Mirza Saeed Akhtar—Muhammad Din alliance

The alliance between Mirza Saeed Akhtar and Muhammad Din begins in opposition to Ayesha’s pilgrimage and takes shape after the death of Muhammad Din’s wife, Khadija. Saeed offers the bereaved village leader a way out of the march; Muhammad Din accepts, becoming both Saeed’s companion in skepticism and a persuasive presence among the pilgrims. Their partnership is practical and unequal, but it alters the balance of authority on the road without entirely resolving their different ties to the pilgrimage.

Opponents on the Pilgrimage

When Ayesha returns to Titlipur and tells the village council that the archangel has commanded every man, woman, and child to walk to Mecca, Muhammad Din convenes the meeting as the village’s leader. He initially considers how the old and infirm might travel, but his wife insists that the command means walking. The council agrees, and preparations begin: provisions are pooled, infants are assigned to be carried in rotation, and most personal belongings are left behind.

Mirza Saeed Akhtar arrives after the preparations are well advanced. Incensed, he spends forty-five minutes trying to slow the departure with speeches and by confronting individual villagers, then leaves when his efforts fail. Their initial positions are therefore not equal: Muhammad Din has accepted responsibility for carrying out the community’s decision, while Saeed, a landowner who rejects the pilgrims’ certainty, tries to stop it. The long march gradually places them in one another’s orbit, but it is Khadija’s death that turns their opposition into a personal connection.

Khadija’s Death and the Turn

The pilgrims make slow progress, walking for several hours in the morning and again after the heat, with children’s illnesses, official harassment, and problems with a cart limiting them to about two miles a day. On the eighteenth day, Khadija dreams of an angel and continues walking the next morning without telling her husband about the vision. Near the ruins of an old roadside inn, she asks to lie down. Muhammad Din finds a smooth stone for her to rest her head on; she dies within a minute.

Grieving, Muhammad Din confronts Ayesha and says he should never have listened to her, holding her responsible for his wife’s death. Saeed sees an opening to challenge the pilgrimage. He argues that Khadija should receive a proper Muslim burial, appealing to the villagers’ regard for their Sarpanch and his beloved wife. The villagers choose to bury her at once in a field beside the ruined way-station, and even Muhammad Din accepts that decision. The burial does not immediately make him abandon the journey: the following day he remains with the march, but apart from the other pilgrims, grieving and no longer moving with the same conviction.

From Offer to Partnership

Saeed approaches Muhammad Din after the burial, and Muhammad Din recalls that Saeed had previously offered him a place in his motorcar. That evening he asks to accept the offer. His decision is a qualified withdrawal: he does not wholly abandon the project for which Khadija died, but he can no longer sustain the absolute faith the expedition demands. Saeed welcomes him as his first convert to skepticism. The phrase marks both a change in belief and the emergence of an alliance: the village leader who once helped organize the march is now willing to travel with the man who had tried to stop it.

The change is not simply a transfer of authority from religion to reason. Muhammad Din’s grief and the death of his wife unsettle his certainty; they do not erase his attachment to the pilgrimage or the community that continues it. Saeed, meanwhile, gains a companion whose decision carries weight precisely because he has been the Sarpanch and a participant in the undertaking. Their partnership begins in a private request for a ride, but its importance soon becomes public.

Shared Influence and Limits

By the fourth week, Muhammad Din’s defection has begun to affect the march. Seated in the back of Saeed’s Mercedes, he assumes some of the landowner’s former air of authority, while Saeed takes the driver’s seat. At the end of each day, pilgrims gather around the car as Saeed tries to persuade them to reconsider. Muhammad Din’s presence strengthens Saeed’s arguments: a leader who had accepted Ayesha’s command and walked with the villagers now sits beside the skeptic. Their alliance gives Saeed a form of credibility that his earlier speeches alone had not secured.

The partnership does not end the pilgrimage or produce an immediate mass departure. Ayesha does not call the villagers away, and, at this stage, no further pilgrims defect. She looks toward Saeed, then disappears. Later, when the exhausted pilgrims reach the Arabian Sea and enter the water, Saeed and Muhammad Din are among those who run in to help. Muhammad Din is pulled out; Saeed continues diving until he too is rescued. The expedition ends, and the survivors face questioning by the Criminal Investigation Department. Their shared attempt to save those entering the sea does not undo their differences, but it gives the alliance a final form beyond persuasion: both men are left among the survivors of a journey whose certainty neither could control.