August 1325

 

Traveling for many weeks now, I have successfully traversed my city of Tangier, the larger places of Morocco, but now my journey begins with a group of caravan travelers whom I have recently gotten acquainted with. They, too, are making the pilgrimage to Mecca. These individuals look to be not much older than myself, yet they seem even more eager. The clothes that they travel in are more modest than mine as they brought headscarves made from cheap cloth and tunics with unastounding craftsmanship. They don’t come from a background of scholars, nor do they intend to study religion and law. Nonetheless, we decided to travel together for now so we could set up our tents together without fear of attack from Arab rebels.

 

After some days spent over the Maghrib, we arrived at Qusantinah which was not drastically different from Tangier. Golden sand with a warm, beaming sun reminded me of home. However, the resemblance did not last long. My traveling group and I set up our tents just outside the town near some homes with the intent to continue travel early in the morning. As the night progressed, I noticed a dampness in my bed, and as I looked up, rain fell through the cloth from my tent and onto my face. As I rushed out of the tent, I noticed that my fellow travelers were covered in the rain, too. We decided to approach one of the residences near our tents, and a woman named Nerjes, a beautiful girl, let us into her house without hesitation. Similar to a star in the night sky, Nerjes was indescribable. The next morning, Nerjes alerted her neighbors that many of our things were soiled by the rain, and within an hour, the mayor of the town came to her house. He demanded that our clothes be washed at his house. Once we picked up our belongings to continue traveling, he handed me a gray and blue Syrian scarf made from fine silk. The scarf was softer than the sand of Tangier and a deeper blue than the night sky in Qusantinah. In a moment of confusion, I felt something hard in the scarf. Two gold dinars! Zakat, the 3rd pillar of Islam (Britannica), has been shown! The first alms of my journey, and hopefully, not the last. With this, my new acquaintances and I set out once again in hopes of reaching Mecca in the next few months.