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| Ducks are conscientious objectors to potato harvest. |
There
aren’t many school districts in the United States that cancel school come
harvest time. But I grew up in one of them. Every October, we could count on
potato harvest to bring us two weeks’ respite from book learning.
This
was one of the simple pleasures I didn’t anticipate my kids would ever be able
to enjoy. But then we moved to Saudi Arabia. And it just so happened that the
Muslim-calendared Hajj coordinated with potato harvest. And that we were living
in the very gateway where Muslims from across the world would be arriving to
reach their final destination, a mere forty miles from here. That meant my kids would get two weeks' break from school.
Hajj
is just like potato harvest, except with people instead of potatoes. There are
other differences too, I suppose. Whereas potato harvest focuses mainly on
tubers, Hajj is about pilgrimage. And whereas Idahoans spend late nights and
early mornings bringing in the harvest, Muslims spend late nights and early
mornings accomplishing religious tasks in Mecca and Medina.
The
endless lines of people add their own body heat to the desert heat, add the
dust of their own feet to the dust of the parched earth, add the microbial content
of their own breath to the microbial content of the communal air. It’s
dirty business, this harvest of souls.
At the end of it, people limp back to
their homes in Sudan and Syria, Indonesia and England, Madagascar and Malaysia.
Friends and family welcome them home with a pat on the back and sometimes with
song and dance. Job well done. They pull back the sheets of their beds, lay
down their weary frames, and sleep for a long, long time. Just like Idahoans do
at the end of potato harvest.