Free Standing Alone by Asra Nomani Page B

administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America.” In addition, America had been friends with Israel since its inception in 1948, without resolving the crisis created when the Palestinians lost their homes. I had heard my father’s frustrations with world politics since my earliest days. “It is not a question of Islam or Christianity, East or West, democracy, justice, or freedom,” my father always told me. “It’s a question of power. It’s a question of modern-day colonialism of countries for money and natural resources and the corruption of Muslim governments betraying their people.”
    Now, as I began my pilgrimage, America was on the brink of war with yet another Muslim nation. As we had sat at JFK Airport before takeoff, CNN reported that President Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair had met that day over plans to launch a strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. The headline: “Showdown: Iraq.”
    I couldn’t help but feel sad.

OPEN BORDERS, CLOSED DOORS
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  And proclaim the hajj among mankind.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  They will come to thee on foot and [mounted] on every camel,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  lean on account of journeys through deep and distant mountain highways.
    â€œAl-Hajj” (The Pilgrimage),
    Qur’an 22:22
    ON THE ROAD FROM JEDDAH TO MECCA —Throughout the changing tides of history, pilgrims had overcome their fears to venture onto this path on which I found myself.
    Until the nineteenth century, a pilgrim usually traveled the long distance to Mecca by joining a caravan. There were three main caravans: the Egyptian caravan, which formed in Cairo; the Iraqi one, which set out from Baghdad; and the Syrian caravan, which, after 1453, started at Istanbul, gathered pilgrims along the way, and proceeded to Mecca from Damascus. Because the hajj journey took months, pilgrims carried the provisions they needed to sustain them on their trip. The caravans were elaborately supplied with amenities and security for rich pilgrims, but the poor often ran out of provisions and had to interrupt their journey in order to work and save up their earnings before they could continue. As a result, the hajj was a long journey of ten years or more for some pilgrims.
    Travel in earlier days was filled with adventure. The Begum of Bhopal, a woman ruler from India, risked death to become the first royal pilgrim from India centuries ago. The roads were often unsafe owing to bandit raids. The terrain the pilgrims passed through was also dangerous, and natural hazards and diseases often claimed many lives along the way. For this reason, the safe return of pilgrims to their families was the occasion of joyous celebration and thanksgiving, a tradition that continues to this day.
    With the days of caravans over, our modern-day pilgrimage with the Islamic Society of North America promised us air-conditioned buses, the Mecca Sheraton, and buffets. When we piled into our air-conditioned diesel bus at the Jeddah airport, we could sit freely wherever we wanted. On the bus there was no segregation of men and women, just as in my earliest days when I rode the yellow school bus that picked me up at the corner of Headlee and Briarwood Streets, a block from my house in Morgantown. I still preferred to sit in the back of the bus, and my family and I nested in the last row of our tour bus. My father sat next to my mother, and in front of us husbands sat next to wives. There was no men’s bus or women’s bus. I was surprised. I knew it was illegal for men and women who weren’t married to mix freely in this country. This arrangement most certainly broke the rules. We hadn’t even split the bus into a men’s half and a women’s half. On