walk in a store and spend a hundred dollars, and leave, and you're still a stranger. Both you and
the clerks act as though you're doing each other a favor. Europeans act more human, or humane,
whichever the right word is. My brother Muslim, who could speak enough German to get by,
would explain that we were Muslims, and I saw something I had already experienced when I was
looked upon as a Muslim and not as a Negro, right in America. People seeing you as a Muslim
saw you as a human being and they had a different look, different talk, everything. In one
Frankfurt store-a little shop, actually-the storekeeper leaned over his counter to us and waved his
hand, indicating the German people passing by: "This way one day, that way another day-" My
Muslim brother explained to me that what he meant was that the Germans would rise again.
Back at the Frankfurt airport, we took a United Arab Airlines plane on to Cairo. Throngs of
people, obviously Muslims from everywhere, bound on the pilgrimage, were hugging and
embracing. They were of all complexions, the whole atmosphere was of warmth and friendliness.
The feeling hit me that there really wasn't any color problem here. The effect was as though I had
just stepped out of a prison.
I had told my brother Muslim friend that I wanted to be a tourist in Cairo for a couple of days
before continuing to Jedda. He gave me his number and asked me to call him, as he wanted to
put me with a party of his friends, who could speak English, and would be going on the
pilgrimage, and would be happy to look out for me.
So I spent two happy days sightseeing in Cairo. I was impressed by the modern schools, housing
developments for the masses, and the highways and the industrialization that I saw. I had read
and heard that President Nasser's administration had built up one of the most highly
industrialized countries on the African continent. I believe what most surprised me was that in
Cairo, automobiles were being manufactured, and also buses.
I had a good visit with Dr. Shawarbi's son, Muhammad Shawarbi, a nineteen-year-old, who was
studying economics and political science at Cairo University. He told me that his father's dream
was to build a University of Islam in the United States.
The friendly people I met were astounded when they learned I was a Muslim-from America! They
included an Egyptian scientist and his wife, also on their way to Mecca for the Hajj, who insisted I
go with them to dinner in a restaurant in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo. They were an extremely
well-informed and intelligent couple. Egypt's rising industrialization was one of the reasons why
the Western powers were so anti-Egypt, it was showing otherAfrican countries what they should
do, the scientist said. His wife asked me, "Why are people in the world starving when America
has so much surplus food? What do they do, dump it in the ocean?" I told her, "Yes, but they put
some of it in the holds of surplus ships, and in subsidized granaries and refrigerated space and
let it stay there, with a small army of caretakers, until it's unfit to eat. Then another army of
disposal people get rid of it to make space for the next surplus batch." She looked at me in
something like disbelief. Probably she thought I was kidding. But the American taxpayer knows
it's the truth. I didn't go on to tell her that right in the United States, there are hungry people.
I telephoned my Muslim friend, as he had asked, and the Hajj party of his friends was waiting for
me. I made it eight of us, and they included a judge and an official of the Ministry of Education.
They spoke English beautifully, and accepted me like a brother. I considered it another of Allah's
signs, that wherever I turned, someone was there to help me, to guide me.
The literal meaning of Hajj in Arabic is to set out toward a definite objective. In Islamic law, it
means to set out for Ka'ba, the Sacred House, and to fulfill the pilgrimage rites. The Cairo airport
was where scores of Hajj groups were becoming Muhrim, pilgrims, upon entering the state of
Ihram, the assumption of a spiritual and physical state of consecration. Upon advice, I arranged
to leave in Cairo all of my luggage and four cameras, one a movie camera. I had bought in Cairo
a small valise, just big enough to carry one suit, shirt, a pair of underwear sets and a pair of