What is faith?
It is a question that I asked at the beginning of the end, and I ask it once again now, at the end of the beginning. The setting of one world and the dawn of another.
Perhaps I have written this account, this collection of my memories, for no other reason than to answer this question that has haunted me over the years.
Nearly twenty years have passed since that fateful day in Basra when I faced my darkest demons, and the world has moved in directions that none of us could have expected.
Ali is dead. Muawiya reigns unchallenged as the Caliph of the Muslim empire.
It was an outcome that none of us could have foreseen on that terrible, blood-soaked plan in Iraq. Ali emerged victorious in a battle that he had never wanted to fight. The worst fighting had centered around my camel, as Ali’s men sought to bring down the most visible symbol of the enemy, while my own soldiers had fought to the death to make sure that the Mother of the Believers was unharmed. In the end, the last of my protectors was killed and the poor camel’s legs were hamstrung. When my howdah crashed to the ground, the Meccan resistance collapsed and Ali’s men held sway over the battlefield.
I lay inside the upturned carriage in shock, an arrow having torn into my shoulder. My mind was still reeling from the strange vision I had experienced at the height of the battle, but I felt no fear in my heart. Even though I was facing almost certain death at the hands of my enemy, I was calm, serene, for I had surrendered my fate to God. I had become, in truth, a Muslim.
And then the steel curtains parted and a gentle hand reached inside to see if I was still alive. My brother Muhammad had ridden out into the field when he saw my camel fall, and he alone had the courage to peer inside the sacred carriage and see if the Messenger’s most beloved wife still lived. I held him tight and wept, and the tears cleansed my heart as the rain would soon cleanse the green fields of Basra of the stain of blood.
After Muhammad had removed the arrow point from my shoulder and bandaged my wound, he picked me up like a little girl and carried me back to Ali’s tent. The Caliph looked at me with great sorrow, and I could see that his green eyes were now crimson from grief.
“Zubayr is dead,” he said simply, and I felt my heart crumble. They had been best friends and had fought beside each other, and now he was gone.
Somehow I managed to find my voice.
“And Talha?”
Ali turned away, unable to answer. Muhammad took my hand in his and shook his head, and I felt a scream rising in my throat.
“How?” was all I could choke out. It did not matter, but I needed to know.
“It was not one of our men,” my brother said softly. “A soldier of the Bani Tamim in our ranks said that Talha was betrayed by Marwan, who shot him in the back in heat of battle.”
The world was vanishing in a veil of tears.
And then Muhammad leaned close to me.
“My witness said that Talha spoke before he died, but the words made no sense to him,” he whispered.
“What did he say?”
“She is still so beautiful.”
ALI PARDONED ME in public and announced that he had nothing but respect for the Mother of the Believers, the wife of Muhammad in this world and the hereafter. He led funeral prayers for the dead on both sides of the conflict. And then he sent me back to Medina with an honor guard.
I returned to my home in silence, unable to share with anyone the depth of pain that I carried. The other Mothers avoided me for a time, and the only person I could turn to for support was my sister, Asma. She was kind to me, although I sensed that there was a distance between us. She did not say it aloud, but I always believed that she never truly forgave me for having led her beloved husband, Zubayr, to his death.
Isolated from family and friends, I focused on doing what I could to repair the damage I had inflicted on our faith. I returned to teaching and sharing the hadith that contained my beloved husband’s words. But I renounced any involvement in politics.
The Battle of the Camel was not the end of the civil war, just the beginning. Muawiya refused to make peace with Ali, and their struggle erupted into open warfare on the plains of Siffin near the Euphrates. The brutal battle between the Muslims led to thousands of dead on both sides. And then Ammar, one of Ali’s soldiers and a man from my childhood memories, was slain. Yes, Ammar, whose mother, Sumaya, had been the first martyr; Ammar, the youth whom Hamza and I had rescued from the wilderness. The Messenger had once prophesied that Ammar would die a martyr, like his mother, and that his killers would be wrongdoers. When word spread that Ammar had been killed in battle by Muawiya’s men, some of the rebels lost heart, fearing that the Prophet’s words now branded them as the unjust party.
Ali gained the upper hand. But as his forces were poised to annihilate Muawiya’s regiments, the crafty politician sued for peace, sending out troops who held pages from the holy Qur’an high on their spears. Ali was tired of warfare between brothers and accepted Muawiya’s proposal to arbitrate their rival claims to the leadership of the community.
It was a decision born out of compassion and statesmanship, but some of Ali’s partisans were shocked to hear that he was willing to negotiate what they believed to be his divine right to rule. Ali himself had never publicly claimed any such right for himself or his heirs, and some of these partisans turned against him like spurned lovers. They renounced their support and branded him a traitor. These fanatics decided that they alone possessed the true understanding of Islam, which had been corrupted by men like Ali and Muawiya. And these self-proclaimed true believers, known as the Khawarij, were now dedicated to cleansing Islam by destroying anyone who failed to embrace their uncompromising vision. The Khawarij sent spies with poisoned daggers to rid the Muslim world of its competing claimants to the throne. They struck Muawiya in his palace in Damascus. The son of Abu Sufyan was grievously wounded but survived.
Ali was not so lucky. A Khawarij assassin named Ibn Muljam stabbed him in the head while he was leading the prayers in Kufa in southern Iraq. Ali lived for two days in excruciating pain before dying a martyr. His final wish had been that his assassin be tried fairly and that the Muslims should refrain from torturing him. In this last request, he was ignored, and his followers made Ibn Muljam’s final hours on earth horrifyingly painful.
In the aftermath of Ali’s death, his son Hasan was briefly elected Caliph in Kufa but abdicated under threat of attack by Muawiya. The Syrian governor quickly declared himself Caliph, and the Family of the Prophet did not oppose him. Muawiya was gracious in victory and treated the People of the House magnanimously. He gave them great wealth and generous pensions, on the condition that they stay out of politics and not challenge his rule. The Prophet’s grandsons, Hasan and Husayn, agreed, and they withdrew from public life to the quiet sanctuary of Medina. They lived in peace in the oasis, and I saw them regularly, always greeting them as if they were my own sons.
And then a few years ago, Hasan unexpectedly fell ill and died. There was much weeping in Medina for the son of Fatima and Ali, and there were rumors that he had been poisoned by Muawiya’s corrupt son Yazid, who had feared that Hasan would challenge the power of Damascus once the Caliph died. I do not know if this is true, but I have learned that the Umayyads are a cruel and vicious clan.
For in the midst of all this madness, I faced my own painful tragedy at the hands of the Bani Umayya. My fugitive brother, Muhammad, was finally captured by Muawiya’s men. The lord of Damascus wanted my brother sent to him so that he could face trial for his involvement in the events leading to Uthman’s death. But my proud and fiery brother taunted his captors with such intensity that they disobeyed Muawiya and killed him on the spot. Even as I write this, my hand shakes in horror at their vile actions. For the Umayyad commander added desecration to the crime of murder. The odious man took Muhammad’s corpse and threw it into the carcass of a dead mule, and then set it on fire.
I wept for many days when I heard the terrible news. And then, in the midst of my grief, Ramla, the daughter of Abu Sufyan who had married my husband, made a vicious gesture to rub salt in the wound. She ordered her servants to cook a lamb and then deliver the meat to my door, with a note saying that it had been roasted just like my brother.
I have not touched meat to this day. And I have never forgiven the heartless Ramla, nor will I look upon her again, even if we are reunited as Mothers of the Believers on Judgment Day.
LAST NIGHT THE MESSENGER of God came to me in a dream. He was clothed in green and surrounded by a golden light. I bowed my head, too ashamed to look at him. But then he took my face in his hands and raised my eyes to meet his.
“What will happen to me, my love?” I asked. “For I fear that when my time comes, my sins will grab hold of my soul and pull me into darkness.”
Muhammad smiled at me, his eyes twinkling with an ethereal radiance.
And then he said to me the words of the holy Qur’an that I had heard before, at a time when hope had been clouded by fear of death.
God is the Protector of those who have faith. From the depths of darkness, He will lead them forth into light.
And then he vanished and I awoke knowing that the day of my death was fast approaching.
AND SO WE COME to this moment at long last, beloved Abdallah, son of my sister.
What is faith?
It is a memory. Of a time when all was perfect in the world. When there was no fear and no judgment and no death.
It is a memory of a time before we were born, a beacon to guide us back from the end to the beginning, to the memory of where we came from.
It is a memory of a promise made before the earth was formed, before the stars glittered in the primordial sea.
A promise that says that we will remember what we have learned on this journey so that we may return full circle, the same and yet different.
Older. Wiser. Filled with compassion for others. And for ourselves.
What is faith?
It is the memory of love.