshippers in the course of the principally out of doors ritual.
Beautiful custom
As temperatures exceed 42 levels Celsius (107 levels Fahrenheit), younger males distribute bottles of frozen water to assist pilgrims survive the warmth.
“We buy water and cool it well, then we start distributing it once or twice a day after prayers,” mentioned Mecca resident Hamza Taher, 25.
Standing close to a truck loaded with water bottles, his brother Anas, 22, mentioned they weren’t the one ones serving to out.
“All of the people of Mecca are racing to help,” he mentioned.
The custom of internet hosting pilgrims in Mecca’s houses has died out in recent times, with Saudi authorities embarking on an infrastructural growth mission that has elevated lodging choices.
But lots of the metropolis’s residents nonetheless bear in mind the centuries-old customized.
“When I was growing up, we used to host pilgrims in our homes,” mentioned a Mecca resident who requested to not be named.
“It was a beautiful tradition.”
And whereas some practices die out, youthful ones are coming into play, together with a state-led initiative by the Education Ministry that has dispatched lots of of Mecca’s college kids to assist with hajj.
Their duties embody helping wheelchair-bound pilgrims and guiding non-Arabic audio system to holy websites.
“I am completing what my ancestors started hundreds of years ago,” mentioned 17-year-old pupil Sultan al-Ghamdi.
Source: www.dailysabah.com
