The pilgrimage cleanses bar none

I HAVE never had a more fulfilling time professionally and personally away from home base for such a long period as I have been on this hajj assignment. The longest was when I embarked on a two week-long tour of newly-liberated, post-apartheid South Africa way back more than a decade ago being part of a Malaysian party of journalists on a kind of busmen's holiday. We had our fill of spotting the Big-5 – lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos and buffaloes, playing either predator or running away as prey. After that visit, I never got tired of natural life and death predation that I got glued even more tightly to the telly watching National Geographic and Animal Planet ever so religiously.

Now, back from Madinah and Makkah, I find myself having conquered a whole new experience but one which gives me an unfilled longing to want even more of what I went through and craving to want to repeat the experience all over again – starting tomorrow!

Alas, this is not to be. For one there's the small issue of MERS-CoV – the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome – Corona Virus ; that cousin of the SARS virus that so rocked the length and breadth of China; which threatened to bring down the whole world too at one point.

The culling of chicken during the SARS outbreak

No, guys in the office need not stay clear off me or only dare shake my hand from the safety of a long barge pole. Just that, protocol deems it wise that I stay away – and that you too keep your distance; just in case I am Mers-CoV Patient Zero!

AM I PATIENT ZERO?

Why do I find myself in this position?

Precaution – erring on the side of caution for which I COMMEND; NOT condemn; our health authorities – Kementerian Kesihatan officials manning the arrivals gate at the KLIA until the last of our pilgrims return. They are virtually stationed there round the clock to mount a barrier in constant vigilance against this latter-day world class pestilence.

If not strangled at source, it could be this age’s version of the bubonic plague to wipe out humanity from the face of this earth. Bye bye to each and everyone of us – me and my Baby Boomer generation, the hordes of Haji Nazri's Gen Xers, all of Zan’s Gen Ys and our precious Gen Zees yet to be fully weaned off infancy. All that’s gonna be left are the hardy roaches who are acknowledged as the only critters who will survive Kim Jong Un’s infantile tantrums once he accidently stabs his fat thumb on the…oops; red button!

Disembarking from a packed SV5616 at the KLIA on a wet and humidly sweaty KLIA evening last Saturday (Oct 26), I got in the range of a heat seeking thermal imaging camera trained on us as soon as I and 449 other excited returnees disgorged ourselves from the front end of the packed plane. My heart sank when the camera operator pointed his index finger at me with stentorian certitude and my fate for the next two weeks at least was sealed.

You see, should I be a real Mers-CoV case, I would have to be kept under quarantine for two full weeks with everyone else around me having to wear one of those plastic boiler suits. They would be poking at me with instruments that are good only for one time use and then banished into a bin (to be exported to some Third World nation hungry for our garbage) never to be used again. Yes, this Haji cannot help but retain a bit of real world cynicism. Which reminds me of the very same ploy a developed nation is imposing on others by exporting toxic ooze so their backyard barbie is radioactivity-free, Fair Dinkum mate!

Back to my fragile health.

Ahead of me were about nine or ten others singled out by the vigilant camera operator. So I resigned myself to waiting until everyone was seen to by a team of two doctors who took our temperature and asked lots of questions what we got up to while in Makkah and Madinah. It just so happened that I did some of the things that would make me a Mers-CoV magnet – patted a pregnant camel and visited a sheep market.

Camels for qurban

By the time my turn came after just under an hour of waiting, my bodily defences must have cranked up into protective mode. I was told that I got singled out because when I stepped out of the plane my temperature was hovering around 37.4 degree Celcius. Normal body temperature – if you have forgotten your High School Science, is 37 degree Celcius. I was deemed by the camera as 0.4 degrees north of healthy, feverish it was noted.

A FEW DEGREES MATTER

But by the time the doctor prodded my ear with a thermometer, yaay…I had cooled down to 37.1 degree Celcius. Physically, I felt fine and far from feverish; if anything, it was all the hassle and waiting that was making the mercury rise and, as Ogy Ahmad Daud quite accurately put it that classic Malay movie Mekanik – made my blood go upstairs!

Be that as it may, I decided to play the part of newly-crowned Haji – by not making the life of others unnecessarily difficult! So I stayed home without meeting and greeting as any newly-returned haji would, or should. The doctor told me to stay put, confine my social life and report to the nearest hospital should I feel feverish.

The millions of haj pilgrims

I woke up the next day Sunday feeling one ringgit short of a million dollars – I was not feverish, just that I needed a bit of orthopaedic attention to my lower back pelvic area.

I presented myself to a government-run clinic but became a cause célèbre when it was noticed that I was a returning pilgrim. The hospital (which I shall not single out for notoriety) got into Mers-CoV mode and pretty soon everyone was hiding behind face masks and I was whisked into a special room designated the Quarantine Area.

Once again, my ear was prodded. Alas my temperature was NORMAL!. But since there are procedures to be followed, I was told to remain incommunicado, and by the way, here’s a three-day MC!

Syukran, I replied with the first Arabic word I picked up from our Saudi hosts that still sticks with me to this day. Thank you tobib (that’s the second word of Arabic I have since picked up – it means doc).

So thanks to all this vigilance over Mers-CoV, it will be a while before I am pronounced fit and ready to take on board the fresh challenges that awaits at the Astro AWANI newsroom. That will have to wait until we get this nasty bug beaten!

* RAZAK Chik now is bit more comprehending of the wily ways of some politicians who turn to Makkah after every political faux pas.