by A personal reflection on my second and third Hajjs, in 2016 and 2023, and the people who quietly walked beside me
There are journeys we plan for months, checking documents, comparing prices, marking calendars. And there are journeys that seem to have been planned for us long before we knew it, quietly, somewhere behind the scenes, by someone with better handwriting than ours. Hajj, I have come to believe, belongs to the second kind.
I have performed Hajj three times now. The first in 2010, with the late Junaid Jamshed. The second in 2016. The third in 2023. Three journeys to the same sacred ground, and yet none of them felt like a repeat of the one before it. Perhaps that is because nobody ever returns to a place as the same person who left it the first time.
The Kaaba does not move. Mina does not move. Arafat does not move. We do.
A Name Mentioned in Passing
After the first Hajj in 2010, I had no plans of ever going back. When you are standing before the Kaaba for the first time, you are not thinking about six years from now. You are simply trying to believe that you are actually there.
Back in Karachi, I met Mufti Naeem, an old friend of my father’s, may Allah have mercy on him and grant him the highest place in Jannat ul Firdous. In the middle of an unrelated conversation, almost like a footnote, he mentioned his brother in law.
“There is a good travel company, run by my brother in law. His name is Furqan Abdul Qadir. They are called Universal Brothers.”
I nodded. I thanked him. And then, the way most unimportant sounding things do, I forgot about it.
Or maybe I did not forget. Maybe certain things simply go underground and wait.
Hajj 2016, the Reference I Never Used
Six years passed before Hajj came up again, this time with my father, my sister and my aunt all travelling together. I collected quotations from several operators, the way one does before spending a great deal of money on something that matters more than money.
Somewhere in that process, I remembered Mufti Naeem’s name. I called him.
“You once mentioned that your brother in law had a travel agency?”
He said,
“Yes, yes. Furqan Abdul Qadir. Universal Brothers. Give them my reference. They will give you a good discount and look after you.”
I wrote it down this time. And then, when we actually reached Universal Brothers, we never mentioned him. Not once. Not at the counter, not during the briefing, not even when I finally sat across from Furqan bhai himself.
I am still not entirely sure why. Perhaps I wanted to know, quietly, whether the reference would matter at all, or whether the people in front of me would simply be who they were regardless of whose name I carried.
Furqan bhai turned out to be humble in a way that is difficult to manufacture. Not the practised humility of someone who has read a customer service manual. Something closer to plainness. He listened. He gave time. He did not make me feel that my questions were an inconvenience.
We compared his quotation against others, some excellent, some cheaper. In the end my father and I looked at each other, and one of us said,
“Let us go with them.”
Some decisions get made on paper. This one got made across a table.
What Hospitality Looks Like Up Close
Furqan bhai did something we had not asked for. He upgraded our rooms, a Kaaba view in Makkah, a Haram view in Madina, a little more comfort in our private accommodation in Aziziyah.
A room upgrade is rarely about the room. It is a way of saying, without quite saying it, that someone noticed you had come a long way.
Later, after we returned home, my father invited Furqan bhai and Junaid bhai and their families to dinner, partly to say thank you, partly because that is simply what my father does.
That evening we finally told them about Mufti Naeem.
“We actually came to you because of him.”
There was something almost comic about it, carrying a name across six years and never once using it. But by then it hardly seemed necessary. You do not need to explain who recommended someone after they have already given you your own reasons to recommend them.
The Ordinary Things You Remember
What stays with me from 2016 is not, strangely, the rituals themselves but the small physical facts around them. The Mina buffet, waiting after a long day of walking and standing and praying, rice and curries and continental food and fruit, nothing extraordinary, and yet extraordinary simply because it was there.
The Aziziyah Building buffet became something more than a place to eat. It turned into an unofficial meeting point, pilgrims arriving at different hours, someone asking whether an elderly uncle had eaten yet, someone else looking for the rest of their group, tea being poured somewhere in the background.
At home a bottle of cold water is just a bottle of cold water. After hours in the Saudi heat it becomes something closer to a small mercy.
Mina, Where Everyone Becomes a Pilgrim
You arrive at Mina thinking of yourself as a traveller. Within a day you remember that you are a pilgrim, and the distinction matters more than it sounds.
The tents were air conditioned, which helped, but what I remember more is the constant, quiet motion of people checking on other people. Hassan. Abrar. Qamar bhai. You would ask one of them a question and watch him disappear, and two minutes later someone else would arrive with the answer, as if the question itself had multiplied.
There must have been a WhatsApp group somewhere holding the whole operation together. Their phones never seemed to sleep. I am not sure they did either.
Arafat and the Weight You Carry Alone
Arafat is different from everywhere else. Whatever arrangements surround you, eventually you are left with yourself, one plain, one day, one prayer, and the strange awareness that everyone sitting near you has brought something invisible with them.
I noticed, more in 2023 than before, how much a clean bathroom or a place to sit can matter when you are travelling with an elderly parent. You begin doing arithmetic you never expected to do. How far. How long. Can he manage. Is there somewhere for him to rest.
These are not the questions Hajj is supposed to be about. And yet they occupy a surprising amount of the mind while everyone around you appears to be thinking only of prayer.
Hajj 2023, a Joke That Became a Plan
Seven years after 2016, Hajj found me again, this time through a WhatsApp message advertising an eight day package.
I read it over breakfast and laughed.
“Now even Hajj has become an express service. A helicopter will come, drop you from Makkah to Mina, then to Arafat, then Muzdalifah, and straight back to Karachi.”
My father did not laugh.
“Eight days is manageable.”
“Get me the information.”
This is something I have learned about fathers. You make a joke, and sometimes they quietly turn it into a project.
Why I Wanted Madina Too
I called Furqan bhai, who answered with his usual calm.
“You need to decide quickly. The Hajj flights are closing soon, and you will need to complete the vaccination and other requirements.”
We did not take the eight day package. I wanted a little more time, and there was another reason. I have always felt that if Allah allows me to reach Saudi Arabia, I should try to visit both Harams, the House of Allah in Makkah and the city of the Prophet ﷺ, peace be upon Him, in Madina. You never really know which journey will be your last.
So the longer route it was. Aziziyah, Mina, Arafat, Muzdalifah, Mina/Aziziyah again, and then Madina. Makkah overwhelms with majesty. Madina, I find, does something gentler. It holds you.
The Illness, the Passport and a Private Car
Hajj 2023 came with its own complication, a great deal of vomiting and gastrointestinal illness moving through the pilgrims that year.
My friend Dr Farooq, who was working in emergency care in Makkah at the time and has become something closer to a brother over the years, called to warn me.
“Take care of Uncle.”
He was particularly concerned because of my father’s age, and his advice was simple, to be careful and, if possible, to use private transportation.
I raised it with Junaid bhai, who asked me to speak with Furqan bhai, who simply cooperated. He helped release our passports from the Muallim so a private vehicle could be arranged.
I called Amir bhai, who had helped with our transport during earlier Umrahs.
“I need a car.”
“Where are you?”
“Makkah. Where are you?”
“Pakistan.”
“Well, that is not particularly useful.”
He laughed, and then, despite the peak season and the prices that come with it, he arranged everything at a reasonable rate. We travelled from Makkah to Madina privately. A small thing, except that small things stop being small when you are travelling with an elderly parent.
A Cheque, a Flight and a Sentence I Have Not Forgotten
There is one more episode from 2023 I keep returning to. I had handed Furqan bhai a crossed cheque for roughly nine point eight million rupees on a Wednesday. Not a pay order. Not a bank draft. A cheque.
He gave us our tickets and visas. I looked at the departure time. Thursday night, eleven fifty nine, essentially Friday morning. I called him.
“Furqan bhai, is everything alright? You are giving us the flight tomorrow?”
He explained that another flight was available later, likely the last Hajj flight of the season.
“Should I move you to that one?”
I thought about it for a moment.
“No, no. Let us leave it.”
The next day, while I was praying in the Haram, a message arrived. The cheque had been deposited. It cleared the following Monday. I spoke with him at the Aziziyah Building, half joking and half not.
“If, God forbid, the cheque had bounced, would it not have been better to deposit it on Thursday? At least it would have cleared by Friday.”
His answer has stayed with me since.
“Human error can happen. If there was an issue, we would have dealt with it. You weren’t running away, and we weren’t running away.”
I have thought about that sentence more than once since. It says more about a person than any brochure ever could.
The Family Behind the Journey
The clearest difference between my first Hajj and the later two was not the hotels or the food. It was the presence of the people responsible for us.
With Junaid Jamshed, in 2010, he himself was closely involved with the pilgrims, though most of the arrangement sat behind him, somewhere less visible. With Universal Brothers, the family itself seemed woven into the journey. Furqan bhai. Junaid bhai. Their own father (May Allah rest his soul and grant Jannah – Aameen) and families moving through the same heat, the same roads, the same waiting.
There is a particular comfort in that. When the person responsible for you is standing beside you in the same sun, your problems stop being theoretical to him. They become his as well.
The People Whose Names Rarely Appear
Farhan Atta was the first person we met, back in 2016, and the impression he left, of someone who actually cared rather than performed care, had not faded by 2023. If anything it had grown steadier.
Hassan worked in a way that seemed to exceed what anyone could reasonably ask of him. Abrar was the same. So was Qamar bhai. Different people, different temperaments, the same underlying instinct to simply be present.
These are the names that do not appear on any package itinerary. The buses and rooms and buffets are visible. The human effort holding them together rarely is.
What Remains After You Come Home
Eventually you leave Makkah. Eventually you leave Madina too. The suitcase goes back into the cupboard, the ihram is washed and folded, the photographs get buried under newer ones, and ordinary life resumes its usual rhythm.
But something stays behind, quietly, in the corner of the mind. A sentence. A face. A road. The first sight of the Kaaba, or the memory of someone helping you when you were too tired to help yourself.
Mufti Naeem’s Unintended Legacy
I sometimes wonder whether Mufti Naeem knew, back in 2010, what a single sentence could become. He probably did not. He was likely just doing what old friends do for each other, passing along a useful name.
He mentioned it once. Six years later we acted on it. Seven years after that we acted on it again. Three Hajjs, one recommendation, and a small collection of people who quietly became part of the story.
He is no longer here to see how the story continued. May Allah have mercy on him and grant him the highest place in Jannat ul Firdous.
Three Hajjs, One Gratitude
I do not want this to read like an advertisement for anyone, and I hope it has not. I have stayed in beautiful hotels I would never recommend to a friend, and I have met people whose names never appeared in any brochure whose kindness I still carry with me.
What I remember, when I think back on these three journeys, is not a logo or a package. It is Mufti Naeem mentioning a name in passing. It is meeting Furqan bhai without telling him whose reference had brought me there. It is my father’s dinner invitation. It is a WhatsApp message that started as a joke and ended as a pilgrimage. It is a passport released at the right moment, a private car arranged despite impossible timing, a cheque that took its own slow route through the banking system while I stood praying in the Haram, unaware.
And it is one sentence, said quietly and without any need to impress anyone.
“You weren’t running away, and we weren’t running away.”
Perhaps that is what trust really is. Two people on either side of something ordinary, both understanding, without needing to say so, that something larger than the transaction is actually taking place.
The pilgrim rarely sees the arrangements happening behind him, the bus being checked, the room being confirmed, the phone call being answered at an inconvenient hour. He simply keeps walking toward the Kaaba. Perhaps that is the quietest form of service there is, to carry the weight so someone else can keep walking.
You think you are the one making the journey. And then, somewhere along the road, you notice that you were invited all along. Once you understand that, you spend the rest of your life hoping the invitation comes again.
Alhamdulillah, for the invitation. For the journey. For every person Allah placed along the road, seen and unseen: Furqan Bhai, Junaid Bhai, Farhan Bhai, Hassan, Abrar, Qamar bhai, the entire Qadir family, and the many others whose names I no longer remember but whose effort quietly became part of my pilgrimage. May Allah accept the Hajj of every pilgrim, and may He grant Mufti Naeem the highest place in Jannat ul Firdous.