Book Review by Rakhi Dalal
Book Title: Her Hajj Story: Travel Diaries of Women Pilgrims from Assam
Author: Teresa Rehman
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
There are some journeys which stay alive not in published word but in cupboards and old family trunks. Journeys whose stories travel through families, passed down as memories. Journeys, whose accounts may or may not enter literary sphere but leave account of a world seen through the eyes of women. Her Hajj Story: Travel Diaries of Women Pilgrims from Assam by Teresa Rehman attempts to bring some of those stories together. A compilation of account of memories of eleven women from Assam, this book recovers those stories and brings them to a larger view. As an award-winning journalist based in Northeast India, Rehman has brought the region’s diversity and distinct ethos to mainstream media through her work with India Today, The Telegraph, and Tehelka, before founding and editing Thumbprint Northeast Magazine. Her books include The Mothers of Manipur (Zubaan Books) and Bulletproof (Penguin Random House India).
The personal stories making up this book, written originally in Assamese and Bengali, are memories of eleven women living through different times. The translated voices belong to a botanist, an actor, a poet, a social worker, a widow and more, varied voices with equally varying experiences and reasons for undertaking the pilgrimage. One travels in grief, one in search of a spiritual course. While one struggles with finding a suitable male companion, the memories of another account for watching Red Sea on journey through ship. Then there are the practical difficulties of travelling as a woman. Alongside being a pilgrimage, the journey is also essentially of the female body through crowd and apprehension, sickness and fatigue, food and ablutions.
The book carries accounts of a mother and daughter, who travelled at different times. Syeda Sakina Ashraf journeyed in the year 1996 and her daughter Ayesha Ashraf Ahmed, a decade later. While the former account served as a practical reference for other women going on Hajj, the latter, documented scrupulously, brought forth the views of the pilgrimage experienced as a botanist. Beauty Rahman writes of her experience of journey by ship while Syeda Nazifa Ahmed’s writes about encounters with fellow travellers and her camaraderie with a woman from Nigeria. Zebunissa, a single woman, writes about her struggle in looking for a suitable mehram (a male companion) while Mallika Rahman, a social activist, writes about travelling at the age of sixty-four and about taboo topics like Hajj and menstruating women.
Eleven accounts making up this book read as reportage on eleven travel diaries, encompassing the varied voices not simply describing Mecca and Medina but bringing forth the distinctiveness of observing faith as a body. The ordinary questions of health and clothing, resting and exhaustion, while offering prayers or taking in the indescribable grandeur of Mecca before eyes, makes the account intimate and universal at the same time.
Through this book, Rehman succeeds in creating a geographical shift where Assam appears as a place with its own Muslim histories and traditions distinct from what is imagined or seen through pervasive cultures. Her labour in archiving the varied voices points to the difficulties of making editorial choices where the translated writings seem sometimes to be at variance with Rehman’s crisp, readable style, but perhaps that is the only way she could offer a comprehensive view of the distinct personalities of different women from different backgrounds. Collectively, these accounts convey the tradition of women writing the stories of their journey to Mecca as antecedents for subsequent travellers. They offer a unique glimpse into the courage and conviction that made their trials insignificant over their will to achieve what to them was a greater goal.
Rakhi Dalal is an educator by profession. When not working, she can usually be found reading books or writing about reading them. She writes at https://rakhidalal.blogspot.com/ .
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