Mecca and Medina brace for record losses this year

By Ashraf Khalil

Sayed Moustafa al-Qazwini sounds genuinely worried over the telephone. A Shiite imam based in the southern California city of Costa Mesa, Qazwini has led annual groups of pilgrims to Mecca for more than 15 years.

But this year could be very different, thanks to global anxiety about swine flu.

Qazwini, whose title “Sayed" indicates a direct bloodline to Prophet Mohamed, normally accompanies more than 100 Shiite pilgrims every year, and said he needs at least 70 commitments to make the trip worthwhile. As of the second week of September, he was well behind that number. Five of Qazwini’s brothers are also imams in the US. “They’re having the same problems," he said. “I’m adapting myself to the idea that we will not have a Hajj trip this year. It’s very painful for someone like me who’s addicted to the Hajj."

Qazwini is already preparing a backup plan: a trip to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Tellingly, he believes his congregants might be less frightened of visiting Iraq this year than Mecca.

As Hajj season approaches (the pilgrimage is scheduled for the third week of November) Saudi officials, tour operators and businessmen in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are bracing for devastating losses, due to swine flu fears.

Arabian Business magazine, which has dedicated a special section of its website to swine flu coverage, estimated the overall losses at USD266 million.

“We’re receiving cancellations from all over the world," said Waleed Abu Sabaa, whose company owns 20 hotels in the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina. “If it goes on like this, we’re going to be in big trouble."

Abu Sabaa said his hotels have lost USD16 million in potential business already this year. He estimated a 50 per cent drop in attendance so far, especially in the 5-star hotels, and joked that this was a great year to get a bargain.

The drop has even extended to Saudi citizens. Abu Saaba said the visits to Mecca by Saudi nationals have dropped by 50 percent this year. He said that friends in the coastal city of Jeddah, a 45-minute drive away, have told him they are afraid to visit Mecca.

It is a prospect that is both frightening and frustrating for Abu Sabaa, head of the Hotels and Tourism Committee for the Mecca Chamber of Commerce. He feels he’s fighting (and losing) against a hysterical myth that has no basis in medical reality.

“People have made something out of nothing," he said. “People should not worry. For starters they’re all Muslim and should have faith in God."

It’s still too early to conclusively tell just how this year’s Hajj numbers will be affected—partially because pilgrims’ reluctance has delayed the entire reservation process. Iman Samy, vice president of Golden Tours, a prominent local agency that organizes Hajj trips, said prospective pilgrims are afraid to write the check for fear that the trip will be cancelled and they won’t get their money back.

“In normal years, this is the right time. But this year it’s too early," Samy said. “The hotels are just waiting to see if we’re going to take the rooms or not. They’ve stopped even asking us for the money."

But early estimates, based on the numbers traveling to perform the Umra rituals, indicate a massive drop in numbers.

The fear has particularly affected business from Egypt, where public hysteria already prompted the government to kill millions of pigs despite a lack of proof that the disease can be transferred from animals to humans.

Egyptians normally flock to Mecca in droves during Ramadan, signaling the unofficial start of the three-month high season that culminates with the Hajj. An average of 430,000 Egyptians perform Umra during Ramadan every year, Abu Sabaa said. This year slightly more than one third of that number made the trip.

To date, just over 2000 people have died worldwide from the virus, including 19 in Saudi Arabia. Egypt has seen only two deaths so far—one of them a woman who reportedly contracted the disease in Saudi while on Umra.

While Abu Sabaa maintains that the swine flu fears are greatly exaggerated, the Hajj generally is a breeding ground for all manner of illness. The confluence of millions of pilgrims from around the world, jammed together under physically exhausting circumstances ensures than many come down with some form of low-grade illness during or immediately after the experience.

“We call it the ‘Hajj Flu.’ Everybody gets it," said Qazwini. “It’s something you just can’t escape from."

Just as illness is a natural part of the Hajj, so is death. The ritual has frequently witnessed tragic stampedes and fires that have killed hundreds. But even during a non-eventful year, several pilgrims die of natural causes each day due to the harsh physical conditions and the fact that many pilgrims delay the trip until late in life. After each of the five daily prayers at Mecca’s Grand Mosque, a special prayer for the dead is held and the bodies of the freshly deceased are carried into the mosque wrapped in white sheets.

Saudi authorities insist they are prepared to conduct the annual ritual safely. Health ministry officials have repeatedly stated that they have sufficient stores of the anti-viral medicine and have set up quarantine areas to house the infected, if necessary.

Repeated attempts to contact the Ministry of Health were unsuccessful. But Nail el-Jubeir, an official with the Saudi embassy in Washington DC, admitted that swine flu represents a new wrinkle in the massive annual logistical challenge.

“The flu for us was the least of our concerns in the past," said el-Jubeir, noting that the normal priorities were preventing stampedes and fires and even other diseases. “Yellow fever, meningitis, a few years ago polio became an issue with some of the African pilgrims," he said.

One of the preventative steps by the Saudis earlier this year was to request all nations sending pilgrims to impose age restrictions, allowing only those between the ages of 25 and 65 to participate.

The new restrictions have already prompted angry responses from those deemed unfit. In August, an estimated 300 Egyptians staged a sit-in at Cairo airport after they were prevented from traveling for Umra.

Other countries went even further. Iran and Tunis issued blanket bans on their citizens performing Umra rituals this year. No country has yet banned its citizens from traveling for Hajj—a move that would be highly controversial since it would directly contradict religious obligation.

And while an outright cancellation of this year’s Hajj seems both unthinkable and logistically impossible, some predict they will see individual governments debating whether to ban their citizens from attending this year.

Samy, the Egyptian travel agency vice president, says much will depend on the condition of those pilgrims currently performing Umra when they return home near the end of September.

“If we have a lot of cases from the Umrah, I would expect [the Egyptian government] will cancel the Hajj," she said. “Let’s just cross our fingers and see what happens."