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Five days later the last of 3,763 stranded pilgrims was loaded aboard the last flight. The airlift had traveled a total of 121,800 miles. Some of the U.S. airmen had spent 27 out of 40 hours in the air, but the trips had been more than worth it. The pilgrims' airlift had done more good than any other act of the U.S.'s otherwise fumbling and unimaginative action and inaction in the Middle East. It was the one success U.S. diplomacy could claim in a week of continued crises. The Iranian oil dispute with Britain had dragged on for more than a year, while Iran slid to the edge of bankruptcy, chaos and Communism, hanging on to the cliff like Pauline in her perils; last week the U.S. and Britain tried to settle the mess and were flatly turned down by Iran's Mossadegh (see below).
It would take a lot before Arabs would forgive the U.S. for its help to Israel, but Operation Magic Carpet might well be the beginning. "Speaking for myself and 40 million Arab Moslems," Lebanon's Mufti Alaya told Minister Minor, "I would like to say that this is the turning point of American relations with the Moslem world. This aid has been not to governments, but to people. It is neither military nor economic but spiritual."
Then he issued an unprecedented order: this year, the hajjis were to include the American people—infidels though they are —in their prayers.
*Mohammedan legend puts the number of pilgrims to Mecca each year at a constant 700,000, but since the count of mortal visitors is usually far short of that number, the difference is believed by the faithful to be made up by a suitable number of angels.