Taming body's rebellion by taking mind away to Makkah

Dubai: He has not looked into the mirror for 39 days. The dangers of doing so are many. Who has the time to listen to the voices that, if you give them a nanosecond of importance, will set up a world-class rant in your head? "Oh, look at your face!", "Don't you think you should shave right now?" "Your skin looks like it needs a good scrub"… and so on, ad nauseam.

"I don't have time for all that stuff," says Jalal Bin Thaneya, as he takes a break to catch up with Gulf News. He is in Dhulm, about 200km nearer to Makkah. "The mirror is distracting," he says. "It makes you react in unnecessary ways. In any case, this is not the time to fuss about a cracked lip or an overgrown moustache."

Such dismissals of indulgence are not unexpected from this young man. Take a broad-band view of the mission he is on and you are quite likely to see it his way. After all, a cracked lip is merely a nuisance compared to the huge concern of keeping your body and soul together over a distance of 2,000km. A concern that becomes more vexing as the days pass because the body begins to rebel like a spoilt brat who is being denied its usual pampering.

Bin Thaneya's body read him the riot act around Day 25 when it began to engage him in time-consuming, fruitless complaints about this, that and the other. "What's with this food? All this dry, boring, tasteless stuff you keep stuffing me with?", "Remember the taste of the organic goodies back home?", "How long are you going to keep up with this walking business?"... it went on, ad nauseam.

‘My answer'

"My answer to all that is to say, ‘I am not going to eat anything except the same stuff, I going back till I am done so you can stop complaining'."

He admits it can get frustrating, this combative attitude of his body but, "I am stubborn," he says with considerable pride. "So I keep talking back to it till it submits to my purpose." In fact, for the past few days, as he gets nearer to his destination, he has even cut down on his meal portions. Yes, he eats even less of his boring, dry rations. That's a double dare to his body.

But this embattled state is not new to him, except this has been the longest time he has been on the road so to speak. From 2,000km, the journey has now shrunk to just 200km. In terms of physical distance, Makkah is closer but emotionally, Bin Thaneya is already there.

"My heart and soul are already in Makkah," he says. "Through all the waking and walking hours and even during my sleep, I am dreaming and thinking about it." As far as he is concerned, he has already reached Makkah. Except that his body is still lagging behind. "That's the reality about the body-mind divide" he says. "You have to accept that."

Fanciful indulgence

While he is thus engaged, he has been getting word that some people have expressed an opinion that this long walk is a mere fanciful indulgence by a young man who has plenty of time and energy to spend chasing rainbows. In short, "this is a waste of time".

But he is not excessively perturbed. "I will admit that when people sit in air-conditioned comfort, eat warm food and tweet about what they think my walk is all about, I wonder about them. But beyond that, I am quite comfortable with critics.

"At the end of the day, what I do know is that complaints and compliments underscore the fact that what I am doing is real, not a stretch of fiction."