MAKKAH, 14 May 2006 — Abu Mahmoud says there are two different types of people living in Makkah.
“Those that live in the mountains and those that live an easy life on the ground,” said the 40-year resident of the Al-Hindawiya neighborhood in the Al-Noor Mountains that rise up among narrow alleyways near the perimeter of the holy city. “We live a wonderful life. My house is my castle. We do not complain. Everything is available around us and we do not want anything from the people that live below.”
But visitors to Makkah might wonder how and why people have established their homes in the mountains, inaccessible to most vehicles and where residents must carry nearly everything on their backs up the steep inclines. Water is a problem. Electricity is a problem. Sewage is a problem. But the people who live there share Mahmoud’s pride that comes with rugged individuality and rural self-determination.
Residents seemingly all agree that getting gas canisters, used commonly in the Kingdom for cooking, to and from their homes to be the more difficult of the domestic chores. (This labor has provided an opportunity for the more fit of the area’s unemployed to earn a little extra cash.)
Arab News visited a number of residents in these seemingly unreachable mountains.
The elderly sometimes have trouble getting around, but not Ahmad Mansour. The 64-year-old Saudi has lived all his life on a house on top of a mountain. Despite his old age, he is as thin and fit as one would expect for a man who has spent his life walking up and down a narrow and sometimes steep path of alleyways and steps — a route he says he walks as much as eight times a day.
“Water is the main issue for us,” said Mansour. “Unlike houses down there,” he says, gesturing to the neighborhoods on the plain below. “Our water tanks are above the ground because of the hard mountain rocks. The problem with my house is that a car cannot reach where I live because of the narrow alleys. We fill our gallons with water from the highest point where a small water truck can reach and we carry it to the house.”
Mansour says residents in the mountains generally pay about double the price for water.
Residents here often describe their lives as pastoral, with a much stronger social network than the city folk down in the big city.
Local resident Abdul Aziz Al-Nahari said that the life “below” is fast and people lack the social fabric of the highlanders.
“We live above all people,” he says, and when he continues to describe life above Makkah, you realize that when he says the word “above,” he means it both literally and metaphorically.
“It is easy to spot someone missing from the mosque,” he said. “We ask about each other before we go to work and during prayer times. Every day inside the mosque we sit and talk for at least an hour after the prayer. People living below leave the mosque quickly after prayer. I will not give up the place where I live. Here in this place, we preserved the old tradition of hospitality.”
Yousuf Al-Marzooki, a 45-year-old government employee who has lived in the mountains all his life, says that despite the problems with public services, the mountain folk manage it well.
“We are called the mountain people. I would never trade my mountain house for a house below,” he said. “The only problem we face is illegal overstayers that take refuge here; it is difficult for the Passport Department to arrest them.”
He says the mountains offer good refuge for undocumented migrants because the cars cannot follow in pursuit. Al-Marzooki blames the problem in part to the sedentary life of the city people.
“Even if they chase them on foot they can’t catch them,” he says with a wry smile, “because they’re out of shape.”
