MINA, 21 December 2007 — Quite a large number of pilgrims of various nationalities have not returned to their base camps. Their anxious and harried relatives were yesterday seen to be scouring hospitals, centers for missing persons and headquarters of various pilgrim establishments.

The Saudi Boy Scouts were trying to comfort those elderly pilgrims who had lost their way. “My name is Amina. I am from Sri Lanka. I was with my son while coming back from Muzdalifah to Mina when we got separated. Where is he?” she kept asking everybody visiting the missing persons center.

She gave her son’s name as Zainul Abedeen and said they came from Kandy.

Going by the information listed on the mandatory yellow wristbands that the pilgrims wear, the Boy Scouts went to her camp but found no trace of Amina’s missing 40-year-old son.

“We will continue our efforts and have transmitted all information regarding her son to all our centers here in Mina. We are pretty hopeful of locating him,” said a confident Boy Scouts group leader, Shirian Abdullah. He was manning the missing persons center on Jawhara Street. “Their stories are very tragic. But we are trained to deal with such emotional situations. Our boys try to remain calm under such situations.”

After holding back for quite some time, Amina broke down in a torrent of tears.

“God has His ways. He is testing me. And I am not being able to take it. I am worried. Very worried. I am praying for a miracle and God will not disappoint me. If He has brought me to this holy land then He will unite me with my blood too,” she said.

Another person visiting the missing persons center was Shahid Anwar from Bihar, India. “My mother has been missing since Wednesday,” he said. “We went to stone the devil after coming back from Muzdalifah, and then the two of us went to Makkah to perform tawaf. Everything went well there. Because she is too old, I had hired the services of a man with a wheelchair. He had asked for SR100 and we had an agreement. At Maghreb, however, we got lost. I thought maybe the guy with the wheelchair would return to the place where we met first. I waited the whole of Wednesday night and then came back to Mina.”

At this point the 50-year-old Anwar broke down. “I am confused and lost. I can’t walk anymore. My feet are swollen,” he said. “I just don’t know what to do. Please pray for us.”

Among the missing cases, the most tragic was that of 18-year-old Azeem Khan. His father, L.M. Khan, is a medical doctor with the Ministry of Health in Taif. The ministry had deputed Khan to Haj duty and therefore he had come to the holy sites with his family to perform Haj. His family consisted of wife Nahid Afroz and another son besides Azeem.

According to Dr. Khan, Azeem is a mentally retarded child.

“We were together in Muzdalifah till two on Tuesday night. Later, Azeem went missing. His condition is so bad that he cannot take care of himself. He can neither eat nor talk. His mother is the one who always took care of him. He has always been on medication and in its absence suffers fits.”

Khan has requested all those who have their relatives in Mina performing Haj to look for his son. Khan can be reached on 0508267914. The missing boy’s uncle, Abdul Salam Arif, is based in Dammam and he can be reached on 0502656227.

Hundreds of volunteers, mostly Indian expatriates, have arrived from Jeddah yesterday and are helping the Boy Scouts in locating and then uniting the missing people.