MARCH 22 The Message of Pilgrimage

unstitched, plain, white garment which serves to heighten his consciousness of entering a new world. The very act of shedding his normal clothes (and with them all signs of status and ethnicity) signifies that he is separating himself from the way of life peculiar to his environment, and is now ready to become suffused with such emotions as are desired by God. In this way, thousands of men, in casting off their own hues, take on the hue of the Almighty. After clothing himself in ihram (godly raiment), the pilgrim finds his tongue of itself beginning to utter godly words—‘Labbayk! Labbayk!—and he continues, as if hastening to answer God’s call, to repeat the word ‘labbayk’—“Oh God, I am here, I have come!” Labbayk (I am here) does not mean just that the pilgrim has come to stay in Makkah. It means that in leaving his normal abode, he has cast aside his whole way of life. It means, ‘I am here, at Your command, and, with all my heart and soul, I am ready to obey You.’ While on their pilgrimage, pilgrims simply give utterance to the word labbayk, but when they return to their own countries, they must put it into practice in their everyday lives. On reaching Makkah, the pilgrim must peform tawaf (circumambulation). To do this, he enters the House of God (Baitullah), the great mosque in whose spacious central courtyard stands the Ka‘bah, which was erected by the Prophet Abraham in ancient times. Then he goes round the Ka‘bah seven times to demonstrate his willingness to make God the pivot of his whole existence. After the tawaf, there comes the ritual of sa‘i, which entails brisk walking from the hill of Safa to the hill of Marwa and back again. This procedure is repeated seven times in symbolic enactment of a promise, or covenant, to expend all of one’s energies in the path of God. The form which this ritual takes, can be traced back to the Prophet Abraham’s wife, Hajar, running from one hill to another in a frantic search for water for her young baby when they first arrived there. The most important period of worship during hajj is the day-long sojourn on the plain of Arafat. It is, indeed, an awesome spectacle, with people from all over the world, clad in identical, simple, white garments, chanting, “Lord, I am present, Lord, I am present.” This serves to impress upon the mind of the pilgrim how great a gathering there will be in the presence of God on the Last Day of Reckoning. Once he becomes aware of its true significance, all his problems fall into their true perspective, and his life cannot but take a turn for the better.