Appointment In Mecca

Muslim pilgrims walk near a construction crane that crashed into the Grand Mosque in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 12, 2015.   At least 107 people were killed when the crane toppled over at Mecca's Grand Mosque on Sept. 11.                        (photo by REUTERS/Mohamed Al Hwaity)


I wrote a post about how Saudi Arabia was no longer competent to be the Protector of the Two Noble Mosques.
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-protector-of-haramayn.html

That opinion is reiterated in Dawn:
In Makkah I saw little of Islam’s compassion, but a lot of Saudi Arabia’s neglect
Sabreena Razaq Hussain   2015

...The manners and communication skills of the stewards and police deployed in and around the mosque were deplorable. With pilgrims from hundreds of countries, one would think that communication in at least one language other than Arabic would be available. This was not the case.

Also read: Witnesses blame Saudi officials for Haj horror

Not only that, but their manner of aggressively shouting at even the most softly spoken of pilgrims was both needless and a cause of humiliation for those on the receiving end. Nobody had ever spoken to me or my parents in this way before.

It appeared the only thing the very young policemen were authorised to do was shout the Arabic word for “no” and to barricade entry routes as and when they pleased without warning, offering no alternative: clearly a recipe for a crush or a stampede in any of the holy sites.

We were in the mosque when they barricaded an exit and said we couldn’t leave until the next prayer finished, an hour and a half later. The physical pressure of hundreds of people had started to build up behind us, causing extreme anxiety and hyperventilation...

After I had written my post, at least 717 pilgrims were killed and 863 were injured during a panic stampede during the Hajj on September 24th at Mina, just outside Mecca :
http://www.dawn.com/news/1209084

 “If the pilgrims had followed instructions, this type of accident could have been avoided. “

Perhaps the authorities should provide some flogging for the dullards. They do so for their own citizens who have not entirely "learned the ropes".

Yet a mystery remains.
When the crane fell, I was angry and said that Allah had struck the kingdom - ( ضربت يد الله ), never once expecting a sequel disaster to be so quick in the making.
Observe the photo above in greater detail:

There is a man in a yellow hard hat wearing an orange shirt with a shawl over shoulder; immediately to the right in the photo is a man taking photos. This man is dressed in white shirt with a collar colored red-white-red. He has a grey object hanging down his back, and it may be a parasol by the looks of it. His phone-camera is held immediately below a window a/c unit on a construction or police shack.

This man was among the  casualties on September 24th.

It is as if he stumbled across Death - the Sunderer of Friendships and the Destroyer of Delights - while taking photos in the grand Mosque, and Death stared at him with wild surprise. Frightened, this man ran off to Mina, only to find Death again, who said that he had been totally surprised to see him and his camera at the Grand Mosque on the 12th, since Death knew that they had an appointment and photo-op in Mina on the 24th.............

......... and Death knew that the temporary Hajj visa was only good for  7 days !!!!!

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