“You may get shoved out of the way by a burly Turkish woman,” my brother continued. “A man might think it is his God-given right to pee in front of you. Just be patient and know why you are there in the first place.”

He called a few days later: “Listen, I forgot to tell you something.”“Do your business before you go anywhere,” my brother said, describing how he once had to wait two or three hours to move perhaps 50 yards to a hotel. “Toilets, toilets, be very conscious of where they are and how you can get there.” Diarrhea is an ever-present threat. “You might need to find a quick escape route to a bathroom.”

My father chimed in: “Buy your dates in Taif,” a Saudi city near the holy sites. There, he said, “they only cost a couple of dollars a kilo. If you buy them in Mecca or Medina, it’s around $35 a kilo. Everything is more expensive there.”

And then, Arwa, who made the journey in 2004, refocused me.“The spiritual feeling overtakes” these earthly issues, “the people that rip you off, the men that are sexually assaulting people in front of you,” she wrote on WhatsApp. “It takes over all of that. It’s beautiful and unforgettable.”

Hajj Prep: Search Soul, Buy Sturdy Shoes, Pay the Dentist – The New York Times

Wild.