Last night, I took “Foxy: [ my mustered coloured Volkswagen] out of the “Eyrie” [ eagle’sNest- my rooftopstudioapartmentatMarkazF-10].
The old “foxt” coughed, huffed and finally settled into its familiar rhythm as we climbed toward Peer Sohawa. The Margalla night was cool. Islamabad’s lights gradually disappeared behind us, and the mountain road became quieter with every bend.
Then came :Isloo Gril”l.
And then my familiar “Spot by Roadside.”
Foxy was still huffing after the climb. I switched off the engine and stepped out.
I stood there for a while, looking into the darkness spread across the mountains.
Perhaps that was where last night’s journey ended.
Or perhaps it was where today’s story began.
The Darvesh appeared.
Those meeting him for the first time deserve a brief introduction.
“BāBā-Tāl” [ the Bell-man] is tall, thin and strangely smart-looking. He wears blue, torn jeans and white joggers beneath a navy-blue robe stitched with tiny brass bells. When he walks, they give a faint ting-ting, as though time itself is following him.
He is my wandering Darvesh — sometimes a traveller, sometimes a time-machine, sometimes a conscience.
He looked toward the mountains.
Then he looked at me.
“Bacha!”
I waited.
His eyes remained fixed on the darkness.
Then came the whisper:
“Yamanies are coming!”
I smiled.
“From Yemen?”
He gave me the look of a man who knows that his listener has asked the wrong question.
The little bells on his robe whispered.
“Bacha… mountains speak before armies do.”
That sentence followed me back to the Eyrie.
This morning, it is still here.
“Yamanies are coming!”
This time, however, the words do not sound like a Darvesh’s poetic mischief.
The geography itself demands attention.
Yemen is moving again.
The Houthi movement emerged from a Zaydi religious milieu in northern Yemen, but the Houthis and Zaydis cannot simply be treated as the same thing. Zaydism is an older Islamic theological and jurisprudential tradition, while the contemporary Houthi movement has its own political, military and organisational history.
That distinction matters.
Because I am not writing this article against Zaydis.
I am writing it to understand them.
And perhaps, through understanding, to ask whether an old Muslim intellectual tradition has something to say to a modern Muslim world drowning in sectarian suspicion.
But then came the word no Muslim can hear casually:
Mecca.
On September 15, Saudi Arabia said its air defences intercepted and destroyed a Houthi drone south of Makkah before it entered the city’s restricted airspace. The Houthis denied that they had targeted Makkah or any Islamic holy site. The accusation and the denial remain distinct claims; what is beyond dispute is that the incident has brought the security of the Holy City sharply back into regional politics.
And suddenly BāBā-Tāl’s whisper sounded different.
“Yamanies are coming!”
Who is coming?
And toward what?
That question takes us beyond Yemen.
It takes us back into the history of the Hijaz itself.
BāBā-Tāl lifted his coffee mug.
The little brass bells answered first.
“Bacha!”
I looked at him.
“Saudians must be sent back to their original Najad.”
I stared at him.
He knew exactly how explosive the sentence sounded.
So he continued.
“I am not talking about ordinary Saudi people. I am talking about political ownership.”
That distinction is essential.
The Hijaz has never been simply an empty piece of desert waiting for a modern state to give it a name.
Mecca and Medina have lived in the consciousness of Muslims for centuries.
For long periods, the Sharifs of Mecca exercised authority in the Hijaz. In the modern period, the House of Saud conquered” the Hijaz in the 1920s; Ibn Saud’s forces captured Mecca in 1924, Medina later that year, and Jeddah in 1925. The Hijaz was subsequently incorporated into the expanding Saudi state.
In 1932, the political entity was formally named the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
A kingdom named after a family.
That historical fact deserves to be remembered without turning every Saudi citizen into an extension of a dynasty.
The question is political.
The question is custodial.
And therefore the question can be asked:
Should the Hijaz remain politically identified with the permanent dynastic ownership of one ruling house?
Or can the Muslim world, in an age of enormous communications, international law, modern administration and global pilgrimage, begin to imagine something different?
BāBā-Tāl’s bells gave another faint ting-ting.
“Free Hijaz,” he whispered.
The phrase hung between us.
Free from what?
Not from security.
Not from administration.
Not from law.
Not from the responsibility of protecting the pilgrim.
Free from the idea that the spiritual heartland of the Ummah must forever be understood as the private political possession of a dynasty.
That is a much bigger question.
And it cannot be answered by anger alone.
The Qur’an gives us the first foundation:
“Indeed, the first House [of worship] established for mankind was that at Makkah — blessed and a guidance for the worlds.”
— The Holy Qur’an, 3:96
For the worlds.
Not for one nationality.
Not for one tribe.
Not for one family.
For the worlds.
That does not erase the realities of modern sovereignty. It does, however, leave room for a profound question about the meaning of custodianship.
Today the scale itself is enormous.
Saudi Arabia’s official statistics recorded 1,673,230 Hajj pilgrims in 2025, including more than 1.5 million arriving from abroad.
The official 2024 Pilgrim Experience Program report recorded more than 18.5 million pilgrims and Umrah performers arriving from abroad, including 16.92 million Umrah performers. The same report describes a large digital and commercial ecosystem around pilgrimage, including the Nusuk platform and international travel and service arrangements.
And in 2025 and 2026, official Saudi reporting has continued to describe Hajj and Umrah through the language of an expanding “ecosystem,” digital services, logistics, tourism and Vision 2030.
These developments can be viewed as modernisation and improved capacity.
They can also prompt another question:
When does service to the pilgrim become an industry around the pilgrim?
BāBā-Tāl raised his mug again.
“Bacha…”
The bells whispered.
“When the guest of Allah begins to look like a customer, something sacred has been lost.”
I did not answer.
He continued:
“The pilgrim does not come to buy Mecca.
He comes to lose himself before Allah.”
That is why I return to the word custodianship.
Not ownership.
Not dynastic inheritance.
Not commercial possession.
Amanah.
The Holy Places require security. They require roads, hospitals, sanitation, crowd management, transport, accommodation, communications and thousands upon thousands of trained workers.
No romantic slogan can run Hajj.
But neither should modern efficiency end the Muslim world’s right to ask who ultimately defines the philosophy of service to the entire Ummah.
Could there one day be an Ummah Body for the Hijaz?
A representative body of Muslims from different schools and regions — chosen not because of blood, wealth or political inheritance, but because of knowledge, integrity, competence and service?
A body that does not replace the security responsibilities of states overnight, but begins a serious international conversation about the custodianship and administration of the Holy Places?
BāBā-Tāl looked directly at me.
“Bacha!”
I knew another whisper was coming.
“The Ummah Body must never belong to one tribe, one family, one kingdom, or one sect.”
He paused.
“It must be a body of servants of the Ummah.”
Then his voice became almost inaudible:
“Mecca is not a family inheritance.
It is an amanah.”
The mountains were silent.
But that silence was louder than his bells.
The Qur’an gives us another foundation:
“And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided.”
— The Holy Qur’an, 3:103
Sunni.
Shia.
Zaydi.
Twelver.
Different schools.
Different histories.
Different jurisprudential conclusions.
But one Qur’an.
One Prophet — Holy Prophet Muhammad [Peace and blessings be upon him].
One Kaaba.
One Hajj.
One Ummah.
Unity does not require0 intellectual uniformity.
It requires the ability to stand together without pretending that differences do not exist.
And that is where the real meaning of “Yamanies are coming” begins.
Perhaps the issue is not that Yemenis are marching toward Mecca.
Perhaps the deeper warning is that the entire geography of the Arabian Peninsula is changing again — and the Muslim world has not yet decided what it wants the Hijaz to mean in the twenty-first century.
For more than sixty years, my call has remained the same:
O lovers of Ibn Abdullah ﷺ — Unite.
Unite without demanding that every Muslim think alike.
Unite around truth.
Unite around justice.
Unite around the dignity of the guest of Allah.
And if the Muslim Ummah ever gathers the courage to discuss a Free Hijaz, let “free” never mean lawless, undefended or divided.
Let it mean free from dynastic ownership.
Free from sectarian monopoly.
Free from the idea that sacred custodianship is hereditary political property.
Free to be served through an accountable system whose first loyalty is to Allah, whose first duty is to the pilgrim, and whose first constitutional principle is amanah.
That is where the 0proposed “Ummah Body” belongs.
Not as another throne.
Not as another government hungry for territory.
Not as another oligarchic arrangement wearing religious clothing.
But as a possible framework for service, consultation, accountability and shared Muslim responsibility.
And perhaps this is where my POETEARS belongs.
POETEARS — coined by S. T. Hejazi — Where tears become poetry, and poetry becomes tears.
The House is not a throne, nor the road a king’s domain,
The pilgrim comes with tears, not tribute, in his pain;
If Hijaz is an amanah, let amanah be its guide,
Let Ummah serve the House — with no dynasty inside.
For the pilgrim who comes from Lahore.
For the old woman who comes from Jakarta.
For the farmer who saves for decades in Africa.
For the worker who counts every coin in Bangladesh.
For the family that crosses oceans to see the Kaaba once in a lifetime.
For the Muslim who arrives with nothing but two white sheets and a heart full of longing.
Mecca is not a tourism destination in his heart.
It is home to a longing he may have carried for decades.
And perhaps the greatest question of our age is therefore not:
Who will control Mecca?
It is:
Who will serve the Ummah there?
BāBā-Tāl was already walking away.
His brass bells gave one final ting-ting.
“Bacha…”
I turned.
“Yamanies are coming.”
This time I did not ask, “From Yemen?”
I understood the question differently.
The mountains had spoken.
History had spoken.
The Holy City had been brought into the crossfire of a new regional confrontation.
And the old question of the Hijaz had returned with it.
Perhaps the first question is not:
Who is coming toward Mecca?
Perhaps the first question is:
What kind of Muslim Ummah will be standing there when history arrives?
From Peer Sohawa to “Isloo Grill”, from Foxy’s last huff at my “Spot by Roadside” to the quiet of the “Eyrie”, last night’s journey has not ended.
It has only changed direction.
The road now leads toward the Hijaz.
And somewhere between Yemen, Najad, Mecca and the millions of Muslims who face the Kaaba every day, one word keeps returning:
Amanah.