by Syed Shadab Ali Gillani
SRINAGAR: For over four decades, Abdul Rahman Kumar, now in his seventies, has stood at the point of departure, watching others leave for a journey he has never taken.
Each year, as the Hajj season begins and people gather to bid farewell to those going for the pilgrimage, Abdul Rahman quietly makes his way to the departure site. He has always been there since the early days when pilgrims left the Tourist Centre in Srinagar to the current departures at the Hajj House in Bemina.
Now in his seventies, his walk is slower, but his intention remains the same. Wearing a pheran, hands raised in prayer, he stands among the crowd, not to send off a relative, but to be part of the moment. He watches the pilgrims, hoping their prayers might one day include him.
“I come here every year,” he says. “I have no one to see off. I come because it brings peace to my heart.”
Abdul Rahman has never performed Hajj. The cost has kept him from making the journey, but not from hoping. “Every time someone leaves,” he says, “I ask them to remember me in their prayers when they reach Makkah. Maybe one day, someone will remember me enough for Allah to open a way.”
Over time, he has become part of the farewell. People who recognise him now look for him in the crowd. They wave, they smile, and he smiles back, a familiar face to many.
“Seeing these Hajjis, even for a moment, gives me peace,” he says. “When they look at me, when they speak to me, I feel that Allah has not forgotten me. These moments are enough.”
For Abdul Rahman, each farewell is more than a goodbye. It is an act of belief, a quiet prayer, a sign of hope. He brings only his presence, and that presence has come to mean something to many.
“As long as I am alive and can walk, I will keep coming. Maybe my name is not on the list yet, but my heart is already there.”
And so he returns, every year, to the place where prayers rise, where journeys begin, and where Abdul Rahman Kumar stands, not only to see them off, but to keep believing he will one day join them.
