Angelica Lindsey-Ali - Ali Bonne Maman

 

A little over six years ago, I got an invitation to take a five-day desert vacation, where I would sleep in tents, stand in line with thousands of people and use squatty potties. This wasn't Coachella. It wasn't Burning Man either. My first response was, “Oh, hell no,” because I was eight months pregnant. I don't like people that much, especially not when I'm eight months pregnant. [audience laughter] And the idea of living with thousands of strangers in the desert didn't appeal to me. But I said yes, because this was the trip of a lifetime. This was Hajj. 

 

Now, Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. It's a pilgrimage that thousands, millions of people take every year. They save up their entire lives to go. It's like if you complete Hajj, you've completed 20 percent of your religion. And in 2012, my husband and I were two of those people.

 

Now, I had serious imposter syndrome going into Hajj. I've always been a very spiritual person, but I color outside the lines a little bit. I pray every day, five times a day, sometimes more on a particularly rough day. But I curse a lot. The F bomb is my favorite. [audience laughter] I like to listen to the Quran at home with my children. But on the way to work, I listen to Prince and trap music. I wear the khimar every single day, but I have been known to go out in sequin leggings and thigh-high boots. I am a bit of a spiritual anomaly, and I wasn't sure that Hajj was the right place for me. 

 

But I had been dreaming about Hajj for a long time. It all started in Ms. Atkins' third grade social studies class. We were doing a unit on world religions, and she showed us this picture of what looked like thousands of people. It was the most number of people I had ever seen in one photograph. They were all dressed in white and they were circling this little black box. She told us it was the Kaaba, and this was Saudi Arabia, and these were Muslims and they were making Hajj. And right then and there, I made it my mission. I said, “One day, Ms. Atkins, I'm going to make Hajj.” 

 

] She said, “Angelica, didn't you just say you got baptized this year? [audience laughter] You have to be Muslim to make Hajj.” I figured my strict Christian mother and father wouldn't let me attend. So, I set my sights on more attainable pursuits, like winning the third-grade spelling bee and convincing Mario Lumpkins that he was indeed in love with me. [audience chuckle] 

 

But dreams of Hajj resurfaced when I was a sophomore in college. I had become disenchanted with the church that I had grown up in. I happened upon that same picture that Ms. Atkins had shown us in our third-grade class. I set out to understand the wonders of Islam. I was going to prove this religion wrong. What I found was a practicality, a simplicity and an elegance that stole my heart. At the age of 23, four years after I set off on my spiritual quest, I found myself kneeling in front of a Senegalese imam in a northwest Detroit Cape Cod style bungalow, saying the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith.

 

It was six years later that I met my husband. Now, unlike every other Muslim woman I knew at the time, I was not trying to get married. I wanted to travel the world, see the scene, teach dance. I didn't want to be tied down. But my friend Fardo said, "Angelica, you need to get married. Look, my husband has a friend. He's really tall, he's cute, he's smart. You'll love him." So, she set me up on a blind date at her house. 

 

I showed up four hours late for the date. He showed up five hours late. [audience laughter] She was right. He was everything that she said he was. He was smart, he was funny, he was engaging, handsome. But I'm 5’11” and he's 5’6”. He wasn't exactly tall. But what Fardo didn't know, is that I loves me a bite-sized man. [audience laughter] He was like a fun-size Snickers, just enough chocolate. [audience laughter] 

 

We got married six weeks after we met. Children soon followed. He helped me make good on my single woman's promise to myself. When he came home one day and said, "Babe, I got a job teaching English in Saudi Arabia. We're moving to Jeddah." Now, Jeddah is the jewel of the Red Sea. It's like a Muslim New York City, and it's only 45 minutes away from Mecca. My dream of Hajj was now closer than ever. But there was the imposter syndrome again. 

 

You see, I'm the only Muslim in my family. And on Hajj, the men and the women are in separate tents. So, I couldn't be with my husband. I would be with dozens of strange Muslim women. I was afraid that I was going to mess up their Hajj experience, [audience chuckle] because I'm wayward, very irreverent, almost always inappropriate. Like the first time I went to a western-style grocery store in Jeddah, I was super excited. It wasn't like the normal farmer's markets we were going to. This place had Cheerios, they had Pepsi, they had Cheez-Its and it was all in Arabic. It was so cool. 

 

I was dressed in a black abaya, the long flowing gown. I had a black face veil over my face. I was really trying to blend in. But the part that I couldn't turn off was my internal jukebox. See, it's a little raunchy and it plays music in my head at any time. Sometimes the music that's selected is almost always inappropriate. It was really hot that day. So, I'm walking with my stroller, and I'm going through the store looking at all the sights and, [sings] It's getting hot in here, [audience laughter] so take off all your clothes. I am getting so hot, I want to take my clothes off, get a little bit of ah ah. [audience laughter] 

 

I mean, my head is back, my eyes are closed. By the time I get to the second, ah ah, I open my eyes and every other person in the store is looking at me. And they're all men, because men do the majority of the shopping in Saudi Arabia. I was afraid that just like I ruined their shopping experience, I was going to ruin Hajj for some poor unknowing woman. 

 

But when we got to the tents, I realized that it really wasn't a tent. It was these multi-roomed, carpeted, air-conditioned deals. And the women inside were a different mix than I had expected. There was the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Mexican woman who had brought her nursing baby, and she would whip her boob out to feed him in front of all of the other women and they were all aghast and I was secretly laughing. There was the British-Algerian woman who was very prim and proper. I nicknamed her the Muslim Hyacinth Bucket. [audience laughter] 

 

There was the Irish woman with pink and blue cornrows and shaved sides. She was a white girl, but she had a big booty and she taught us all how to twerk. [audience laughter] There was the Somali contingent who wore triple black veils, and gloves, and bloomers and socks, but sat in circles and told ridiculously dirty jokes. They were nothing like what I imagined them to be. But I wondered, would they think I was cool? Were they cool? How was these five days going to go? 

 

The day after we got to Hajj is the Day of Arafat. Now, the Day of Arafat is the most important religious ritual in Hajj. You spend the entire day praying, engaging in these fervent acts of worship. But I had a secret. See, I knew just enough Arabic to make my five daily prayers, but I didn't have any extra credit prayers in my pocket. I knew one du'a, one short prayer. I sat in a corner by myself, just reciting it over and over and over again. 

 

The teacher showed up, like they do every time we have Hajj, and she said, "Okay, ladies. I'm going to teach you the very prayer that the Prophet Muhammad would make on this day. This is the most important prayer that you can make." So, I got out my notebook and my pen. I was ready. No more kindergarten for me. I'm ready to move up to high school Arabic. 

 

As she started talking, she began reciting the exact same prayer that I had been saying all day. I was feeling like maybe I wasn't an imposter after all. The women in the group, they were cool. They were kind of growing on me, especially when we went out to make our rounds. The men and the women are separated sometimes even when we're in the crowds. And Muslim Hyacinth, she was like a linebacker in the crowds. She told all the women, "Protect the belly." When a man tried to push me out of my seat on the train, she clotheslined him. It was a beautiful thing to see.

 

So, on the third day of Hajj, when we all sat down to have breakfast, I decided to take out a jar of jam. Now, on Hajj, we eat traditional Saudi food. We have a breakfast of ful, which is fava beans mixed with olive oil and spices. It's really delicious. They serve it with a flatbread called tamees. Now, normally, this would be a great breakfast, but there were squatty potties and I was pregnant and it was beans and bread. [audience chuckle] It wasn't exactly a good mix for my digestive system. 

 

So, I took out my jar of Bonne Maman all-fruit preserves and tried to slide a little bit on my bread, so that nobody would see. I told you I don't like people that much. [audience laughter] But the Moroccan woman next to me says, "Sister Angelica, can I have a scoop?" I figured, this is Hajj, so I let her have some. And just as I feared, the woman next to her asked for some and the woman next to her, and the woman next to her. I watched my jar of jam make its way around a circle of three dozen women. 

 

But something interesting happened. As each woman took a scoop of jam, she shared her mother or her grandmother's recipe. For the women who had come from cultures that they didn't eat jam for breakfast, they said, "Hmm, dessert for breakfast, I can get down with that." And just like I feared, by the time the jar made its way back around to me, it was completely empty. But my heart was full. 

 

On the last day of Hajj, we make a rite called tawaf al-wada, the farewell tawaf. It's seven circumambulations around that black box that I had seen in Ms. Atkins' third grade class. By this time, pregnancy had gotten the best of me. My feet were swollen, my head was achy, I was dehydrated. As I walked into the crowd, the sheer number of people lifted me up. I couldn't even feel my feet on the ground. I did the worst possible thing you can do when you're in a crowd. I looked around at all of the people and I began to hyperventilate. My blond-haired, blue-eyed, Mexican hippie mama friend said, "Angelica, close your eyes and just breathe." As I did, I could feel a wash of cool air flow over me. It was just enough for me to finish making those seven rounds. 

 

I had to walk back to the bus. It was about 2.5 kilometers. I was dragging my pregnant belly. I sent my husband ahead. I was certain that the bus had left me and had already gone back to Jeddah. But when I got on the bus, I saw that Hyacinth was sitting there saving a seat for me, just like she had done on the train. We went back home and picked up our children, and I spent the next few days eating fried chicken, ice cream, cookies, all of the things that a pregnant woman craves when she's on Hajj. And I reflected. 

 

I had gone to Hajj as a wayward, incomplete Muslim, and I came back from Hajj, a wayward, incomplete Muslim. [audience chuckle] Because Hajj is not about being in competition with the millions of other people who are there. Hajj was about refining and becoming a more complete version of myself. It made me stop and think about the stereotypes that I had foisted upon my Hajj sisters in the tent, the same type of stereotypes that I get upset when people lob at me. 

 

My daughter was born six weeks later, a miraculous Saudi home birth. That's a story for another time. And now, when she doesn't want to pray, she gets to tease her brothers and sisters and say, "Well, I've already made 20 percent of my religion, because I did Hajj in mommy's belly." [audience laughter] When she turned six this December, I didn't even get a chance to post her picture on Facebook, because when I opened my Facebook page, one of my Hajj sisters had already put her up on the page. We're all still very close. We trade stories, recipes, pictures of our babies. Those ladies from the tent, they're no longer strangers. They're my sisters.