Pilgrimages

The last leg of a Buddhist pilgrimage to America turned tragic when a ferocious windstorm toppled a van full of monks in rural San Joaquin Valley, killing seven of them and injuring seven others. At a Fresno hospital, a dozen monks in orange robes and sandals stood dazed in the hallway Tuesday afternoon, waiting for news of one monk who went in for his second surgery.

If this were Lebanon, Raef Hajjali would have returned from Saudi Arabia to a mini-parade of family and friends, a nice long rest and new social standing in the community. Relatives and neighbors would have slaughtered a sheep in celebration and decorated his home with palm fronds. "The whole town would have been waiting," he said. Instead, he and his wife, Ellen Hajjali, returned home to Altadena a few weeks ago to minimal fanfare, and he was back at work the next day. He didn't last long.

Muslims circled the Kaaba, Islam's holiest shrine, for a final time in a hajj that passed without any repetition of the deadly stampedes that have marred past pilgrimages. Hundreds of thousands of the faithful returned to Mecca to perform the "farewell" circling of the Kaaba, a cube-shaped stone structure draped in black cloth that Muslims around the world face during daily prayers. After they packed up to go, many headed for nearby markets to buy mementos and gifts.

Iran takes another step toward patching up its relations with the Arab world when it participates for the first time in several years in this week's annual meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Cairo. Iran's isolation from its fellow Muslims in the Arab world was exacerbated by its long and bloody war with Iraq, but in another gesture earlier this month Tehran sent its foreign minister to Kuwait.

At least eight people died and 15 were injured as millions of Roman Catholics flocked to Mexico City on Thursday, some crawling on bloodied knees, to pay their annual tribute to the Virgin of Guadalupe. A 60-year-old Mexican who had come from his home in the United States, identified as Juan Bautista Galindo, died after suffering a heart attack just three blocks before reaching the vast modern basilica devoted to the Virgin, police said.

A Shiite pilgrim sat on the sidewalk outside a Baghdad shrine, clad in black and holding a brown walking stick. He took off his slippers to rest his scratched and bloodied feet. Abu Zahra had just finished four days and 100 miles of walking, from Baghdad to the holy city of Karbala and back, and his feet were sore. But he had survived. Each year, millions of Shiites make religious pilgrimages such as this one, and each year, the death toll from violence along the way can rise into the hundreds.

Two explosions, apparently bombs, rocked Mecca on Monday night, killing one person and wounding 16 others as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims streamed away from prayers at Islam's holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque. A senior Interior Ministry official told the Saudi Press Agency that two of the injured were in critical condition. The agency earlier quoted an unnamed official who called the blasts "a criminal act."

The road back to this town in the remote, sparsely populated Sierra Gorda mountains of Queretaro state is a hard one for a runner. There are steep climbs through rocky valleys. A desert must be crossed. Every December, 50 men, women and teenagers from Tilaco leave Mexico City for home, carrying a torch to honor the Virgin of Guadalupe. All are residents of the town and its surrounding hamlets, construction workers and farmers who aren't used to jogging.

The church is red brick, pastel-paned Middle America. The music is a drum-and-guitar version of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." The religion is hand-clapping, tears-of-joy Pentecostal. It is a typical evangelical revival meeting--except here all the Bibles, the sermons and the faces are Vietnamese.

About 1,400 Muslim pilgrims suffocated or were trampled to death Monday in a stampede in a pedestrian tunnel leading to the holy city of Mecca, witnesses and diplomats said. They said the stampede began when some pilgrims stopped in the middle of the air-conditioned tunnel and there was a crush as people outside pushed forward to escape the 112-degree heat. They also said the ventilation in the tunnel then appeared to have stopped.