98 Chapter Three
Figure 3.3. Odessa, view of the quarantine port. Early 1900s. (Author’s collection)
the platform.”^31 Provisions were also scarce along the way. Most stations had a
buffet run by Armenians, selling warm seltzer, lemonade, beer, wine, rye bread,
hard-boiled eggs, and cucumbers. But only at the half-dozen larger stations,
Dobson complained, could a “well-served substantial meal” be gotten. At a sta-
tion called Peski (Sands) two railroad cars propped in the sand, with ladders up
to the doors, served as a restaurant and kitchen.^32
Having suffered numerous indignities along Russia’s railroads, hajj pilgrims
faced further difficulties upon their arrival in Odessa, Sevastopol, and other
ports. Many complained about the government’s new sanitary facilities, seem-
ingly expressly for Muslims. At these new facilities in Black Sea ports Muslims
were subjected to medical examinations that at best humiliated them, and at
worst delayed them, causing them to miss the hajj rituals in Mecca. On the
quay in Odessa and other Black Sea ports, hajj pilgrims would be separated
from the Orthodox, and subjected to “disinfection,” which meant different
things at different times—it could involve being forced into a steam-disinfection
chamber and having one’s belongings seized and doused with foul-smelling
disinfection powder. Or it could mean a rough and cursory examination on the