RAWALPINDI: Faraz Ahmed Kamlani, a management consultant from Karachi who lives in the United Kingdom, booked the fastest 11-day Hajj package so he and his wife would not be away from their young children for too long.
The couple had been saving for two years (even the cheapest Hajj packages cost around £7,000-8,000 per person in the UK) and Kamlani’s mother-in-law promised to come over from Pakistan and look after the kids.
Then the coronavirus hit.
A Muslim girl touches the holy Kaaba at the Grand Mosque on the first day of Eid al-Adha during the annual haj pilgrimage in Makkah September 24, 2015. (REUTERS/ File)
Pakistan closed its airspace in March to curb the spread of the virus, making it impossible for Kamlani’s mother in law to travel.
“Around April when all the lockdowns started and news was coming out of Saudi [Arabia] and the UAE that they were closing off of all the mosques there, and then Saudi had closed off all Umrah [pilgrimage] visas as well, that was probably the time when we thought ‘yeah, this is looking unlikely, but let’s see what happens’,” Kamlani told Arab News in a phone interview last week.
#WATCH: A Pakistani national living in #UK expresses "grief and disappointment" over not being able to perform #Hajj this year after the restrictions imposed by #SaudiArabia due to #CoronavirusPandemic. || #Hajj2020
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Read special by @SabahBanoMalik: https://t.co/l6in8NulQW pic.twitter.com/UkhxLNddma— Arab News Pakistan (@arabnewspk) July 29, 2020
Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia announced it would completely bar arrivals from abroad this year due to the coronavirus, allowing only a limited number of Saudi citizens and residents to make the pilgrimage with social distancing measures enforced.
The Kamlanis are now waiting for their travel agency to refund them.
“The agency has been really good, they’ve been very open,” Kamlani said. “I think it’s just everyone is strapped for cash right now so refunds are taking a bit long, but I am hoping to get through in the next couple of weeks.”
When asked if he would try to go for Hajj next year he said: “There it is a bit of concern because we don’t know yet when would be a good time for us to go again. There is definitely grief, definitely sort of disappointment in that sense because we were looking forward to it, but I think, fingers crossed, Inshallah it will happen soon.”
Another family of Pakistani expats, living on the other side of the globe, in Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta, is also hopeful next year will be better.
Naima Salman, a homemaker and mother of two, said she had been discussing the pilgrimage with her husband for the past two years but it was in December last year that the couple began to lay down concrete plans.
“It’s funny and strange at the same time because we were in conversation about this for two or three years, with two or three different Hajj travel operators,” Salman said. “But by January they all became very transparent and upfront that it may not happen.”
The couple still continued to get their own logistics in order. Salman’s husband requested leave from work and they planned a stopover in Pakistan so they could leave their children with relatives while they went on to perform the pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
But as time went on, it became clear that Hajj would not be on the cards for the couple this year.
“It just seemed so odd,” Salman said. “Hajj is not going to happen!? Is this for real? That can’t be!“
“It was disappointing but then again you keep telling yourself that it’s for the better and it’s okay,” Salman said. “As Muslims we have this belief that man proposes and God disposes, so if God is willing it to be this way, then there has to be some good in it.”
She paused and added: “If I am here and I am alive then, then next year, Inshallah!”
