Hatem’s Diaries

Just wanted to wish happy Eid for everyone ! I was offline for few days as you may noticed and I’ll be back online in the next days inchallah. Today is last day in pilgrimage, and since yesterday muslims start leaving Holy makkah to go back their countries. Yesterday as you may heared there was about 350 dead in the stampede which happened on the Jamarat Bridge in Mina. None of the news I heared or read talked in details about the accident but it happened certainly under the bridge and there is really big difference in the organisation under the bridge and on it.

First under the bridge people can enter the first Jamara from all directions, and of course they can go out from all directions too, while on the bridge there is just one direction which is from the first Jamara to the second one. I passed just after the accident happen on the Jamarat bridge and really didn’t notice anything strange ! Everything was very normal. I took this picture after the latest Jamara, which is Jamret Al Aquaba.

And when I’m back home I heared the news on television, and until today news don’t talk only about it ! Last night gsm was saturated, enable to call or even receive calls. And as you may imagine lot of discussions started here and there about Jamarat, pilgrimage, this accident, islam … etc !

Seriously pilgrims are not considering Jamarat as a ritual at all, they consider it as a game, some other think that there is really satan there and they’re trying to shoot him with everything they find around them, others don’t want to miss their plane and pressed to going back home, some of them shoot 10m before they arrive to the jamarat. One in place and one on my head !

I really can’t describe the ignorance that you can saw there, but if one day you go to Makkah to do hadj and you go to mina, don’t be scared just try to learn what you should do before you go there. And after all it’s a ritual not a game, and if everyone consider it like this, the jamarat will never be crowded and stampede like today. Even with milion of people, everyone can do the ritual without any problem and in time.

I was there at about 16h on the Jamarat and there was absolutely no trace of anything as I have said. You can imagine with 120 ambulances just under the bridge waiting, and 3 hospitals just in Mina, that any case could be treated in absolutely no time. The only problems still there which is pilgrims who don’t know anything, and there is no way to explain them coz they are very old and most of them don’t speak arabic at all.

Anyway I need to rest the few days then I’ll be back blogging, so eid mubarak again for everyone !

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