[URBAN NOTE] "The man who dreams of old Mecca"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera's Basma Atassi has a beautiful, image-heavy feature about a Saudi, Sami Angawi, who is doing his best to preserve the memory of old Mecca as a ruthless Saudi Arabian government is literally razing and completely rebuilding the Islamic metropolis.

Sami Angawi refuses to call Mecca a city, for his Mecca could never be transformed into a metropolis - no matter how deep the drills dig or how fierce the battle between the skyscrapers and the clouds.

Mecca is a “sanctuary,” he says. “It’s God’s house, the refuge of humans, the birthplace of Islam.” It is the sanctuary established by the archetype of the perfect Muslim, Prophet Abraham, he adds.

And for this impassioned, animated Saudi architect it is also the place of his roots and the object of his love. Angawi’s father was a Mutawef, a guide to pilgrims undertaking the spiritual journey of Hajj. As a boy, he would help him, sometimes carrying the pilgrims’ shoes to save them from being lost at the steps of the Grand Mosque.

Their home was located in Shaab Ali, the neighbourhood said to have been home to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam and a descendent of Prophet Abraham, in the 600s AD. He remembers it as an intimate but bustling neighbourhood that once housed one of Mecca’s busiest open markets, ‘Souq al-Leil’ (the Night market). Its narrow allyways smelled of rich incense and spices, he says.

But the Angawi family home was demolished during the 1950s, as the country’s ruling family, the Al Sauds, began to expand the Grand Mosque in order to increase the number of pilgrims it could accommodate. It is a programme of expansion that has continued ever since, transforming the area Angawi once knew as home.

In 2006, the architect stirred debate when he told a regional television channel that where once there had been historical sites - the Prophet Muhammad’s house and the oldest school of Islam, Dar al-Arkam - there were now roads and public facilities. “These places have always been known to the Meccans,” he says, adding: “And now I am trying to use old and modern maps to scientifically locate these historical sites.”