Hajar Aswad
I am writing this from memory.
Hajar Aswad literally means "black stone", if I'm not mistaken. It's a stone from the heaven. It was related that 'Umar Ibn Khattab said that he would not kiss it if not for the fact that the beloved Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) did it.
When we were doing the Tawaf, we would see the packed crowd struggling to get to the stone. I didn't imagine being in that crowd, although I had the intention to kiss it for once (I also had a dream of praying inside the Kaabah). So I decided to wait to the last minute, as we would be among the last people left in Makkah, and the crowd would have been lessen by then.
We planned to make the attempt to kiss Hajr Aswad before Fajr on our last day in Makkah. We started to do the tawaf at around 2am. But after that, Pakcu changed his mind, saying that it's still very crowded. I didn't want to give up, so Mak and I got closer to the spot. There were people queueing above the ground level beside the left wall. We got to the end of the queue, but it seemed impossible to get in the line as the people were actually trying to stick to the wall without a proper place to stand on.
So we went to the stone from the direction perpendicular to the corner. People cried - some for being able to kiss it and some for being pushed aggressively. It was shocking, actually, to see how at that very spot people could get very selfish and knocked and pushed and smashed and pulled other people. It was not right, as kissing the stone would be recommended (sunnah), but hurting others would be prohibited (haram).
Anyway, many times Mak and I were almost there, we could actually touch the stone, but when the person who kissed it was leaving the spot, people at the back were forced to move further back. So it was like that "almost there only to get forced back a moment later" back and forth for at least one hour. It started to dawn on me that we would never get to kiss Hajar Aswad like this. And I didn't see any other way for us. I also was worried to see Mak got squeezed many times like that - there was only so much strength I had to try to protect her (I was always holding her from behind) as well as myself. Pakcu was not there, and if anything happened to her, how would I be able to be much help? And he would probably blame me for going against his advice.
So in that struggle, I told Mak to quit, giving her the reasons, and telling her my worries, asking her to be contented by touching the stone by hand. She started to cry. Oh God! I was startled. She said she just wanted to feel what it's like to kiss Hajar Aswad, just one time. We never know when we'll get the chance to be Baitullah's guests again. OK, I lost. So we continued the effort. Then in the dynamic of the crowd, her pouch was pulled away from her, and it fell down. We tried to search for it using our feet, but couldn't find it. All her important documents were kept there (thank God we didn't keep our own Hajj passports and air tickets, it's the rule). There were sympathetic eyes around us, but really there's not much they could do to help anyway. It's very dangerous to try to get down to the floor.
That actually fired her desire to continue trying to kiss the stone. She said she had to try to make sure the loss was worth it. Then I saw her started to wave her hand crying "Allah.. Allah", and it seemed to me as if she was starting to lose her mind. I reminded her that this is just a sunnah, and she must not be too obsessed by that, and that Allah was not there at the stone!
The guard who were standing next to the stone signalled to us to come to his side. So we slowly moved towards him, and before I knew it, we were exactly in front of the stone! I remember thinking "this is unbelievable!". So Mother kissed it, and then so did I. The oval space between Hajar Aswad and its silver holder was quite deep but narrow, and I hated my eye-glasses at that moment for blocking my face from fully reaching the stone. Nonetheless, the stone touched some parts of my face, alhamdulillah.
So it took us about two hours of struggling in the crowd, to finally reach Hajar Aswad.
We moved away from the center of it all, and left the crowd. I went to the side of the Hijr Ismail, but it's already closed (there went my dream to pray inside Kaabah). It was already almost Fajr, so we rushed back to the hotel to renew our wudu' (and to pick Makcik up as we had promised her to go for Fajr together - Makcik needed to perform the Tawaf Wida' with us after the prayer. We were leaving for Madinah after breakfast).
After all that, we discovered bruises on our arms and back, and our bodies ached for a few days.
Little did I know that when Mak had seemed to lose her mind, she was actually waving to the guard, trying to attract his attention. She had noticed that he had helped women to get closer to the stone and scolded men from pushing too aggressively. Alhamdulillah. She was more resourceful, optimistic, and observant than I am :-)
All in all, I am proud and happy to be the one being with my Mother in her quest to kiss Hajar Aswad. I am honored to share those moments with her. Back to TOC
Hajar Aswad literally means "black stone", if I'm not mistaken. It's a stone from the heaven. It was related that 'Umar Ibn Khattab said that he would not kiss it if not for the fact that the beloved Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) did it.
When we were doing the Tawaf, we would see the packed crowd struggling to get to the stone. I didn't imagine being in that crowd, although I had the intention to kiss it for once (I also had a dream of praying inside the Kaabah). So I decided to wait to the last minute, as we would be among the last people left in Makkah, and the crowd would have been lessen by then.
We planned to make the attempt to kiss Hajr Aswad before Fajr on our last day in Makkah. We started to do the tawaf at around 2am. But after that, Pakcu changed his mind, saying that it's still very crowded. I didn't want to give up, so Mak and I got closer to the spot. There were people queueing above the ground level beside the left wall. We got to the end of the queue, but it seemed impossible to get in the line as the people were actually trying to stick to the wall without a proper place to stand on.
So we went to the stone from the direction perpendicular to the corner. People cried - some for being able to kiss it and some for being pushed aggressively. It was shocking, actually, to see how at that very spot people could get very selfish and knocked and pushed and smashed and pulled other people. It was not right, as kissing the stone would be recommended (sunnah), but hurting others would be prohibited (haram).
Anyway, many times Mak and I were almost there, we could actually touch the stone, but when the person who kissed it was leaving the spot, people at the back were forced to move further back. So it was like that "almost there only to get forced back a moment later" back and forth for at least one hour. It started to dawn on me that we would never get to kiss Hajar Aswad like this. And I didn't see any other way for us. I also was worried to see Mak got squeezed many times like that - there was only so much strength I had to try to protect her (I was always holding her from behind) as well as myself. Pakcu was not there, and if anything happened to her, how would I be able to be much help? And he would probably blame me for going against his advice.
So in that struggle, I told Mak to quit, giving her the reasons, and telling her my worries, asking her to be contented by touching the stone by hand. She started to cry. Oh God! I was startled. She said she just wanted to feel what it's like to kiss Hajar Aswad, just one time. We never know when we'll get the chance to be Baitullah's guests again. OK, I lost. So we continued the effort. Then in the dynamic of the crowd, her pouch was pulled away from her, and it fell down. We tried to search for it using our feet, but couldn't find it. All her important documents were kept there (thank God we didn't keep our own Hajj passports and air tickets, it's the rule). There were sympathetic eyes around us, but really there's not much they could do to help anyway. It's very dangerous to try to get down to the floor.
That actually fired her desire to continue trying to kiss the stone. She said she had to try to make sure the loss was worth it. Then I saw her started to wave her hand crying "Allah.. Allah", and it seemed to me as if she was starting to lose her mind. I reminded her that this is just a sunnah, and she must not be too obsessed by that, and that Allah was not there at the stone!
The guard who were standing next to the stone signalled to us to come to his side. So we slowly moved towards him, and before I knew it, we were exactly in front of the stone! I remember thinking "this is unbelievable!". So Mother kissed it, and then so did I. The oval space between Hajar Aswad and its silver holder was quite deep but narrow, and I hated my eye-glasses at that moment for blocking my face from fully reaching the stone. Nonetheless, the stone touched some parts of my face, alhamdulillah.
So it took us about two hours of struggling in the crowd, to finally reach Hajar Aswad.
We moved away from the center of it all, and left the crowd. I went to the side of the Hijr Ismail, but it's already closed (there went my dream to pray inside Kaabah). It was already almost Fajr, so we rushed back to the hotel to renew our wudu' (and to pick Makcik up as we had promised her to go for Fajr together - Makcik needed to perform the Tawaf Wida' with us after the prayer. We were leaving for Madinah after breakfast).
After all that, we discovered bruises on our arms and back, and our bodies ached for a few days.
Little did I know that when Mak had seemed to lose her mind, she was actually waving to the guard, trying to attract his attention. She had noticed that he had helped women to get closer to the stone and scolded men from pushing too aggressively. Alhamdulillah. She was more resourceful, optimistic, and observant than I am :-)
All in all, I am proud and happy to be the one being with my Mother in her quest to kiss Hajar Aswad. I am honored to share those moments with her. Back to TOC
posted by Ina at 10:09 PM
1 Comments:
how does anyone know which religion the stone belongs to? as some people say that "it is not of muslim origin and that it was stolen" - is this true???
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