The Mecca Diaries

'Writing this now, on a borrowed laptop, in my hotel room four minutes from the haram, my eyes are filled with tears. How have I been so fortunate as to come here?' What is it really like to go on hajj? What is the truth about this high point in a Muslim's religious experience - in a far-away Middle-Eastern country, at the holiest sites of the Islamic religion - and in the presence of nearly three million other pilgrims? Part diary, part guidebook, part spiritual memoir, this absorbing book records Rayda Jacobs's preparation and departure for hajj; her stay in Medina and journey to the city of Mecca; her experience of the five days of hajj; and, finally, her return to South Africa. Illustrated throughout with her own photographs, Jacobs's candid diary lifts the veil from the life-changing experience of hajj - for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Readers of her "Confessions of a Gambler" and "Postcards from South Africa" will not be disappointed by Jacobs's fascinating personal account of her 2004/5 pilgrimage.
 
'Writing this now, on a borrowed laptop, in my hotel room four minutes from the haram, my eyes are filled with tears. How have I been so fortunate as to come here?' What is it really like to go on hajj? What is the truth about this high point in a Muslim's religious experience - in a far-away Middle-Eastern country, at the holiest sites of the Islamic religion - and in the presence of nearly three million other pilgrims? Part diary, part guidebook, part spiritual memoir, this absorbing book records Rayda Jacobs's preparation and departure for hajj; her stay in Medina and journey to the city of Mecca; her experience of the five days of hajj; and, finally, her return to South Africa. Illustrated throughout with her own photographs, Jacobs's candid diary lifts the veil from the life-changing experience of hajj - for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Readers of her "Confessions of a Gambler" and "Postcards from South Africa" will not be disappointed by Jacobs's fascinating personal account of her 2004/5 pilgrimage.