Mecca – Dreaming of Dante's Inferno

IT was on the 29th of Ramadan that I had the dream. It woke me up at 4, 06 am exactly, and I could not go back to sleep. It was a disturbing dream, but strangely, I hadn’t woken up in a muck-sweat, my heart pounding with fear.

I was clear-headed and calm, but I definitely needed to think about what my mind’s eye had just seen. There are dreams we remember, and dreams that we don’t – even after we are roused from deep slumber by them. This was one that I was going to remember.

The scholars say that “true dreams” – dreams of ilham, or inspiration – have symbolic relevance. They can only be properly interpreted under strict conditions. A person must have ceremonial ablution before going to sleep; the dream must be before dawn, and the dreamer must be of sound mind – and so on.

Now, I’ve always enjoyed listening to accounts of other people’s dreams – but I’ve never regarded my own as having any grand import. I do not rate myself as being gifted with sights of the great unseen, nor the favour of true dreams. To be honest, if I had a true dream I’d probably die of fright.

Apart from paying little heed to my own sub-cortical activity – psycho-babble for dreaming – my interest in other peoples’ dreamworlds has always been inspired by Ibn Sirin’s approach. If Ibn Sirin – the most celebrated dream-psychologist in Islam – could dismiss most of those who petitioned him, then someone like me had even more reason for caution.

The dreamworld is a jungle of symbols and its path is laid with numerous snares where sometimes the reverse is true, and sometimes isn’t. Therefore, I don’t interpret dreams.

But there are self-explanatory dreams when a specialist does not have to be consulted. For example, a person may be blessed to see a deceased relative, or spiritual adept. If that person is in the Garden of Bliss, they will appear as happy, larger-than-life figures with the glow of youth. They will deliver messages that are clear and unambiguous.

My own dream had a clear and unambiguous message too, but so stark that if I’d seen it unveiled in all its reality, I probably would have had a heart attack. It all started the day before when an old lady whom I love and know well – who has visited Makkah for over 50 years – asked me about the Jabl Omar project in the Holy City.

A travel agent in Makkah had phoned her about the multi-billion dollar scheme – one that will reportedly see 15 million pilgrims (those who will be to afford it, that is) staying in a marble, treeless expanse of Las Vegas-style hotels looming 40 stories over the Haram.

On the drawing board, the scheme is on a scale beyond impressive. Mountains will be moved and almost a whole city razed to the ground. The logistics are stupendous.

But logistics – and the real need to accommodate pilgrims aside – Makkah is still a Haram, a sanctuary that has to be respected. No human being or living thing can be violated within its precincts. Not even a tree should be cut down in the Haram, not a piece of dust of its sacred history disturbed. It is meant to be a place of peace where every believer – rich or poor – can enjoy a safe haven.

The first place of worship on earth was built in Makkah by Adam. It is a city beloved to Ibrahim, who prayed for it, and it was closest to the Prophet’s heart until he was forced, much against his will, to leave it. Makkah is the centre of the spiritual universe, the Ka’bah mirrored in each of the Seven Heavens until it reaches the foot of the Heavenly Throne.

So if I condemn the Jabl Omar project for being crass, I beg forgiveness. Makkah should be a place of beauty, not a centre of rampant materialism as it is threatening to become. Why should Makkah be the domain of the financially privileged and spiritually insensitive?

This is because the future Makkan megapolis stands to exclude the poor (just one night in Ramadan near the Haram in 2012 will set you back over R10, 000) and the very legacy of Islam itself. As I write this, one of the Holy City’s last-remaining historical monuments – Muhammad’s [SAW] birthplace where Asiyah (the wife of the Pharaoh) and Maryam (the mother of Jesus) were his midwives – is under threat of demolition.

With over 300 sacred heritage sites having already been destroyed in Makkah and Madinah by the Wahhabi sect, who dominate religious discourse in Saudi Arabia, this development has been a great boon. This is because in their reductionist Islam, visiting historical sites is shirk, or polytheism. All sacred sites have to be destroyed, just in case we might worship them.

These natives from the Najd region, some of whom the Prophet [SAW] explicitly refused to bless, have dragged Islam from the world back into the desert – the very antithesis of Muhammad’s [SAW] metaphor of co-existence. And so when the “reformist” ideologue, Ibn ‘Abd ul-Wahhab, made a familial pact with Ibn Sa’ud in 1747, he sparked the modern era of Islamic extremism.

Today, it looks as if the Wahhabi vendetta against the Prophet’s family, the Bani Hashim, and his Companions in the Holy Cities behind this veil of “progress” is almost complete. The traditional ziyarah – the visit by pilgrims to these heritage sites commemorating the life of the Prophet [SAW] – are now just sad memory.

No such thing as integrated urban planning in the petro-dollar universe of Bani Sa’ud: it’s just demolish and rebuild. No consideration for culture, ecology, or ancient buildings. Dr Sami Angawi, Jeddah architect and environmentalist, quotes a Prophetic Hadith that we should preserve Makkah’s old buildings “for they are the ornaments of the city”. But his is a voice in the wilderness.

For in Makkah, the ornaments – including the old Ottoman fort in the Ajyad district – have all been mindlessly obliterated without as much as a nod to the ummah, the world Muslim community who should really have a say in these matters. Surely the old could have been blended with the new – the past informing the present?

The house of noble Abu Bakr, from where the Prophet [SAW] fled to Madinah, is today the Hilton. The house of Khadijah, the mother of the Prophet’s children, has a public toilet built over it. And, according to Dr ‘Irfan Ahmad al-‘Alawi of the Islamic Heritage Foundation, the Jannat ul Ma’la – Makkah’s historic graveyard – has been flooded with effluent.

Another victim has been Hajr’s well of Zamzam. With no meaningful environmental impact studies countenanced by the authorities, indiscriminate blasting and digging has splintered the eye of the well so badly that Zamzam – an Abrahamic spring that has flowed unceasingly for thousands of years – now has to be filtered.

“I didn’t know about the development,” said the old lady, “S…. said that you would know.”

Call it a dream of “connectivity”, if you will, but in the early hours of the 29th of Ramadan I was not experiencing Laylut ul-Qadr, the mystical Night of Power “worth a thousand months” hidden in the last 10 days of Ramadan, but something more resembling Dante’s Inferno.

My dream begins with a friend and myself walking from Bab us-Salam across the mataf towards the Ka’bah. The imagery is not quite right, but my heart tells me it’s the Ka’bah. My first response is one of amazement – I did not expect to be back in Makkah. My second response is anxiety – I’m not in ihram, the two white sheets obligatory for pilgrimage.

There is a clear path to the Ka’bah, something that also amazes me, but a third person – who claims to have performed the Hajj with me, although I don’t recognise him – beckons us towards a ladder leading up to the first level of the Holy Mosque. “You can see the Ka’bah better from up there,” he says.

As we climb the ladder it begins (dream-like) to disintegrate, but we manage to scramble up. As we prepare to pray, I notice that the Haram’s walls have become like a steep, eroded donga. We can’t find a level place anywhere.

A member of our party decides to scout the area towards Bab ul-Fath; maybe we can pray there. But he comes back with strange, disturbing news. People are sitting there, he says, chained to wooden benches. They can’t move or make tawaf around the Ka’bah, and we can’t make salah because they have their goats with them, and they’re covered in their animals’ urine and faeces.

At that moment, I look over the mataf, but I see no marble, no recognisable Ka’bah – even in my imagination. All that I see is a pit of crumbling bricks and walls that have been stripped of all decoration. It is at that point I wake up.

I have since thought long and hard about my dream. Should I reveal it, or should I not? But in retrospect, this dream is not about condemning the Saudis, but more about ourselves. Wahhabis are still Muslims; they are still part of our community – and as such – I think we bear joint responsibility for what is happening in Makkah.

The Jabl Omar project – its megaliths snatching at the sky like the open jaw of a crocodile – is a reflection of what we have become. We have happily, and blindly, embraced a global culture of consumption and mass communication – a culture that is amorally secular, atheist, and ultimately empty. This is the idol of profanity, lacking all values except its own.

Indeed, we have forgotten that a visitor to Makkah is a guest of God; Allah is his host and not an Egyptian hotel manager, Saudi official or travel agent. Makkah, the En-Nobled City, can never be about timeshare, leisure or class status. Makkah is not about consumption or communication, but Divine values that wholly transcend the worldly.