The Nomadic Alternative – Page 113

XI

Islam fanned out from Mecca - the city set in a valley of sterile soil. Like Judaism, the religion professed by the Prophet Mohammed is a stratagem for settlement, arising in an atmosphere of high finance and international trade. Its commands are clear, strident, and make no concessions. They will keep the people from the malaise of settlement. The Hadj or sacred journey to Mecca is an artificial migration cycle for settlers and takes over where real nomadism leaves off. The Prophet declared it the duty of every believer to journey at least once in his lifetime to his spiritual centre, there to encircle the Kaaba, a shrine containing a black stone of celestial origin. A litany of prayer, prostrations and processions were the concrete media through which believers affirmed they were travellers in this world making their way to another. "The Pilgrimage", Mohammed said, "is a sort of punishment."

The Holy City bulks large in the imagination of every believer. Since childhood he has absorbed the descriptions of other pilgrims. He has feasted his eyes on diagrams of the holy places - in the mosque or scrawled as graffiti on mud walls. That Place is infinitely more numinous and transporting than his profane home, and the meteoric Black Stone attracts him as a magnet. But though his pilgrimage may imitate the migration cycle of a nomad, it functions in reverse. It detaches him from his 'sinful' homeland and lures him to a bright place of enlightenment. The nomad's journey never forces him to leave his homeland. He cannot be detached - except by settlement.

appearance." The orbital ring dance mimes the antics of the goats as they gambol about on their way to the mountains. The men and boys ritually perform the migration in haste. There is not one moment to be lost. Egypt is the Death of Captivity. The Passover is Life in Movement.