Sneaking a Camera into Mecca to Film Hajj: The World's Largest Pilgrimage with Suroosh Alvi

SUROOSH ALVI: And this is as quiet as possible. Hajj is the

largest

annual

pilgrimage

in the

world

. It happens in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. And for Muslims, it is a requirement that they must fulfill once in their life. The Saudi government estimated that more than 3 million pilgrims attended last year, but the unofficial figure is much higher. My parents are originally from Lahore, Pakistan. They are practicing Muslims and last year they decided it was time to perform the Hajj. So I went with them to help them on their journey, but also for myself. It was the first time for all of us.

And I didn't think I was going to make a VBS documentary. I just took the smallest handicam we had in the office and literally shot from the hip. You can't shoot in most sacred places. So this is the footage I managed to sneak in. We fly on Saudi Arabian airlines. It was approximately a 10 hour flight from JFK to Medina, where we spent 6 days mentally preparing for the Hajj we were about to undertake. In pre-Islamic times, Medina was a place where travelers who crossed the desert in camel caravans rested. It was a kind of oasis in the desert.

In modern times it is more or less the same, but there are fewer camels and more shopping centers and hotels. There is also an impressive mosque called the Prophet's Mosque, which is the second holiest site in Islam. When you're there, you basically go to the mosque five times a day, for six days straight, to enter a meditative state. The mosque is huge. It has capacity for almost 700,000 people. And when we were there for Friday prayers, it was practically full. Flying to Mecca from Medina was really interesting. Before going to the airport we cleaned ourselves in a very specific way.

And then we had to put on a seamless white garment made of plush that all pilgrims have to wear. And it is a renunciation of the life from which you come and that must put everyone on the same level. There is no upper class or lower class. All are equal. It's just you and the sheet, and that's it. This is called entering a state of Irham. In addition to clothing, there are many other rules. You can not smoke. You can't have sex. You can't shave. You can't cut your nails and there are many other things that can't be done.

So we got this charter flight, just for pilgrims, and 10 minutes after the plane took off from Medina, the captain announced that we had flown over a designation and that we were in the area near Mecca. And we all had to start saying a prayer. And our group guide got on the plane's public address system and started shouting the prayer. Everyone started singing it. And I had a moment where I looked around and saw all these men and women with their white robes, the men with their beards, and I thought, if anyone from the West could see us right now, they would think we were a group. of fanatical jihadists on some kind of insane mission, when in reality, they were just pilgrims excited to undertake this spiritual quest.

I think the strangest thing about this flight was the flight attendants, who were all Filipino, dressed in their usual Saudi flight attendant outfits, and seemed to prefer any other job in the

world

than this one. We landed in Jeddah and took a bus to Mecca. And that trip to the city was one of the wildest scenes I've ever seen in my life. There were all these pilgrims coming from all directions in all kinds of vehicles. And you see them mounted on the top of cars, trucks and buses. I remember seeing a pilgrim jumping from the roof of one bus to another.

Everyone is trying to get to the city. Mecca is not a very big city. And during the year, it is a relatively quiet place, except during Hajj week. The city is completely transformed and half the challenge of completing the Hajj is performing all these rituals on a very strict schedule, taking into account the fact that there are around three million people there trying to do the exact same thing at the same time. . After checking into our hotel in Mecca, we walked towards the Grand Mosque, also known as Masjid Al-Haram. It is the holiest place in Islam.

And it is a huge structure. This Moscow can accommodate more than four million people with its indoor and outdoor space, which, during the Hajj, is technically the

largest

gathering of people in the world at any given time. This mosque is where Muslims from all over the world pray towards. And as you walk there, you feel the anticipation building. People have been waiting their whole lives to come to this place. And once you enter the mosque, you see the Kabeh. The Kabeh is a black box in the center of the Grand Mosque. And it was built around 2000 BC.

And people have been praying for it since before Islam began. And when Prophet Muhammad finally appeared, he cleaned the place, he got rid of all the idols that the pagans had been worshiping and rearranged the building as the House of God. So, at the Grand Mosque, we had to do our first ritual, which is called Tawaf, which is basically going around the Kabeh seven times counterclockwise. And it's like being in a mosh pit with hundreds of thousands of people, but instead of being full of angry punk kids, we're faced with aggressive Bangladeshi grandmothers. I had my parents linked in each arm and we hugged each other as we circled the structure seven times.

You are looking at the Kabeh. It's a very intense and heavy vibe. But the only thing that's a bummer is that you look up and all you see are these huge five-star luxury hotels for super-rich Muslims who want to pray from the confines of their room. After running around the Kabeh seven times, you must perform many other rituals to complete your Hajj. You have five days to do it. And it's like being on a treasure hunt. You have a checklist. You have to be smart. And you have to use a strategy to make this happen as planned.

You have to do the Sa'i, which is walking and running back and forth between two hills. In the past it used to be outdoors and now it has been converted into an indoor structure with two very, very long hallways. You have to spend a day on Mount Arafat. It is from where the Prophet delivered his last sermon. And you spend the day in prayer and contemplation, and beg forgiveness for all your sins. It's a very important day and after spending most of the day in a tent, I got out and headed in the direction of the mountain.

And I walked through this wild scene with people everywhere camping with their animals. And as I got closer to Mount Arafat, it was an incredible sight because it had been completely transformed. It looked like a snow-covered peak. Our tour group operators, before embarking on this trip, gave us some guidelines. And the last point on the page said: be patient. Be very patient. Be very, very patient. I fully understood the meaning of this when we had to make a three-kilometer bus trip and in the end it took us eight hours. It was midnight and we had to collect stones, it was one of our rituals, in a place called.

And so we got off the bus. We navigate among sleeping bodies all over the ground and find the stones. And then it was time to pray, so we threw the prayer rugs on the side of the road and lay down on the mats. After collecting the stones, we returned to the bus and headed to Mina. The Mina Valley is where most pilgrims stay. It's a tent city that fills up, essentially, with the population of Seattle for a week and then, once the Hajj is over, empties again and disappears. They are tents as far as the eye can see.

From there we arrived at Mina, and there we had to stone Satan. That is the next ritual. And this one was actually really fun. There were 21 stones to be thrown, seven of them at three different satanic stoning stations. And I finally got to see what Satan is like. Until a couple of years ago, Satan looked like three large pillars protruding from a large pit. But the space wasn't big enough and there was a stampede and people died. So the Saudi government built three ramps the size of a multi-lane highway, and inside were three pillars representing the devil.

They are illuminated in shades of green. And a strange and loud sound comes out of them. And as my father pointed out, all of this made Satan seem quite surreal. Before finishing the Hajj, we had to repeat some of the rituals we had already performed. So we had to visit Satan again and throw stones at him two more times. We had to return to Mecca from Mina and make another seven turns counterclockwise. And then it was time for Eid, which marks the official end of the Hajj, which is a great celebration. It's the end of the Irham state we've been in.

And we sacrifice an animal to celebrate. And then the last thing you do is shave your head. This is the line at the barbershop. This is the line. Soon all these men will be bald. The barbershops in Mecca have huge queues outside them. And you see hundreds of thousands of buckets walking around the city. And all those people have managed to complete their Hajj. And they are called Hajjis. Dealing with the Hajj each year is a huge logistical challenge for the Saudi government, to the point that they have created a Ministry of Hajj. In the past, there have been incidents where pilgrims were trampled, when ramps collapsed and pilgrims died, and the Saudi government has invested billions of dollars to create infrastructure to make this work, with complex techniques of crowd control.

And what I saw when I went last year was something that somehow manages to work. But it goes without saying that bringing 3 million people to such a small place will bring some complications. There is a slightly dark side. With so many people in such a small place, it is really difficult to manage. And despite the Saudi government's best efforts to address this profound logistical challenge, the bottom line is that there are too many people. And people need things. They need places to sleep. They need food. The need for bathrooms. And the poor people that were there, you see them basically camped on the side of the road for days and days.

It really felt like Mecca was reaching its peak at the end of the Hajj. And the whole scene starts to look and feel quite apocalyptic. It doesn't matter where all these people come from. It doesn't matter what they do. And no matter how rich or poor they might be, during this

pilgrimage

to Mecca it seemed like everyone was equal. It was unlike any place I had ever been or anything I had ever experienced. I was there, among millions of people, I was there with my family, but, on some level, I felt like I was completely alone, on a personal journey.

And everyday life seemed hundreds of thousands of miles away. We flew back to New York. We landed in the morning and I headed straight back to the Vice offices, which perhaps weren't the wisest ideas. I felt like I had been catapulted from one end of the universe to the other.