I went looking for Malek Bennabi the thinker, but entered his world through a story. In Labbaik: The Pilgrimage of the Poor, a drunkard and an orphan leave behind the little they possess and board a ship bound for the Hajj. Through them, I began to understand something I had struggled with for years: what draws ordinary people to Hajj, even amid poverty, injustice, and a world that has offered them very little.