Everyone is flowing a slow crowd, a patient crow. You just have to get into the swim of it, he says. The best place to do that is in the mosque. Mecca s mosque is hard to miss. This vast temple complex can hold a million people.
Most pilgrims arriving in Mecca come straight here.
Even at midnight the mosque is in full swing. A hundred thousand people fill the ground floor colonnades. It takes me 15 minutes to pass from the outer gates to the core of the complex, where a white marble floor gleams under stadium lighting like an ice rink. This part of the mosque is open to the stars. The rest of the temple complex is a mere surrounding for this modest, ancient building.