Hajj 1430 - Part 3 - A Day in Mina (I)

(ok right. So. Why is that Twitter widget displaying the account of someone else? Wait what? o.o)

(ok that was settled. hmm.)

...

I was downed with a terrible fever.

And by terrible, I mean, extremely incomprehensibly out-of-this-world-in-your-face terrible *dies*

Hence the lack of updates.

:D

Anyhow, as mentioned before in my cliffhanger, my mouth somehow managed to extort the contents of my stomach out from the dark pit of my hole and into the filthy world, staining my hijab and abaya with the awful unprocessed leftovers, further manifesting the air with its horrible stench and causing me to bear the image of a walking corpse.

Okay, I did not say that. But that was exactly what’d happened…in a nutshell.

I suppose I was in luck at the time. My dinner only consisted of breads and biscuits—nothing too heavy, nothing too icky—so it wasn’t that horrible. Also, as customary per Saudi’s rule, every female was required to wear black garments in public, so I didn’t look that messed up—maybe. Hopefully.

At least the blackness of it all conveniently hid every little speck of stains from the eyes of mortals, enough to blind them from seeing my horrific state. I couldn’t be more grateful. Really. No joke. I was grateful that I wore black from head to toe. Literally. Really.

However, I did consume those edible little white things called bread and biscuit, so you bet that some of the whitish residues were still hanging on my clothes, desperately trying to contaminate me with that ferocious willpower of theirs, holding to their last breaths, wanting their existence to be noticed by all of these mortals alike, anything in their power to make me appear the least graceful…

I will not let that happen, obviously.

My mother handed me a small towel to wipe the residues away, but it proved to be incapable of battling the rest of them out of my clothes. She told me to use my handkerchief then, but really, my handkerchief was filled with booger and phlegm and all those nasty stuff—I didn’t want my hijab to suffer such a disgusting end. D:

*I’m being melodramatic, I know*

Thankfully, the residues weren’t that noticeable after several wipes, and the wetness wasn’t apparent either, thanks to the garment being black. But I still smelled horrible, no thanks to the black.

To put it simply, I smelled like dead fish, fishy and stinky, not to mention, sticky.

I rhymed! :D

lol

Anyway.

After frantically wiping my vomit away with the pukey towel and booger handkerchief, the bus continued his hiccupping, but several minutes later, the bus no longer performed the notion, rigidly standing with zilch movement, only releasing the busting sound of engine into my ears.

I was fumed with desperation—I thought the traffic had no longer jammed but glued together instead. Take note, the windows were securely veiled, and in the state that I was in, I was too exhausted to even lift the curtain, so I had no idea that the reason for the sudden bus freeze was because we had finally arrived.

Yay.

It was not until the males started standing and retrieving their luggage from the upper compartment did I realize that we had finally reached our destination. Relieved, I primed myself, making sure that I looked presentable. I waited for the door to open, because aside from the nauseating air, I was afraid that my uncouth behavior would repeat itself.

And by that, I mean the puking. Obviously.

I waited for the door to open, counting the seconds, pushing the gas in my lungs all in. Since I sat at the heart of the bus, the first line of the females, the door was exactly on my right. Thus, I had a greater chance to be the first to waltz out.

I was proven wrong. Instead of jolting out of the door, my mother quickly dashed out faster than me, carrying my vomit bag with her.

Yay.

For a moment, I thought she wanted to escape the horrible stench of my puke, but apparently not.

I considered waiting for my sister—she sat directly behind the door—but the gas in my lungs prompted me—no—forced me to dolt out of the bus as fast as possible. Discreetly vomiting was one thing, publicly puking was…downright humiliating.

So off I went, and after a while, my sister followed my suit, but as she was about to gracefully step down, the bus started moving.

The slight movement caused uproar by the passengers, and panicking, my sister refused to free herself from the clutches of the bus. But I said, “Come on, jump!” because really, the bus was moving in a speed that could match a turtle. It moved because it was giving some space to the bus behind it. Duh.

She listened. And she jumped. While the bus was moving.

Kind of dangerous, sure, but no harm was done. Like I said, the bus wasn’t moving in such a high speed anyway.

We stood near our luggage, watching our dad unloading the rest of the bags from the bus’s stomach. I was still feeling anxious, and agitatedly, I asked my sister, “Do I look weird?”

And she answered, “No. You look normal.”

And by normal, she meant…

I shuddered at that.

Anyway, I didn’t trust her.

Not one bit.

Because I was certain that others were staring at me strangely.

I know it.

They can see the leftover puke.

Oh…no.

I feigned ignorance, and I was not sure how effective that was, but anyway, I followed my group into the city of tents, my eyes loudly scanning the place about, my brain refused to cooperate, causing a minor conflict in my system, disabling my conscious to comprehend every single information that flew right in front of my nose. I was not even sure about the exact route to my tent, the place that I was in, the exit, the front gate—all I saw was tents, and more tents, and a whole lot of tents, and more of those…white tents.

Okay, I admit. MY SENSE OF DIRECTION IS BEYOND TERRIBLE. THAT IS LIKE, THE MAJOR FLAW OF MY LIFE D:

Moving on.

We moved with the pace, passing several tents in the process, referring to our Hajj’s tag for our tent’s number—mine was 31—hearing the directions from the staff—but I was in such a dreamy state to notice, or even comprehend, their laser words—before finally, we arrived at a fairly large tent.

Upon entering, I was mentally impressed, since hey, the place looked mighty comfortable! Two giant carpets were neatly laid on the sore ground, hiding any trace of potential coldness experienced by the lack of floor. Twenty sofabeds were stacked side by side, neatly arranged near the flimsy tent’s wall. A cozy-looking pillow peeked from the head of the bed, accompanied by a furry blanket, inviting the heavy-lidded and sleepyhead for a momentary doze. I was intrigued.

Still, the clock had just strike 5, and the Fajr prayer will be in time at any moment now, so a brief nap was out of question. A nap could lead to greater things, you see. A sleep, for example.

I sat on the sofabed, gazing at nothing at all, hearing the outbreak of a supposedly minor error from the management—there was a slight mistake in arranging the people in our tent—all the while wanting to be invisible.

It didn’t work, apparently.

I tried to dissolve into the wind, become invisible, gone, far beyond, and I was too immersed in that particular idea that I nearly didn’t realize the aunt in front of me had took the liberty of actually talking to me, piercing my thick skull with her question, albeit pleasant, “Tired?”

I was caught off guard.

Oh scratch that, I was always caught off guard.

Anyway, that was awkward.

Because really, tired from a mere bus ride? For real?

If a mere bus ride could strip all of your energy in one blow, then how are you going to withstand the hardness of the Hajj’s deal? Really, how?

That did it.

I felt a chilled breeze prickling my face.

So in my defense, this was what I answered.

“…”

Blinked.

“Uh…”

Silence.

“Yeah.”

THAT WAS SO PATHETIC AAAAAH *DUSH* FAIL.

To be continued. D:

Because this post had grown really long, you see. :|