The marketing manager at a Warminster manufacturing firm didn't practice the religion of his birth until the wife he had known for only 11 days before they became engaged began to influence him.

"He would see me pray and started to ask me questions," Manal Al-Qasem said. "I started giving him books, and then one day he surprised me and said he wanted to perform the pilgrimage."

Osama Al-Qasem, of Holland, and his neighbor and friend Kareem Ali boarded a plane in New York on Dec. 24, beginning their pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. They were one of more than three million Muslims on the annual spiritual journey that the tenets of Islam say Muslims should complete - if able.

Al-Qasem and Ali's pilgrimage began Dec. 29, during the sacred Islamic month of Zul-Hijjah.

"I've been lucky in life," Al-Qasem said. "I've gone through a difficult period financially, and now I am in this house. I can afford to send my son to college. I wanted to say thank you to God."

Al-Qasem, 51, was born in Libya and educated in England. He immigrated to the United States in 1981. He was working in Kuwait when Saddam Hussein invaded the country in 1990, and was able to flee. Ali, a 54-year-old lab technician, was born in Egypt, came to study in the United States 25 years ago, and stayed.

The two prepared for the hajj, the annual pilgrimage, with the help of a travel agency that specializes in making arrangements for it. The cost for each was about $5,300 for airfare, lodging, food, vaccinations, special visas, and the white ihram garment of two unhemmed pieces of cloth that all male pilgrims must wear.

They arrived in Medina, to temperatures that were in the mid-80s during the day. The prophet Muhammad is buried in the city, and his tomb sits below a green dome at the center of the stone and marble Mosque of the Prophet.

"To stand there" before the prophet, Al-Qasem said, "it makes your hairs stand up."

The two men then rode the bus for 12 hours to Mina, where they stayed in the air-conditioned tents erected and maintained by the Saudi government for the millions who come for the pilgrimage.

Before arriving, they made a short stop to shower and pray in preparation for the hajj. They put on their ihrams. Once in Mina, they boarded another bus, to Mecca, for a ride of about eight miles that took nearly three hours because of traffic.

"We enter the Grand Mosque of Mecca, and we pray," Ali said. "Then the first tawaf."

Tawaf is the ritual of circling the black granite center of the mosque, which is called the Kaabah. Pilgrims circle the Kaabah seven times, counterclockwise.

The ritual symbolizes equality in the worship of one God during a pilgrimage that commemorates the prophet Abraham's offering his son for sacrifice in obedience to God's command, said Masood Ghaznavi, professor emeritus of history at Rosemont College.

"You're walking body to body with millions," Al-Qasem said. "There were old people with walking sticks, people in wheelchairs."

After two hours, the two friends performed the ritual of the Sa'i, walking between the hills of Safa and Marwah, which is to be done seven times. The hills are inside the Grand Mosque.

The walk, a total of about one mile, commemorates Hajira's search for water in the desert, said Zaheer Chaudhry, president of the American Muslim Society of the Tristate Area. Hajira - in the Bible, she is Hagar, mother of Abraham's son - eventually discovered a spring that Muslims believe God miraculously provided.

The lesson is "do your duty," Ali said, "and God will do the rest."

The next day, it was on to Mount Arafat, a hill east of Mecca, where Muhammad delivered his farewell sermon. Pilgrims remain there, mostly in prayer, until after sunset.

Then, Ali and Al-Qasem performed the ritual of throwing stones at the wall in Mina, which symbolizes stoning the devil. In between, there is another tawaf, the taking off of the ihram, and cutting and shaving the hair to symbolize purity.

Traditionally, an animal is sacrificed, but today, pilgrims buy vouchers and an animal is sacrificed in their name with the meat sent to the poor, said Al-Qasem, who serves as acting fund-raising chair for the Philadelphia branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. A farewell tawaf ends the pilgrimage.

"I feel quieter, more spiritual," Ali said. "I take my problems one step at a time with ease."

"You realize how small you are, said Manal Al-Qasem, who performed the hajj in 1985. "I thought I was big, arrogant, and every problem was the problem, but when you see yourself as one of millions, you feel small. And at peace."

Osama Al-Qasem realized "that we are here in transition only," he said. "We are striving to go to heaven."

Ali and Al-Qasem arrived home Jan. 3. Al-Qasem returned with a cold, or perhaps the famed "hajj flu."

"After all the tired, walking and staying on the bus for so many days . . .," Al-Qasem said, "if you'd tell me I'm going to hajj next month, I'd pack my bags."