‘I’m surrounded by millions of people but I could still die from the heat’ – This is climate breakdown

He went to Saudi Arabia to perform the sacred hajj pilgrimage – then the heat came. This is Zirrar Ali’s story Please enable Javascript to fully experience this interactive article. Location: Mecca, Saudi Arabia Disaster: Heatwave, 2024 After a transformative trip to Iran and one of its mosques, Zirrar started believing in God and writing about the soul of travel. Six years later, Zirrar and his elderly father were participating in the sacred five-day Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj, when temperatures soared over 51°C. Temperature increases from climate change have made Hajj pilgrimages that happen in the summer, and even during the previously safer spring months, more dangerous. View image in fullscreen Zirrar Ali, photographed here at the Leeds Art Gallery Tiled Hall Cafe Photograph: Laura Pannack/The GuardianBy the age of 40, I had travelled so much that I was exhausted. I needed to be done with this experimentation of places and ultimate place, Mecca. There was always a pull to go back to the east. In my tradition, the only travel you were ever supposed to do is the great pilgrimage to Mecca. Abraham built the very first house of God in Mecca. God said to him: “Proclaim to the people the hajj; they will come to you on foot and on every lean camel; they will come from every distant pass.” All souls go to that location; it’s a homecoming. Once I said I was going, my dad said: “OK, I’m going as well.” A week before the hajj started, I flew into Medina and met my father. You learn the rituals and why you’re doing it. It’s regulating your nervous system to a different routine. To protect you from the sun, they made special umbrellas. It has this coating for the sun. When it gets hot around midday, they release cooling vapour. Now you have shade and there’s water hitting you. There’s a deceptive feeling that it’s not hot. At the beginning of hajj you go to the Grand Mosque in Mecca and do seven rounds around the Kaaba. It’s hundreds of thousands of people dressed in white, walking like a river and humming supplications to God. I remember covering myself with sunscreen thinking: “I’m going to be hot.” You’re in the open space, no roof, no air conditioning. But the weather was surprisingly cool. Maybe this is one of the blessings of God?