RIYADH
\nAfter years of failing to secure a visa, Yasser finally concluded he had no choice but to perform Haj illegally, a move he now regrets.
\nWhile he survived the rites in extreme heat, he has not seen his wife since Sunday and fears she is among the more than 1,000 reported fatalities \u2014 the majority unregistered Egyptians like himself.
\n\u201cI have searched every single hospital in Makkah. She\u2019s not there,\u201d the 60-year-old retired engineer said on Friday by phone from his hotel room, where he is reluctant to pack his wife\u2019s suitcase in hopes she will return to do it herself.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to believe in this possibility that she\u2019s dead. Because if she\u2019s dead, it\u2019s the end of her life and also the end of my life.\u201d
\nEgypt accounts for more than half of this year\u2019s Haj fatalities \u2014 658 out of more than 1,000 reported as of Friday by around 10 countries stretching from Senegal to Indonesia.
\nAn Arab diplomat said 630 of those 658 dead Egyptians were unregistered, meaning they could not rely on access to amenities that make the Haj more bearable.
\nThat included air-conditioned tents meant to offer some relief as temperatures soared to as high as 51.8 degrees Celsius at the Grand Mosque in Makkah.
\nIn the first Saudi comment on the deaths, a senior official said 577 people died on the Haj\u2019s two main days on Saturday and Sunday, and that an overall toll was still being compiled.
\n\u201cThe state did not fail, but there was a misjudgement on the part of people who did not appreciate the risks,\u201d the official said.
\nOff-the-books fees
\nOfficial Haj permits are allocated to countries through a quota system and distributed to individuals via a lottery.
\nEven for those who can obtain them, the steep costs make the irregular route, which costs thousands of dollars less, more attractive.
\nThat is especially true since 2019 when Saudi Arabia began issuing general tourist visas, making it easier to travel to the country.
\nBut for Yasser, who declined to be identified by his full name because he is still in Saudi Arabia, the complications from being unregistered became clear as soon as he reached the country last month.
\nWell before Haj began a week ago, some shops and restaurants refused service to visitors who could not show permits on the official app, known as Nusuk.
\nOnce the long days of walking and praying beneath the blazing sun got underway, he could not access official Haj buses, the only transportation around the holy sites, without paying exorbitant, off-the-book fees.
\nWhen heat drove him to exhaustion, he sought urgent care at a hospital in Mina, but was turned away, he said, again for lack of a permit.
\nAs their conditions worsened, Yasser and his wife Safaa lost each other in the crowds during the \u201cstoning of the devil\u201d in Mina.
\nSince then Yasser has repeatedly postponed their return flight home, hoping she will turn up. \u201cI will keep postponing it until I find her,\u201d he said.
\nAlarming sights
\nOther unregistered Egyptian pilgrims described similar hardships \u2014 and similarly alarming sights as the heat\u2019s toll mounted.
\n\u201cThere were dead bodies on the ground\u201d in Arafat, Mina and on the way to Makkah, said Mohammed, 31, an Egyptian who lives in Saudi Arabia and who performed Haj this year with his 56-year-old mother.
\n\u201cI saw people suddenly collapse and die from exhaustion.\u201d
\nAnother Egyptian whose mother died on the route, said it was impossible to get her mother an ambulance.
\nAn emergency vehicle only materialised after her mother was dead, taking the body to an unknown location.
\n\u201cUntil now my cousins in Makkah are still searching for the body of my mom,\u201d she said. \u201cDon\u2019t we have the right to get a last look at her before she is buried?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RIYADH After years of failing to secure a visa, Yasser finally concluded he had no choice but to perform Haj illegally, a move he now regrets. While he survived the rites in extreme heat, he has not seen his wife since Sunday and fears she is among the more than 1,000 reported fatalities \u2014 the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413975,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-413995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n