Part 3 – 1962-1963
It was sometime in June 1962
that I finally left Montgomery. With my suitcase packed by my mother, I was
waiting on the railway station with my father and brothers who were there to
see me off. Montgomery railway station had only one platform, the longest one
in the country’s entire railway network. One half is for the train coming from
Lahore (the North) and the other half for trains coming from Multan and Karachi
(the South). Of course it had two railway lines to let the trains transfer from
the main line to the one along the platform.
It was a long journey for me
to travel alone to the metropolis, Karachi, the port city which provided the
air and sea access to travel abroad. It was a stunning journey which took the
passengers through the fertile lands of Punjab, then across Punjnand, the great
water reservoir where the river Sindh hits the other four rivers of Punjab,
turning into a massive trail of water. Through Multan and Bahawalpur, it enters
into the desert wilderness of Sindh province to which the river Sindh has
brought a gift of fertility and growth on both banks. By reaching Rohry
Junction, once again we had to cross Sakkhar Bridge, one of the biggest in the
whole country. In the early hours of the following morning, long before
arriving at my destination at Karachi Cantt, I could see miles and miles of
populated area on both sides of the mainline. Karachi, the city of immigrants
had expanded towards the Arabian Sea. Stepping outside the station, a tanga
took me to the old Golimar where my sister had her abode. The locality, with
immigrant population had grown haphazardly with all types of houses mostly with
brick walls and tin roofs. In the main room, during the hot hours of mid-day,
all family members, some on the bed and some on the floor would enjoy their
siesta. From the ceiling, a huge flapper of folded chaddar was hanging like a
massive feather, tied with a long string; this was the ceiling fan. It was the
duty of the children to take it in turns to pull the string and let the big
flapper move and break the air. Soon
those hand operated fans gave way to the electric ones.
In Karachi, I had to travel
each day by bus to the city, the hub of commercial and state activities, to
arrange for getting a passport, then a visa to travel to Saudi Arabia. It was
not an easy task to meet all the requirements needed for acquiring a passport
but with the help of Ishtiaq Ahmad, father’s maternal cousin, I was able to get
hold of the paperwork. Still I needed a verification from an authority, with a
status of section officer in a Ministry. Ishtiaq’s step brother, Uncle Khaliq
Ahmad was such an authority who was glad to see me embarking upon a noble
mission. He had no hesitation in stamping
my papers. In a few days I had my green passport in my hand, with my
name as Suhaib Hasan Salafi on it. The addition of ‘Salafi’ to my name was an
innovation by my brother in law, Abdul Rabb Salafi, the son of Abdullah
Salafi.
We had to visit the Saudi
Consular (someone) Fatani to get our passports stamped and tickets in our
hands. 'I' has turned to ‘we’ because by that time I had made the acquaintance
of some other young men who were the part of the first batch of Pakistani
students selected to study in Medinah;
Muhammad Salafi from Ghuraba Ahl-e-Hadith was one of them. In the Saudi
consulate, we felt the cool breeze emerging from the air condition unit which
had its seat in the wall. One day he gave us the astounding news of our travel
arrangements. We were all going on a sea voyage aboard Safina Hujjaj, the
biggest Pakistani ship which had carried a massive five thousand pilgrims
returning from Hajj that year. Now it was ready to sail back to Jeddah, to
bring the second wave of pilgrims.
One
day a friend took me to a teaching circle at Idara Ma’arif Islami, Nizamabad. A
young teacher, sitting on a chair, was addressing a host of relatively younger
group. That was my first encounter with Professor
Khurshid Ahmad. (Who knew that thirty
five years later, my son was destined to marry his daughter!) He had been an
ardent follower of Maulana Maududi. As a former head of Islami Jamiat Talaba,
an off-shoot of Jamaat Islami and the editor of its weekly organ, he was a
known figure among the youth. Unlike Dr Israr Ahmad, who preceded him in
presidency of the Jamiat and joining the Jama’at, he remained attached to
Jama’at after the great upheaval of 1957 which led to a schism in Jama’at’s
rank.
By that time, Dr Israr Ahmad
had established his office, very near to Jinnah’s big mausoleum under the
banner of ‘Qureshi Construction Company’. Though he had shifted from his
profession, he never abandoned his Quranic circle which he started at
Montgomery. Once, accompanied by one of his close friends, Allah Baksh Sayyal, we were
strolling beside the highways of Nazim Abad. Allah Baksh Sayyal pointed towards the earth under our feet, which was full of
pebbles and sand and said: “This is what Jeddah looks like”. On another occasion,
someone introduced me to an elderly man as an expert in palmistry. Out of
curiosity, I stretched out my hand asking him about the lines of my hand.
Holding my hand and concentrating his gaze into my palm he said: “it seems that
you will have a long stay abroad.”
During my stay in Karachi, I
made acquaintance with Abdul Mun’im al-Adawi, an Arab settled in Pakistan. He
used to publish a monthly magazine “Al-Arab” by name. The journal used to cover
all the activities carried out by the Arab ambassadors and the Arab community
in Karachi. It wasn’t much of a pleasant read but through this journal, I
developed a friendship with his son who would relate to me his adventures; an
imaginative fairy-play to amuse both of us.
At last, on a hot July
evening, the day had come when I had to leave the Kemari Shore to embark upon
an unknown world: a world in pursuit of knowledge. Waving my hand, from the
deck of Safina Hujjaj, I said farewell once again to my father and my brothers,
who by that time had also moved to Karachi as well. Gradually, the ship started
drifting away to the deeper blue waters of the Arabian Sea with eighteen
passengers on board, the first batch of Pakistani students to join the Islamic
University of Madinah. The other seventeen were all new to me and I was the
youngest among them. We had our sleeping bags type of bedding rolled up on the
floor in a big compartment. Soon we were introduced to each other.
Let me see if I can recollect
their names:
1.
Mohammad Salafi
from Ghuraba Ahl-e-Hadith, Karachi
2.
Abdul Razzaq
Iskander from Binnori Town, Karachi
3.
Ghulam Qadir from
Baluchistan
4.
Muhammad Qasim
from Baluchistan as well
5.
Yusuf Kazim from
Jamia Salafiyyah, Lyallpur
6.
Bashir Ahmad from
Taqwiyat-ul-Uloom, Lahore
7.
Abdul Rahman
Nasir from Lahore
8.
Salahuddin from
Ocara
9.
Sufi Ahmad Din
from Punjab
10. Hasan Jan from Charsaddah
11. Abdullah Kaka Khail from Peshawar
12. Muhammad Ibrahim Khalil from Skardu
13. and 14.Two students from east Pakistan
15. Abu Bakar from Binnori Town Jamia, originally from
Mozambique
I fail to remember the names
of the other three. The fate of all these young and excited students was a
mystery. Who was going to shine as a teacher, scholar, Imam, Mufti, speaker or
politician was all in the making.
By the time of writing these
memoirs in July 2016, to my knowledge
six have passed away. The latest among
them was my class-mate for four years in Madina, Shaikh Ibrahim Khalil of
Skardu, Baltistan who breathed his last in Islamabad at the end of June 2016,
after serving for fifty years after graduation in Mombasa, Kenya. How fortunate
was I, when I met him at his house, after many years, during my latest tour of
Kenya in February 2016.
Let me come back to our
carrier, Safina Hujjaj, a huge sailing edifice of five or seven floors. We
spent much of our time standing beside the railings, at the front decks,
turning our gazes to the stormy waves of an agitated ocean, which kept on
tossing the mighty ship like a toy. What an amazing sight it was to see another
ship which happened to pass by even at a far distance, or of jumping and diving
dolphin, small and big creatures of the water. It is at times like these, when
one is on a boat in the middle of a vast and seemingly endless ocean, that one
sees why the boat has been given the status of 'sign of Allah'. That ship was
our whole universe at the time, our only means of survival in an unruly and
merciless ocean.
Apart from the crew, a young
Indonesian man was also aboard the ship. Everyone was keen to talk to him.
“How is Indonesia?” we asked.
The young man must have had
some dealings with Arabs as he was able to construct a couple of simple
sentences. He responded to our questions thus:
“Fi Muslim Kathir,
Al-Hamdulillah
Fi Masajid Kathir,
Al-Hamdulillah
Fi Cinema Kathir,
Al-Hamdulillah.”
(Thanks to Allah, there
are many Muslims, thanks to Allah there are many mosques, thanks to Allah there
are many cinemas.)
After five days, the southern
coast of Oman, Hazramaut and Yemen appeared to our grateful eyes. It had only
been five days since we left land, yet we were yearning to see it again. Nearer we came to the port of Aden after
crossing the gateway of Al-Mundab, our curiosity to see an Arab land at its
height. Embarrassed and horrified, we saw our Indonesian co-passenger chained
to a bench. We learned that the poor fellow was on this ship on its previous
trip to Jeddah but was refused entry to land because he was travelling without
an entry visa. Courier was forced to take him back until his visa was sorted
out. So he had to shuttle between Jeddah and Karachi for an unknown time. He
was to be chained lest he should try to escape at the port.
We were allowed to visit
Aden, still under British Protectorate, for a few hours until the ship could
fill its belly with enough fuel to carry on. Though a small boat we came to
land at the port. A neat and clean bus took us, through hills and valleys, to
the small town of Aden. What a great and amusing experience for us to use our
knowledge of Arabic to all Arab hosts around us. We walked the foreign streets
and did some window shopping ( a term I did not learn until later in life) until
we entered a café to quench our thirst with a taste of coke. One of us was in
charge to pay on behalf of us all. Soon a row started with the shop keeper who
insisted that we had consumed twenty bottles of coke while we knew that we had
drank eighteen. It seemed that two strangers had mingled with our group,
finished their drinks and disappeared quietly, leaving us to pay their bill. It
was not a good sight of the shop keeper shouting to us at our backs when we had
left his shop. So our first encounter in an Arab land was not a pleasant one.
We were two days away from
Jeddah. We sailed along the Red Sea, the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula
constantly in view. Passing by Yalamlam, a point on the Yemini coast, we were
told to enter into the state of Ihram, a ritual required of each pilgrim coming
from the south, either for Umrah or Hajj. Our intention was for Umrah; we
bathed, perfumed ourselves, and dressed in the two unsewn white sheets of the
pilgrim. We then offered two rak'ahs of prayer.
I was fortunate to be the
first person in my immediate family to be blessed with fulfilling this sublime
act of obedience. What a privilege to be called to the House of God.
After two days journey, the
ship was anchored at a distance from the port of Jeddah. It was a unique sight
of the first town in Hijaz. Jeddah was at that time a small town with no
sky-scrapers or magnificent buildings. Unlike Karachi, the ship had no direct
mooring on the bay. A small boat took us to the port. We could see, at a far
distance, hundreds of pilgrims waiting
earnestly to aboard this ship which would take them all back home; home sweet
home. Abdul Aziz Linwaji, the Madina University’s representative in Jeddah was
there to greet us; to facilitate our exit and to host us for the remaining few
hours until we took our bus to Makkah.
At his spacious residence, he
offered us food and drinks while he was busy on his phone speaking to someone
in Madinah to let them know about our arrival. Again and again, he had to turn
the handle attached to the handset and shout “hello, hello” until the exchange
would be able to connect him to the other person on the line. He was a lovely,
good-mannered man who did not know how to say “no” to any of our requests.
A mini-bus took us to the
most sacred city of Makkah. We had to stop for a while at Bahra, the only rest-area
type of a point between the 70 km ride to our destination. The road leading to
the Sacred Mosque of Ka’ba goes up and down and long before reaching there we
had a glimpse of the tall minarets of the mosque basking in the sunlight of a
hot July month. Our bus made its way through a narrow road leading us to the
Abdul Aziz gate. Beyond a few steps, Ka’ba, the House of Allah was in our
sights. Covered in its traditional black curtains, its marble floor gleaming in
the light, it was there to welcome everyone who comes to pay homage to it. With
the supplication to grant it more dignity and honour we started our Tawaaf by kissing the black stone glowing in one of
its corners.
Passing by Al-Hateem and rubbing
our right hand on the Yemen corner, we passed by the black stone once again to
mark our first circle. Tawaaf was completed at the end of the seventh circle
followed by two Raka’at prayer at Maqam Ibrahim. Then we turned to the wall of
Ka’ba: a place to embrace and supplicate as long as you can. Heading towards
the hill of Safa, we have to pass by the wall of Zamzam to drink the blessed
water. In those days, both the station of Ibrahim and Zamzam well were inside a
covered area, the first one with a small canopy above it and second one with a
mausoleum type building surrounding it.
At present, in order to make
room for the pilgrims to do Tawaaf easily, the building has been removed
completely. The water finds its way to the drinkers through pipes connected to
the underground well and projecting at many places inside and outside the Haram
(precinct of the Sacred Mosque). As for the station of Ibrahim, the canopy is
replaced by a glass-covered column. After walking between the hills of Safa and
Marwa seven times, we completed our Umrah. The hair of our heads was then
shaved or trimmed before we could remove our Ihram.
This was our first visit to
the Ka'ba, and was to be followed by many more throughout my life. Apart from
the covered area of Mataf, the remnant parts of open floor around Ka’ba were
cut into many pebbled-ridden pieces open for the visitors to spread their mats
upon them for prayers in the cool hours of the evening. Ramla (sandy area) was
the popular name by which they were known.
The sacred mosque was
surrounded by narrow alleys, shops of every kind and some leading to the minor
market (Suq Saghir) which offered all types of fruits, vegetables, meat, live
chickens, spices and grocery. Similar was the scene outside Masa’a (the place
of walking between Safa and Marwa). Somewhere within these alleys was a
two-storey building with a sign of Maktaba Al-Haram (the Mosque library). That
was exactly the same location where the Prophet (SAW) was born in 570 AD. Once
the rituals of Umrah were over, we took our way back to Jeddah. This had been a
short but blessed stopover. We had to continue with our 420 km journey to
Madinah.
The coastal road passes
through Rabigh and Mastura; sea on your left and vast sandy plains on your
right for about 270 km. Once you approach Badr (the famous battle-field which
witnessed the first encounter between the Muslims from Madinah and the
polytheists of Makkah in 612 AD), small hills turn into barren mountains
throughout the way to Madinah. You can see oasis here and there; streams of
water bringing coolness and growth. At a far distance from Madinah the
following morning, we had the first glimpse of the tall and glowing minarets of
the Mosque of the Prophet (SAW).
“May Allah bless him and
grant peace to him” was the cry on our lips.
We passed by the old Madinah
railway station: the end spot of Hijaz railway; a remnant of a glorious past
but now a ghost town with old engines,
shattered looking carriages and a deserted platform. Then comes a small old
mosque with one minaret of a Taskish architect. That was the gateway to
Madinah. We were temporarily housed in Hotel Bahauddin, just left to the mosque
if you are facing Qiblah. The nearest gate of the Mosque to the hotel was
Bab-Majidi (named after Sultan Abdul Majid of Ottoman Empire) but we had to
enter the mosque, in our very first visit, from Bab-us-Salam, on the western
side of the mosque which used to face the market leading to Masjid Ghamama.
There were two more gates, Bab-ur-Rahma which takes you to the front old building
of the Ottoman construction and another gate opening to the new added building
by King Sa’ud. The old Ottoman building with red round pillars; front wall
decorated with multi-lines of the verses of the Qur’an in Naskh calligraphic
gold writing, some large and some in small letters. At the middle of the wall
was the Mihrab (niche) where the Imam lead the prayer. After entering through
Bab-us-Salam one walks until reaching the house of the Prophet (SAW) on your
left, which now accommodates three graves: that of the Prophet (SAW), Abu Bakr
(RA) and Umar (RA). The whole tomb is covered from all four sides by iron
railings. There in front of that wall, where there is a marking which faces all
three graves, you have to stand and offer your salutation to the Prophet (SAW)
and his two companions. Then you turn towards Qibla and supplicate as long as
you can. On the eastern end is Bab-Jibreel to let you exit. A small area beside
the Western wall of the House of the Prophet (SAW) is known as Rauda (The
Garden of the Paradise) extending as far as the pulpit. The Prophet himself
declared: “what is between my house and my pulpit is a garden from among the
Gardens of Paradise”. (Bukhari, Muslim)
This area is now at the back
of the front four rows. Here you offer your Nafl prayer beside the daily
obligatory prayers. Visitors come in huge numbers to look and pray, so courtesy
demands they leave quickly to allow others to share in the wonderful blessings.
A section is screened off for the women to pray in privacy. In those days, the
eastern part of the Mosque was allocated to women who could enter the mosque
from three eastern gates or from Bab-un-Nisa at the Northern side, straight
opposite to the Qibla and next to Bab-ul-Majidi. In between the old Ottoman
building and the newly added Saudi extension, these used to open areas with
pebbles under you and sky on your head and was known as Ramla (sandy area). On
its both sides was the covered new extension. On the right for men and on the
left for women. In the area at the right, on the wall in front of you, was the
only clock which gave the Arabic time. This clock rang its bell at 12 midnight,
which is the Maghrib time or the start of the new date. According to Arabic
time, the night precedes the day. So the Islamic month first day would start
from Maghrib and this is why you start praying Tarawih, the moment you see the
crescent of Ramadan, followed by Isha prayer, even before beginning your first
fasting day. So Maghrib was always at 12 followed by Isha
Adhan at 1:30. You can say that Islamic day starts around six hours earlier
than the Western-orientated of starting the new day from midnight. We, the
students from Pakistan, appointed this place in front of the Arabic clock as
our point of gathering in the mosque throughout our four years stay in Madinah.
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