Thursday 3 November 2011

A Travel Tale from the Holy City of Makkah



For your reading pleasure: One of my travel stories from The Female Cell to usher the 2011 Hajj season . 'Shoe Bag' was inspired from my Hajj pilgrimage in Nov'06 to Jan'07.


"Kak Teh and I take off our rubber slippers and put them in two lime green shoe bags with our name tags and tighten the strings to secure it. Our travel agent has provided them to us when we checked into the hotel and advised us to take them to the mosque. It is common for pilgrims to lose footwear left outside.

At the entrance, a woman security guard in black looks into our bags. She mumbles something in Arabic as she returns them and gestures for us to proceed. I take my sister's hand as we enter we admire the floral motifs carved on the entrance arch, the walls are of white marble that have light grey strokes in them, the high ceiling is carved in arabesque and the white marble floor we walk on while pilgrims shuffle around us hurriedly.

We ignore the shoe racks around the pillars as we have our footwear in our bags. Yesterday, we had trouble finding our shoes at the racks. We have, also, carefully hidden our flat purses in the deep pockets of our robes as a precaution. We go up a flight of steps to another large area and down again to another. The joints in my knees wobble from fatigue and I see that Kak Teh is a little out of breath...."


Full story: Shoe Bag

3 comments:

  1. Hello Ms/Mr. Rumaizah Abu Bakar I am one of the degree students from a Teachers Training Institute in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. We are assigned to do an interview with one of the Malaysian authors/ writers and me and a few of my friends would like to interview you if you don't mind. On behalf of my group members, I would like to know if you can spare some time for us to interview you. The interview can either be a live interview or an online interview. If you don't prefer to have an online interview do inform us so that we can meet and interview you personally. Thank you

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  2. Hi. Thanks for your interest. Sure. Please email me your contact details & questions at rumaizah123@yahoo.com and let's go from there:)

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  3. Ahoy madam rumaizah,me and me crew at University request ye guidance for the plot and probably the style of language(simile,personification et cetera)

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