US Muslim fulfills late wife’s wish with Umrah at 83, joins 450-km Hijrah walk

NEW YORK, United States (MNTV) – At 83, American Muslim David Noble has fulfilled a promise to his late wife by performing Umrah in Mecca and joining part of the approximately 450-kilometer Hijrah journey between Mecca and Medina — a journey made more remarkable by the fact that he suffered a heart attack just three weeks before departing.

Noble embraced Islam around 2007, introduced to the faith by his stepson, filmmaker Mustafa Davis. “Until my son went away for a while, and when he came back home, he came with a gift. He gifted me Islam,” Noble said.

He and his wife Sandra Susan Noble converted together, and the two dreamed of one day performing Umrah. Sandra passed away two years ago, and Noble resolved to make the journey in her honor.

“When my son told me he was going to take me on my Umrah and how I could take my soul partner, Sandy Sue, with me, I jumped at the chance,” he said.

The journey was far from straightforward. Noble had undergone quadruple bypass heart surgery ten years earlier, suffered a stroke the previous year, and had the heart attack shortly before departure.

Davis considered canceling the trip, but Noble refused. “Even if I just walk two steps on the Hijrah, just to show the Prophet my love for him, and to show Allah that I’m following in his path, it would be enough for me,” Noble said.

Describing his first sight of the Kaaba, Noble said: “My son had me keep my head down the whole time until we were in front of it. And he said, ‘Okay, pop, look up.’ Wow. Amazing. The Kaaba was way bigger than I thought it was, and way more beautiful than I could imagine. It was simplistic in design. It wasn’t gaudy. It was just a spiritual thing. You just have to be there to see it, to feel it.”

For Davis, the journey carried deep personal meaning.

He and Noble had a difficult relationship in his youth, before he converted to Islam at 24. “If you had asked me back then that one day we would both be Muslims, walking arm in arm around the Kaaba and from Mecca to Medina, I would have said, ‘Are you crazy? There’s no way possible,'” he said.

After Sandra’s death, Noble began studying Islam more seriously, telling Davis that religious scholars had offered his wife glad tidings but had not said the same for him.

“If I want to be with her in the hereafter, I have to earn it,” Noble told his stepson. “I want to go to Mecca and Medina to show God that I’m serious about this faith.” Davis turned the journey into a documentary titled “In Her Name.”