‘Bodies on the ground’: Pilgrims recount haj heat horrors

RIYADH – After years of failing to secure a haj visa, Mr Yasser finally concluded he had no choice but to perform the holy pilgrimage illegally, a move he now regrets.

While he survived the gruelling annual rites that unfolded in extreme heat again in 2024, he has not seen his wife Safaa since June 16 and fears she is among the more than 1,000 reported fatalities – the majority unregistered Egyptians like himself.

“I have searched every single hospital in Mecca. She’s not there,” the 60-year-old retired engineer said on June 21 by phone from his hotel room, where he is reluctant to pack his wife’s suitcase, hoping that she will return to do it herself.

“I don’t want to believe in this possibility that she’s dead. Because if she’s dead, it’s the end of her life and also the end of my life”.

Egypt accounts for more than half of the haj fatalities in 2024 – 658 out of more than 1,000 reported as at June 21 by around 10 countries stretching from Senegal to Indonesia, according to an AFP tally.

An Arab diplomat said that 630 of those 658 dead Egyptians were unregistered, meaning they could not rely on access to amenities that make the pilgrimage more bearable.

That included air-conditioned tents meant to offer some relief as temperatures soared to as high as 51.8 deg C at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam.

In the first Saudi comment on the deaths, a senior official said that 577 people died on the haj’s two main days on June 15 and 16, and that an overall toll was still being compiled.

“The state did not fail, but there was a misjudgment on the part of people who did not appreciate the risks,” the official said.

Off-the-books fees

The haj, one of the five pillars of Islam, must be completed by all Muslims with the means at least once.

Yet, official permits are allocated to countries through a quota system and distributed to individuals via a lottery.

Even for those who can obtain them, the steep costs make the irregular route – which costs thousands of dollars less – more attractive.

That is especially true since 2019, when Saudi Arabia began issuing general tourist visas, making it easier to travel to the Gulf kingdom.

But for Mr Yasser, who declined to be identified by his full name because he is still in Saudi Arabia, the complications from being unregistered became clear as soon as he reached the country in May.

Well before the formal haj rites began a week ago, some shops and restaurants refused service to visitors who could not show permits on the official haj app, known as Nusuk.

Once the long days of walking and praying beneath the blazing sun got under way, he could not access official haj buses – the only transportation around the holy sites – without paying exorbitant, off-the-books fees.

When heat drove him to exhaustion, he sought urgent care at a hospital in Mina but was turned away, he said, again for lack of a permit.

As their conditions worsened, Mr Yasser and his wife lost each other in the crowds during the “stoning of the devil” ritual in Mina.

Since then, he has repeatedly postponed their return flight home, hoping she will turn up.

“I will keep postponing it until I find her,” he said.

‘All of Egypt is sad’

Other unregistered Egyptian pilgrims interviewed by AFP this week described similar hardships – and similarly alarming sights along the haj route as the heat’s toll mounted.

“There were bodies on the ground” in Arafat, Mina and on the way to Mecca, said Mr Mohammed, 31, an Egyptian who lives in Saudi Arabia and performed the haj in 2024 with his 56-year-old mother.

“I saw people suddenly collapse and die from exhaustion.”

Another Egyptian whose mother died on the pilgrimage route, and who declined to be identified by even a first name because she lives in Riyadh, said it was impossible to get her mother an ambulance.

An emergency vehicle materialised only after her mother was dead, taking the body to an unknown location.

She added: “Until now my cousins in Mecca are still searching for the body of my mum... don’t we have the right to get a last look at her before she is buried?”

Even some registered pilgrims struggled to access emergency services, pointing to a system that was overwhelmed, said Mr Mustafa, whose elderly parents – who had haj permits – both died after they were separated from younger relatives.

“We knew they were tired,” Mr Mustafa said by phone from Egypt. “They were walking very long distances and they couldn’t find water, and it was so hot.”

He had been looking forward to welcoming them home once they returned, but now his only solace comes from the fact they have been buried in the holy city of Mecca.

“Of course, we believe in what God has written for them... but all of Egypt is sad,” he said.

“We’re never going to see them again.” AFP