I was born in blood, and its terrible taint would follow me all my life.
My mother, Umm Ruman, cried out in agony as the contractions increased in severity. The midwife, a stout woman from the tribe of Bani Nawfal named Amal, leaned closer to examine the pregnant woman’s abdomen. And then she saw it. The line of blood that was running down her patient’s thigh.
Amal looked over to the young girl standing nervously to the side of the wooden birthing chair where her stepmother was struggling to bring forth life.
“Asma,” she said in a soft voice, trying to mask the fear that was growing in her chest. “Get your father.”
Your mother, Abdallah, was no more than ten years old at the time, and she paled at Amal’s words. Asma knew what they meant. So did Umm Ruman.
“I am dying,” Umm Ruman gasped, her teeth grinding against the pain. She had known something was wrong the moment her water broke. It had been dark and mottled with blood, and the subsequent horror of the contractions was far beyond anything she had experienced at the birth of her son, Abdal Kaaba, so many years before.
At the age of thirty-eight, she had known that she was too old to bear another child safely and had greeted the news of her pregnancy with trepidation. In the Days of Ignorance before the Revelation, perhaps she would have turned to Amal or the other midwives of Mecca for their secret draft that was said to poison the womb. But the Messenger of God had made it clear to his small band of followers that the life of a child was sacred, despite the many pagan Arab customs to the contrary. She had sworn an oath of allegiance to his hand, and she would not go against his teachings, even if they meant her demise. Unlike most of her neighbors and friends still clinging to the old ways, Umm Ruman no longer feared death. But she grieved to think that her child, the first to be born into the new faith of Islam, might not survive to see the sunrise.
Amal took her hand and squeezed it gently.
“Do not despair. We will get through this together.” Her voice was kind, but Umm Ruman could see in the stern lines around her mouth that Amal had reached her professional conclusion. The end was nigh for mother and child.
Umm Ruman managed to turn her head to her stepdaughter, Asma, who stood frozen at her side, tears welling in her dark eyes.
“Go. Bring Abu Bakr to me,” she said, her voice growing faint. She stroked the girl’s still plump cheeks. “If I die before you return, tell him my last request was that the Prophet pray at my funeral.”
Asma shook her head, refusing to face that possibility. “You can’t die! I won’t let you!”
The girl was not of Umm Ruman’s flesh, but the bond between them was as strong as that of any mother and daughter. Perhaps stronger, for Asma had chosen her over her actual mother, Qutaila, who had refused to accept the new faith. Abu Bakr had divorced his first wife, for it was forbidden for a believer to share a bed with an idol worshiper. The proud Qutaila had left their home in a furious rage, vowing to return to her tribe, but Asma had refused to go with her. The girl had chosen the Straight Path, the way of the Messenger and her father, Abu Bakr. That had been three years ago, and Asma had not seen her mother since. Umm Ruman had felt sorry for the abandoned child, still too young to understand the enormity of her choice, and had raised the girl as her own.
She wondered what would happen to Asma once she was gone. Abu Bakr would likely look for a new wife, but there were only a handful of believers, and the Message was spreading slowly because of the need for secrecy. If the pagan leaders of Mecca learned the truth of what the Prophet was teaching, their wrath would be kindled, and the tiny community the believers had founded in the shadows would be exposed and destroyed. In all likelihood, Asma would be alone, without any foster mother to guide her through the journey of womanhood. The girl was past due for her cycles, which usually began at the age of ten or eleven for those born under the harsh Arabian sun. The men-strual flow would erupt any day now, but Umm Ruman would not be there to comfort her through the shock of first blood.
She ran her hand through Asma’s brown curls, hoping to bequeath a soft memory with her touch that would comfort the child in the days to come. And then a shock of pain tore through Umm Ruman’s womb and she screamed.
Asma broke free of her stepmother’s grasp. She fell back, stumbling over one of the bricks that the midwife had placed at Umm Ruman’s swollen feet. As Amal searched desperately through her midwife’s stores for a salve to ease her patient’s agony, the girl turned and ran in search of her father.
Umm Ruman closed her eyes and said silent prayer even as her body burned from within.
As her uterus contracted with increasing urgency, she could feel the baby shifting, preparing to emerge into the world. A process that in all likelihood would lead to her death, and possibly the baby’s as well.
It was the beginning of the end, she thought sadly.
Umm Ruman was right. But in ways she could not have expected.
MY FATHER, ABU BAKR, walked through the quiet streets of Mecca, his head bowed low, his back hunched slightly, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Which, of course, it was.
Tonight everything had changed. And he needed to tell someone. Normally he would have gone straight home after emerging from the Prophet’s house, as their dwellings were next door to each other. But after what he had seen and heard tonight, he needed to take a walk.
And besides, his wife had entered labor earlier that day, and his home was now the exclusive domain of the midwife. Abu Bakr had learned through the birth of two sons and a daughter to give the tribe of women its privacy at such moments. A man could only serve as a bumbling annoyance or a dangerous distraction to the sacred rituals of birth. And the safe delivery of this child, the first to be born into the Revelation, was important not just to him, but to the entire Muslim community.
All twenty of them.
His child. Abu Bakr wondered for a moment what kind of world the baby would grow into. For years he had hoped that the Truth would spread discreetly and in secret until the masters of Mecca were surprised to see that their tribal religion had died in its sleep, to be replaced quietly with the worship of the One God. But tonight had shown him that whatever path Islam would take among these people, it would not be a quiet one.
He paused to look up at the heavens. There was no moon tonight and the sky was aflame with a legion of stars, the sparkling strands of a cosmic web that testified to the glory of the Lord. The foolish among his people believed that the future could be discerned in the shimmering patterns that played across the heavens. But Abu Bakr knew that such superstitions were a delusion. Only God knew the future. The greatest of storytellers, every day He surprised man with a new tale. Those who thought they could encompass His grand plan with their puny calculations were always humbled.
Turning a corner in the walled district of Mecca where many of the chieftains of the city lived, he found himself looking out past the hills that surrounded the desert valley to Mount Hira-the place where God had spoken to a man, even as He did to Moses at Mount Sinai to the north. The mountain, which soared two thousand feet above the desert floor, tapered into a rocky plateau, at the pinnacle of which was hidden a tiny cave. A small, cramped space where no light could enter. And from which Light itself had sprung forth.
When his childhood friend Muhammad, the orphan son of Abdallah of the clan of Bani Hashim, had emerged from that cave three years ago, he was transformed. He had seen a vision of an angel named Gabriel who had proclaimed him to be God’s Messenger to mankind, the final Prophet sent to bring the world out of darkness into light. It was an audacious claim, one that would understandably invite ridicule had it been made by any other man. But Muhammad was different.
Abu Bakr had known him since they were excited boys traveling with a caravan to the markets of Palestine and Syria. And from the first day he had set eyes on the young Muhammad, Abu Bakr had known that his friend had a destiny. Raised in poverty and humiliation, the boy nonetheless exuded a dignity, a power, that seemed to emanate from another realm. While other youths quickly embraced the sharp business tactics of the Meccan traders as a means of getting ahead in the harsh world of the desert, Muhammad had gained a reputation as Al-Amin-the Honest One. His reputation for fair dealing brought him respect but little profit, and Abu Bakr had been heartbroken to see his friend live in destitution while less scrupulous young men advanced rapidly.
And he had been overjoyed as Muhammad’s luck finally turned, when he won the heart of Khadija, a lovely-and wealthy-widow who had employed the youth to manage her caravans. Khadija had proposed to the penniless Muhammad, and Abu Bakr took great pleasure in seeing his boyhood comrade finally living in affluence among the nobles of Mecca. But Muhammad had never seemed comfortable around wealth, and his sudden prosperity and entry into elite society had only increased his concern for the many who remained poor in the desert valley.
Abu Bakr had spent many nights talking with his friend through the years as he expressed agitation over the worsening plight of the lower classes of the city. Women and children starved in the valley of Mecca, even as flourishing trade with the Byzantine and Persian empires to the north enriched its tribal chiefs. Muhammad had become increasingly distraught at the daily injustices he witnessed, as the strong preyed on the weak and men used and discarded women, leaving their bastard children to fend for themselves-in the worst cases, killing infant girls, whose birth was seen as socially undesirable.
Abu Bakr had not been surprised to see his tormented friend embark on a spiritual path, meditating every night and spending his days conversing with people of other nations and faiths he met on the caravan routes. Muhammad had never been interested in the religion of their people. The crude idols that the Arabs worshiped had repelled him, and he was drawn instinctively to the People of the Book, Jews and Christians, and their remarkable stories of the One God who stood for justice and compassion. And the People of the Book would remind him that this God had once also been worshiped by the ancestors of the Arabs, who had been descended from the prophet Abraham through his firstborn son, Ishmael. This God, whom the Jews called Elohim, was still known to the Arabs as Allah, the Creator God. But the Arabs now worshiped hundreds of other deities that were seen as intermediaries of Allah, who was too powerful and remote to care about the daily lives of men. Every tribe in the desert had its own god, and each held its god out to be better than the others, leading to division and warfare among the clans. These competing deities, like the untamed elements of nature they symbolized, were capricious and lacked any sense of morality or justice. Seeing the chaos engendered by these warring and cruel gods, Muhammad longed for his people to return to the old ways of Abraham and his simple, pure vision of Allah.
When Abu Bakr would come to visit him, Muhammad would often stay up late into the night sharing tales he had heard from these foreigners, stories about Moses and the haughty Pharaoh, Joseph and his conniving brothers among the Children of Israel, and Jesus the son of Mary, God’s most recent Messenger to mankind, who had healed the blind and raised the dead. Abu Bakr was swept away by his friend’s passion for this God and His prophets, which awakened within him a similar longing for the Divine. Like Muhammad, Abu Bakr found the gods of the Arabs to be petty and small. But Allah, this God of Abraham, had never spoken to the Arabs, and Abu Bakr longed to hear from this mysterious, invisible being who had forgotten the children of Ishmael.
And then it had happened. Muhammad’s vision on Mount Hira had left his friend shaken and confused. Seeing the winged angel first inside the cave and then standing on the horizon, its wondrous form expanding in a cloud of light until it stretched to the heavens, Muhammad became convinced that he was mad or possessed by a djinn. He had wanted to kill himself in despair, but his wife, Khadija, had comforted him. She told him that a man of his character would not be misled or abandoned by Allah, and that his experience must be true. Over the next several months, the visions intensified, and the angel told Muhammad that he had been chosen to follow in his ancestor Abraham’s path-to abolish idolatry and establish the worship of the One God among the Arabs, who would then spread the faith of their forefather to all mankind.
Muhammad was overwhelmed. He was being asked to undertake an impossible task. To turn a land of warring tribes who venerated hundreds of tribal deities into a unified nation under one God. How could he begin? Unable to find an answer beyond the loving circle of his wife and family, he had taken a risk. Muhammad had turned to his friend Abu Bakr and shared what was happening to him.
So it was that one peaceful evening three years ago, Abu Bakr had sat on the floor in the quiet of Muhammad’s sparsely furnished private study as his old friend revealed the angelic visions and the Voice that had called to him from the heavens. As Abu Bakr heard him speak, he felt something stirring inside his heart. It was as if he had been waiting his whole life for this moment. It was as natural and inevitable as falling in love. Even before Muhammad finished speaking, Abu Bakr knew that his inner longing had been answered. Allah, the God who had spoken to Moses and Jesus, had not forgotten the Arabs, the children of Abraham. Abu Bakr had known Muhammad for over thirty years and had never had reason to doubt one word spoken by Al-Amin. If God would choose anyone to prophesy to the Arab nation, it would be this man. It had to be this man.
Without hesitation, Abu Bakr had accepted his claim to be the Messenger of God and promised that he would be Muhammad’s right-hand man on his mission. And for the next three years, he had quietly spread the word to a few trusted friends and kinsmen that there was a Prophet in their midst, one who would bring their people to salvation. Abu Bakr acted in absolute secrecy, as the leaders of Mecca, whose trade was done in the name of the ancient gods, would have moved quickly to destroy this new religious movement.
While he succeeded in persuading a small handful of associates to accept Muhammad’s teachings and join his faith, he was devastated that he failed to win over some in his own family. His first wife, Qutaila, had refused to break the idols of her gods and he had divorced her. And to add to his grief, his beloved son Abdal Kaaba also proved unwilling to turn his back on the ways of their people. Their arguments grew so bitter that Abdal Kaaba had left his home and gone to live among kinsmen, refusing to speak with him until Abu Bakr renounced his foolish new ideas. His alienation from his son weighed heavily on his heart, and the Prophet gently reminded Abu Bakr that Noah, too, had been estranged from his son, whose resistance to God’s message had ultimately led to his death in the Flood. Abu Bakr understood that a father could not be responsible for the choices of his son, but his failure haunted him nonetheless.
Despite the personal losses he had endured in his family, Abu Bakr had not faced any major social consequences for his involvement in Muhammad’s new group. The chieftains of Mecca had heard rumors that Al-Amin was quietly playing the role of spiritual teacher to a handful of locals, but they paid little attention. As long as his small band of followers kept to themselves and did not create trouble in Mecca, they could worship whatever god they wished, believe whatever they wanted. As long as Muhammad’s teachings remained quiet and did not disrupt the profits of the tribal chiefs, everything would be fine.
But that had all changed tonight.
Abu Bakr turned away from the towering vision of Mount Hira and looked back to the Prophet’s home in a distant corner of the city. The two-story edifice sparkled under the starlight, its white stone walls shimmering with a faint, unearthly glow. For the past few years, that house had been a secure gathering place for Abu Bakr and the nineteen other believers. There they prayed together and listened to the Prophet as he shared God’s words that had been revealed through Gabriel. That home was their sanctuary.
It would now have to be their fortress. For the leaders of Mecca had learned tonight what Muhammad’s true message was.
And they had declared war.
ASMA RACED OUT OF her father’s home. She had seen Umm Ruman’s ghostly pale face, the blood on her thighs, and had known that the birthing had gone terribly wrong. Asma had already lost one mother-she could not bear to lose another.
The girl ran down the steps and stepped out into the narrow alley between her father’s home and the house of the Prophet. She splashed her feet in a pool of dark mud, residue of the rare and welcome rainfall of the night before. Her friends had all gone this morning to pray at the sacred temple-the Holy Kaaba-and thank their gods for the life-giving water that so rarely fell from the sky in the desert valley. But Asma had not joined them. Her father had taught her that the idols in the Kaaba were abominations, false gods whose worship angered Allah. The believers had gathered instead inside the Prophet’s home to thank the One God in secret. They had bowed in unison, their foreheads touching the dark earth as the Prophet recited the most recent verses of the Qur’an, the Book that God was revealing to him bit by bit, in small poetic stanzas, every day.
Asma always enjoyed their services, partly because of the secrecy, the thrill of doing something that was forbidden. And partly because it was a special time that she could share with her father. Abu Bakr was a prosperous merchant who was forever busy inspecting caravans from Yemen, buying and selling frankincense, carpets, and pottery in the marketplace, and serving as an arbiter of commercial disputes among the various trading parties of Mecca. She rarely saw him during the day and relished the few hours every night when he would set aside the ledger of a businessman and take on the robes of a believer.
Asma had always been amazed by how he would change in the presence of the Prophet at these meetings. Abu Bakr was a dignified man, masculine and strong, a man accustomed to quiet leadership. But in the presence of the Messenger, he became as a slave before its master-enthusiastic, nervous, anxious to please. The stern cynicism of the trader was replaced with wonder, the complete and absolute trust of a child. His long face, tired and worn from a day of haggling with Abyssinian, Greek, and Persian traders, would suddenly come alive with enthusiasm and joy. When her father had first approached Asma and told her of his new faith, she was too young to understand the intricacies of theology. But she saw how the Revelation had changed him, how it breathed life into a man who once seemed like a stone, perennially weary of the world, and she knew she that she, too, would embrace this path.
Her love for her father had given her the strength to turn her back on her mother, Qutaila, and her half brother, Abdal Kaaba, who had refused to join the new movement. When they left, a pall had fallen over the house of Abu Bakr. They were outcasts in their own home, adherents to a strange new religion that had the temerity to put the bonds of the soul before the ties of blood. Asma had felt her father’s silent despair grow as his efforts to spread the Prophet’s teachings among his kinsmen were met sometimes with incomprehension, more usually with laughter, and a few times with anger. As fewer and fewer of Abu Bakr’s clansmen and family members came to visit their home, she had felt her own growing isolation. The girls she played with would sometimes whisper about the rumors spreading through Mecca, that Abu Bakr and his family had been possessed by djinn or had been placed under a spell by a sorcerer. She wanted to tell them, tell everyone in the city, the truth. That God had spoken to them, was speaking to them every day, through the lyrical voice of a man who had never before recited any words of power or poetry. That they were being told truths far greater than any relayed by the kahins, the mystical soothsayers who wandered through the villages of Arabia, sharing their visions for a price.
But her father had forbidden her to speak of their community and its beliefs. So she had kept silent, and the shared secret created a lasting bond with the few other believers. They were her new family.
A family that would now be torn asunder if her stepmother died. Umm Ruman had become a mother to the whole community, second only in importance to Khadija, the Prophet’s wife and the first to embrace the new faith. The handful of believers turned to Umm Ruman for hope and inspiration. They relied on her patient ears to unload their tales of loneliness and sorrow, the price that came with their newfound faith. Her kind smile had lifted the hearts of many who had been consumed by grief and rejection, and her soft hands had wiped many cheeks of tears in the past few years. Her death would be a devastating blow to the faithful. But they would ultimately be consoled by turning to the Prophet and his family, the Ahl al-Bayt, the People of the House, who served as the heart of the new religion. The believers would move on, Asma thought ruefully, but she would be bereft of a mother. Again.
She ran down the narrow path toward the Messenger’s home, stopping in front of the wrought-iron gate. As always when she approached the beautiful stone house, with its sturdy pillars and delicately tapered arches, she detected the distinct smell of roses in the air, although she could see no blooms in the courtyard. Asma caught her breath and glanced up. The silver latticed windows on the second floor, the family area, were dark. Although she knew there had been a large gathering inside earlier in the night, no sound emerged from within. The eerie chirping of crickets echoed around her mournfully. Perhaps the Prophet was asleep or immersed deep in prayer.
Even though she knew that her mission was one of life and death, she still hesitated to knock and disturb the holy family. Although her father always reminded her that Allah was merciful and compassionate, she had heard the frightening tales of those who earned His wrath-the tribe of ‘Ad, which had mocked their prophet Hud and been struck down by wind and storm, or Thamud, which had hamstrung the she-camel of its prophet Salih and been consumed by an earthquake.
Asma realized that she was shaking. Whether it was from fear of losing her stepmother or fear of inciting God’s anger by troubling his Prophet, she could not say. She took a breath and took hold of the silver knocker that hung just above her head. Asma rapped the gate three times and was surprised by how deeply the sound echoed inside.
For a long moment, she heard nothing. She tentatively reached for the knocker a second time, when the sound of approaching footsteps halted her. The gate swung inward and a shadow fell upon her. Asma looked up to see a handsome boy of thirteen with emerald-green eyes and hair the color of a starless night. She immediately knew who he was and for a second had difficulty speaking. His intense eyes seemed to peer straight through her in the dark, as if they were lit by their own fire. She blushed and looked down at her feet, and was suddenly mortified to see her slippers, feet, and ankles caked in mud.
“Peace be upon you, daughter of Abu Bakr.” The boy spoke cheerfully, apparently oblivious to her embarrassment. He smiled at her softly, but what he was thinking as he looked at the panting and bedraggled girl on his doorstep, she had no idea. Ali, the son of the Meccan tribal chief Abu Talib, was a cipher, a mystery to even those closest to the Prophet and his family. He was the young cousin of the Messenger and had been adopted into the Ahl al-Bayt when the Prophet’s elderly uncle Abu Talib could no longer afford to feed him. Muhammad was very close to the lad, perhaps viewing him as the brother he had never had, or the son who could have been.
But Ali was not like other youths, and he remained aloof from the boys of Mecca. He showed little interest in their sports, races, or kites, preferring to spend his time watching people in the marketplace as if trying to understand a strange and different species. As a result, the other young men of the city were always a little nervous and uncertain in Ali’s presence. Even the believers around the Prophet were not sure what to make of him. He never quite appeared to be with them in spirit, even if he was there in body. Even now, Ali was like an apparition from a dream. She suddenly had a strange thought. What if Ali is the dreamer and Asma the dream? What happens to me when he awakes?
“I am looking for my father,” she said, pushing the troubling thought aside. “Umm Ruman is ill. Her womb is bleeding.”
Ali blinked at her as if he did not understand her words. Asma got the unnerving feeling again that he was not quite with her but was gazing at her from across some vast distance.
And then he nodded, as if suddenly snapped back to the present moment.
“I am sorry to hear that,” he said softly. “I will inform the Prophet. He will pray for Umm Ruman and, if God wills, she will be healed.”
Ali stepped back and moved to close the gate, when Asma shifted on to the threshold and took hold of its iron latch.
“And my father?” Asma insisted.
“Your father is not here,” Ali said gently. “Abu Bakr went to see Talha and tell him the news.”
“What news?”
The light in Ali’s eyes seemed to brighten.
“It has begun,” he said simply. And with that, Ali nodded a farewell to the perplexed girl and closed the gate.
Asma stood frozen for a moment. There was perfect silence all about her, and the air felt heavier, as if a mysterious blanket had covered the street. It felt as if time had somehow stopped during her brief talk with Ali and that the world itself had been holding its breath.
And then the crickets chirped again in a steady, flowing cadence. Asma shook off the uncomfortable sensation of having just returned from a strange and distant land and focused her mind on what she had to do. She turned and ran away from the Prophet’s house toward the main streets of Mecca and her cousin Talha’s home.
ABU BAKR WARMED HIS hands by the fire as Talha poured him some goat’s milk in an old wooden bowl. The young man, recently turned eighteen, was one of the most recent converts to the new faith. The Prophet’s teachings of charity and justice for the poor had ignited Talha’s youthful idealism and had given him a cause more worthy of dedicating his life to than simply driving camels for his wealthy cousin. He was eager to share the Revelation with his young friends, to recruit them to the cause, but he had sworn a vow of secrecy. Talha had passionately counseled the Messenger to let him spread the word among the stable boys and shepherds of God’s Word. He argued that the new way would be resisted by Abu Bakr’s generation, long trapped in the rites of their fathers, but that it was among the shabab of Mecca, those too young to be subdued by the overpowering weight of tradition, that they would find their strongest supporters. The Prophet had smiled and gently admonished him to be patient. Allah had a plan and none could rush the Divine into action. They day would come, Talha had been assured, when they would emerge from the shadows and proclaim the One God openly in Mecca, and eventually the world.
And now, at last, that day had come.
“So he told the tribal chiefs tonight?” Talha’s eyes glittered with excitement as he handed his elder cousin the bowl of milk.
“Yes.” Abu Bakr held the bowl to his lips, softly whispering the invocation Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Raheem-“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.” It was the sacred formula that the Prophet had been taught by Gabriel, the words by which believers began the recitation of their prayers. It was the blessing that they uttered every time they started something anew, whether it be as simple as eating or drinking or tying their shoes, or as meaningful and profound as making love. The bismillah sanctified even the smallest moments of life, elevating the mundane to the holy with every breath.
Abu Bakr sipped the milk, let its soft curds flow down his throat and cool the fire he had felt growing inside his belly through the night.
“What happened?” Talha leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the old cypress table that Abu Bakr had given him as a gift the day he embraced Islam.
Abu Bakr sighed and put down the bowl.
“The Prophet received a revelation from Gabriel that he must now openly proclaim the Message, beginning first with his own family members,” Abu Bakr said, looking into the flames as he recounted the tale. “And so he asked Ali to gather the heads of Quraysh for dinner tonight.”
The Quraysh were the Prophet’s tribe, who had long administered the city of Mecca and organized the annual pilgrimage that brought Arabs from all over the desert to worship their gods at the Kaaba, the holy temple at the center of the city. They were the de facto rulers of the most important religious site in all of Arabia, and their support would have given Muhammad’s new movement the prestige to win over the hearts of their countrymen.
“It was a sparse meal,” Abu Bakr said softly, remembering the strange events of the evening with a hint of wonder in his voice. “Just a leg of mutton, the meat of which barely filled the bowl the Prophet gave to Ali. And one cup of milk that I saw him fill from an earthen jug. I asked the Messenger if I should go and bring more food from my house, for there was barely enough to feed one man, much less the gathered dignitaries of the Quraysh. He simply smiled and reached into the bowl, taking a small strip of meat. He chewed a morsel and then threw it back into the bowl. And then I saw him turn to Ali and tell the boy to take it in the name of Allah.”
Talha clasped his hands eagerly as Abu Bakr recited the inexplicable events that had followed.
“Ali passed the bowl from man to man, thirty in all, and each reached in and took his fill. Yet the meat did not diminish and the bowl remained always full. Ali poured them milk from the goblet, filling each man’s glass, and yet I never saw him refill his own.”
Talha gasped at the remarkable tale.
“And you saw this? With your own eyes?”
Abu Bakr nodded. “It was like the tale the Messenger once told me when we were boys, a story passed along to him by a Christian monk he met on the caravan to Syria. A tale of the prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, who multiplied many fish and loaves as a sign from God.”
Talha felt a chill go down his spine, and his heart began to thud in his chest. The Prophet had never claimed to perform any miracles, saying that the fact that God was speaking through an illiterate Arab was enough of a miracle in itself. Talha had accepted the truth of the Prophet’s words because they touched his heart. He had never needed any such signs or proofs of his divine mission. But now, listening to Abu Bakr’s tale, he fervently wished that he had been there tonight. But Talha was not a tribal chief. Far from it. He had little wealth or influence of his own and often regretted that he could offer little to the Prophet in terms of material support. But if what Abu Bakr was saying was true, perhaps their little community no longer needed material help. If food could rain down from heaven as it had in the days of Jesus, then the age of miracles had been reborn. Their new faith would triumph, shining a light on what was true and pushing away the darkness.
“Surely the Quraysh must have seen what was happening,” Talha said excitedly. “Surely their hearts must have been moved by the miracle.”
Abu Bakr looked down sadly. “Their hearts were indeed moved, but in the wrong direction. They hardened, like the heart of Pharaoh when confronted by Moses and his miraculous rod.”
Talha was stunned. “They denied the sign?”
“When murmurs of surprise spread through the hall at the miracle, Abu Lahab, the Prophet’s uncle, rose and proclaimed that their host had bewitched them.” Abu Bakr shook his head at the memory of the old man’s fury. “The tribal chiefs rose to leave, but the Prophet begged them to stay, to hear his message. He told them at long last the truth. That he was the Messenger of Allah, and that he had been sent to destroy the idols and false gods that had corrupted the religion of the Arabs. They were shocked and outraged, and for a moment I thought their fury would lead to a riot there in the very home of the Prophet.”
Talha sat back, his heart sinking. “What did the Prophet do?”
“He called out to his clansmen and asked who among them would help him in his mission and thus become his brother, his executor and successor among them.” Abu Bakr looked into Talha’s eyes. “None spoke in his favor. And then Ali stood up before all the lords of Mecca and proclaimed that he would be the Prophet’s helper.”
Talha was perplexed. “Ali? He is just a boy.”
Abu Bakr nodded. “A boy, perhaps, but with the heart of a lion. He showed more courage in that moment, standing firm before the jeering chieftains, than most men show in a lifetime. The Prophet touched Ali’s neck and commanded the tribal chiefs to hearken to Ali and obey him.”
Talha was speechless for a moment. Abu Bakr saw his consternation and smiled.
“The chieftains had the same reaction,” he said. “There was a silence in the room, like the quiet that falls upon the earth before the wrath of heaven is unleashed. And then they began to laugh and mock the Prophet, who had ordered them to obey a boy whose voice had only recently hardened, whose cheeks were still without a beard. I looked across the room to see Ali’s father, the Prophet’s uncle Abu Talib, bow his gray head in shame, as the lords heaped abuse on his son and nephew. And then they all turned and stormed out of the hall, leaving us alone and in silence.”
Talha shook his head in dismay. He ran his hand through his dark curls as if trying to pull off the cobweb of despair that had suddenly fallen on him.
“So now they know. And they will try to destroy us.”
Abu Bakr nodded.
Talha looked across the small room that served as his only shelter in the barren valley of Mecca. He had only the table his cousin had given him and a small leather cot across from the open fireplace. That was the extent of his worldly goods. And he was considered richer than many of the believers. How were they going to stand up to the might of Mecca, whose lords lived like kings, whose coffers were filled with gold, whose clansmen were armed with the finest swords and spears?
“So what do we do now?”
Abu Bakr gazed out the small window of the stone cottage. Outside, the stars sparkled and danced across the firmament. A heavenly flame flew past his vision, followed by another.
“A new day is upon us,” Abu Bakr said thoughtfully. “The secret has been revealed, and the world will now conspire against the believers,” he said softly.
And then he reached over and touched Talha on the shoulder. “Like you, my heart was heavy tonight. But as I moved to leave the empty hall, the Messenger took me aside and comforted me. He said these words that had been revealed by Gabriel:
“In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
By the flight of Time
Man is indeed in loss
Except for those who believe
And do good
And persevere with truth
And persevere with patience.”
Talha felt the words flow through his heart, like a stream bringing life to the dead earth. These words, which rhymed with majestic poetry and perfect meter in Arabic, had been spoken by God Himself tonight. Tears suddenly welled in his eyes. The God of Abraham, who had chosen to speak to man one last time. And in His inexplicable plan, He had chosen to speak through them, a barbaric, uneducated, and primitive people. A nation forgotten by history and mocked by the grand civilizations that surrounded them. They were the worst of the sons of Adam. And yet He had chosen them.
Talha followed his elder kinsman’s gaze at the stars outside. They had circled the earth for countless millennia. Had seen empires rise and fall, had seen mighty kings and warriors crumble into dust, their names forgotten, the songs of their deeds lost in the mists of time. And yet the stars remained firm, sparkling in the heavens, as a sign of that which would never die, that which would never be lost to time.
Talha understood. Though the entire world might work against them, God’s plan would triumph. It was not for them to know the how or the when. Their task was to begin writing the tale, even though its final chapter was hidden from them.
Abu Bakr leaned closer to him and spoke softly, conspiratorially. “Do not sleep tonight, but stay awake and bow in worship.”
Talha looked at him. “I will do as you say.”
Abu Bakr nodded. He looked directly into Talha’s eyes. “The Messenger said that there will be Signs tonight. The angels are writing the future of our faith even as we speak. The destinies of men and women will be inscribed in the Tablet of Heaven, and the writing will be made clear to those whose hearts are ready. For it is tonight that our faith will be born anew and shall light a fire that will consume the old world and bring in the new.”
Talha nodded, his soul stirring with awe at Abu Bakr’s words.
And then he saw the first Sign.
An angel clad in white, its gown glittering in the starlight, was flying down the path toward his home. Talha’s mouth fell open. He stared at the apparition in wonder, like a parched traveler gazing at a mirage, hoping beyond hope that what he saw was real and not a ghost of his imagination
And then he saw that the angel was a child, whose face was white with fear.
“Father!” It was Asma, Abu Bakr’s daughter, who cried to them from across the dirt road as she caught a glimpse of their silhouettes standing near the window of the tiny mud brick cottage.
Abu Bakr turned to stare out the window in surprise. And when he saw the look on his daughter’s face, the blood emptied from his own. Talha watched in shock as his cousin’s serene composure shattered and was replaced by a look of pure terror. Abu Bakr staggered toward the door, his heart in his throat. He stumbled and Talha reached to help him, but the older man swatted him away.
Abu Bakr threw open the small arched door to Talha’s cottage just as Asma fell inside the threshold. He held his daughter close as she tried to catch her breath. But even before the child spoke, Talha knew what she would say. Her red-rimmed eyes burned their message to any who looked into them.
Abu Bakr stroked his daughter’s brown curls softly, let her lean into his chest to gain strength from the power of his beating heart. A heart that was now thundering so loudly that Talha fancied he heard it pounding in his ears. Or was it his own?
“Umm Ruman…” Asma gasped, trying to choke out the words. “Umm Ruman…the baby…is dying…”
AMAL THE MIDWIFE WIPED the sweat-drenched brow of her unlucky ward. She barely noticed that her own face, indeed her arms and breasts, were bathed in sweat from her efforts to save the life of the mother and child. By all accounts, both should be dead by now. The blood from Umm Ruman’s womb had flowed like honey from a beehive, slow, dark, and persistent. She had lost more blood in the past hour than Amal imagined could have possibly flowed through the veins of the tiny woman. But the delicate lady, with bones as dainty and small as a bird, had proven a warrior in spirit. Umm Ruman had screamed and screamed in agony, but she remained stubbornly alive, refusing to give in to the inevitable.
Amal had finally been able to stem the hemorrhage, which had drained the dark-skinned Umm Ruman and left her soft skin a sickly yellow, like a full moon low on the eastern horizon in midsummer. The midwife had breathed a sigh of relief and muttered a prayer thanking the goddess Uzza, when her patient sharply forbade her to mention the name of the divinity. “If you pray, do so to Allah,” Umm Ruman had croaked out between labored breaths. Amal was surprised at the strange request. Allah, the High God, was too far away to hear the prayers of mortals. That is why their people worshiped His daughters Allat, Uzza, and Manat, and a host of other gods who had the time and patience to deal with the petty affairs of mankind.
Umm Ruman was clearly light-headed and confused from her ordeal, but Amal knew enough to remain silent. Now that the bleeding had stopped, she needed to help bring forth the remains of the baby. The child would in all likelihood be stillborn, but she needed to clear the dead fetus from Umm Ruman’s womb and cleanse her of the poisonous afterbirth if there were to be any hope of saving her patient.
Amal had pressed her hand along Umm Ruman’s stretched belly and was surprised to feel the unmistakable tremor of movement beneath her flesh. The child lived! Amal’s heart soared with hope for a second and then was dashed as she pressed farther along Umm Ruman’s stomach. She felt a soft pressure near the birth canal that she immediately recognized as the baby’s feet. Her spirit sank. The baby was improperly positioned. If Umm Ruman pushed the child out feetfirst, it would suffocate before it had a chance to enter the world.
Amal knew what had to be done. She looked up at Umm Ruman, whose bloodshot eyes shone with grim determination. “The child…”
“I know,” was all Umm Ruman said, and Amal knew that she understood. The tiny woman with the heart of a soldier grinded her teeth in preparation. “Do it.”
Amal nodded. She hesitated and then made a loud prayer to Allah for the safe delivery of the child. She did not really believe that the Lord of the Worlds would take a moment from turning the stars in the heavens to care for the plight of one small, forgotten mother, but Amal wanted to give Umm Ruman hope. The odds were she would die from what happened next, but at least she would die with her heart satisfied.
The midwife took a deep breath and put her hands on Umm Ruman’s belly. Remembering the ancient techniques taught to her by her own mother, Amal placed pressure on her patient’s womb in order to turn the child headfirst.
Umm Ruman screamed, an agonized cry that echoed across the valley of Mecca and traveled high into the starry heavens.
ABU BAKR STOOD OUTSIDE his wife’s birth chamber, shaking with fear. He could hear Umm Ruman’s horrific wails, which seemed only to increase in intensity. Every fiber in his body cried for him to rush inside and comfort his dying wife through her final moments. But Talha held him back. “Let the midwife do her job,” the boy had said, and Abu Bakr knew he was right.
He looked down at Asma, his loyal daughter, who had chosen him and his faith even over her own mother, and squeezed her tiny hand. She was strong, stronger than he would have been in her position. He had torn their family apart with his decision to follow Muhammad, and she had never complained. Abu Bakr had always been close to his own parents, and he had found it beyond comprehension how his young friend Muhammad had endured the horrific loss of his beloved mother, Amina, when he was only six years old. Abu Bakr’s heart was heavy with the knowledge that he had orphaned Asma once already by renouncing Qutaila. And now, with Umm Ruman’s impending death, the child would be doubly motherless.
He looked around the antechamber where they waited for the screams to abruptly end and the midwife to emerge with her dreaded tidings. It was well furnished, as befitted a prosperous merchant of Quraysh. Thick rugs imported from Persia covered the marble floors. The stone walls were whitewashed and held many trophies and trinkets from his travels on the caravan routes. Silver plates from Syria, their tiles swirling in intricate geometric designs, lined one wall, while another was covered in an assortment of swords and daggers from Byzantium, their hilts embedded with precious emeralds and rubies. The arched windows were covered in thick curtains made from Abyssinian cotton. Couches covered in rich silk brocade had entertained many nobles from Mecca and beyond in the years past, although now that Abu Bakr’s true beliefs were known, he was likely to have few such visitors in the future.
Abu Bakr was by every account a wealthy man, but he would readily trade all the gold in his coffers for a miracle tonight.
Perhaps sensing his thoughts, Talha touched his shoulder.
“Let us pray the Fatiha. Perhaps it will be of help,” the boy said softly.
Abu Bakr looked at the sensitive young man and then at his brave little daughter, and nodded.
The three believers stood in a circle, their hands upraised to heaven in humble supplication, and recited in unison the Seven Oft-Repeated Verses that the believers read daily in their prayers:
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds
The Merciful, the Compassionate
King of the Day of Judgment
You alone do we worship, and Your aid alone do we seek.
Show us the Straight Path
The path of those who incur Your favor
Not the path of those who earn Your wrath
Nor of those who go astray.
Abu Bakr, Talha, and Asma recited the prayer out loud, their voices melding in lyrical unison. They repeated it again, and a third time. Perhaps it was Abu Bakr’s imagination, but each time he recited the sacred verses, the cries from the adjoining room seemed to lessen in intensity.
Again and again they repeated the holy words. And then, at the seventh recitation, a silence fell over the house, a quiet so sudden and so complete that Abu Bakr’s heart chilled. Umm Ruman was dead.
Tears welled in his eyes, and his heart started pounding. She was his strength, his soul. How could he live without her? He realized that Asma was now crying openly, but he found he could not move to comfort her.
Talha moved to take the weeping child out of the room, to leave Abu Bakr to the privacy of his grief.
And then they heard it. A strange, impossible, glorious sound.
The cry of a baby.
Abu Bakr raised his head and stared at the door to the birthing chamber. There was silence again. Had he imagined it? And then the child wailed louder and he felt a burst of light illuminate his heart, like the sun emerging from behind the empty blackness of an eclipse.
Talha looked up at him in wonder. And Asma laughed, clapping her hands with the unfettered delight that only a child can know.
Abu Bakr felt his legs go weak, and he grabbed hold of an intricately carved chair made from Iraqi cypress. And then he stumbled forward and threw tradition to the wind. He flung open the door to the forbidden chamber and rushed inside.
Umm Ruman was still seated on the sharply angled birthing chair, her tunic covered in blood and the fluids of childbirth. Her face was sickly pale, but her eyes were open and alert. And she breathed deeply, like a woman trapped at the bottom of a well longing for air. She was alive!
Abu Bakr looked at her in wonder and she smiled weakly. He would remember that smile in years to come, when the storm clouds that had been gathering would be unleashed and the armies of men and the devil would seek to destroy the believers. It would give him strength and hope and power to battle on in the cause of God and His Messenger. For in a cruel world where the only certainty was death, their way was the way of life.
The child’s cries turned his head and Abu Bakr looked at the midwife, who had just finished washing the baby and had wrapped it in a green swaddling cloth. Amal’s face was haggard and she looked as if she herself had endured the pangs of childbirth. She looked up at him and nodded a greeting, the lines of her mouth too tired to form into a smile.
“I give you glad tidings of a girl,” she said weakly. Abu Bakr saw the strain in her face and worried that she barely had the strength to hold the precious baby. He moved to take the child into his arms, and the midwife did not protest.
Abu Bakr took hold of the tiny child as Talha and Asma tentatively entered the birthing chamber. He looked down at the wrinkled face and ran a finger across the girl’s cheeks, pink like a rose blossom. His daughter had a healthy brush of hair, a fiery red that glittered like copper in the pale torchlight. As Abu Bakr held his child, he realized that she was a true miracle-the first child to be born into the new religion. He wanted his first words to her to impart the truth he had come to believe with all his heart. He bent down carefully and whispered into the infant’s ears the formula of faith: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.
The child opened her eyes for the first time at the sound of his words. Abu Bakr caught his breath. She had eyes unlike any he had ever seen before. Golden, like those of a lion, they seemed to glow with their own fire.
He felt rather than saw Asma step up behind him, and he turned to her.
“Come, see your sister,” he said to his daughter, who looked down nervously at the little girl. Asma hesitated and then bent down to kiss the baby on its forehead. Abu Bakr turned to Umm Ruman, who weakly reached out to him. He moved to show their daughter to his wife, when the midwife made a cry of alarm.
“Manat protect us! The tidings are ill!” Amal squawked unexpectedly.
Abu Bakr looked over to see the midwife staring out of a small window facing east. Her eyes were wide, and she was slapping her head furiously in the ancient gesture of grief and terror.
“What’s the matter?” Abu Bakr asked sharply.
“The baby…she is born under a dark star,” Amal said. She pointed out the window to a constellation that was rising on the eastern horizon. It was a swirling cluster of lights, with the ominous red star Antares pulsating in its center.
Al-Akrab. The Scorpion. To the pagan Arabs, the stars of the zodiac were gods in their own right, beings that ruled men’s affairs from the heavens and set their destinies at birth. And al-Akrab was the lord of death.
Before Abu Bakr could react, Amal rushed to his side, her eyes wide with fear.
“The child…cast it into the desert…bury it under stones before it can wreak its havoc!” she said, her voice frantic, her leathery face contorted with a kind of madness.
Abu Bakr felt his fury rise. He pushed Amal away from him forcefully.
“Get away from my daughter!” he said with terrifying ferocity. A mild and restrained man by nature, his anger was a rare and terrible thing to behold. Even Asma shrank back at the sudden rage in his voice.
Talha quickly moved forward and put a steady hand on the agitated midwife. “Do not utter your blasphemies in this house, which God has blessed.”
But Amal ignored the boy.
“She is a curse…wherever she will go, chaos and death will follow her,” Amal said, her eyes brimming with the intensity of her superstitious belief. “Slay her now, before the wrath of the gods is kindled!”
Abu Bakr held the baby closer to his heart, which was pounding with anger.
“I will slay your gods instead, and the wrath of the One will be kindled against your lies for all time!” Abu Bakr’s voice boomed with such power and authority that Amal was struck speechless.
He turned to Talha, his eyes burning with righteous indignation.
“Pay this midwife what she is due, and then let her not darken my doorstep again,” he said.
Talha pulled the trembling woman away and led her out of the birthing chamber. She bowed her head and did not struggle with him, nor did she make any move to take the gold dirham that he offered her. He finally pushed it into her hand and closed her fingers around it.
As Talha pushed Amal out the door, she looked up at him with her dark eyes, which now shone with the frenzy that he had seen among the kahinas, the medicine women of the desert whom the foolish people consulted for their oracles.
“The child will lead you to your death someday,” Amal said softly.
Alas, poor Talha, how I wish he had but listened to her portent!
But he only looked at her with contempt.
“If that is the will of Allah, I will happily embrace it.”
His confident response surprised the woman, who suddenly looked confused and lost. Who were these strange people who ignored the ancient traditions of the gods and put their trust in a God that no one could see or hear or touch? She turned and gazed out across the stone settlements of Mecca as if seeing the city for the first time. Amal looked up at the stars for an answer but found none.
“The child is the beginning of the end,” she whispered. “It is all ending. Everything. And I cannot see what will take its place.”
Talha looked at the strange woman and shook his head.
“The Truth,” he said simply, before closing the door on the midwife.
Talha returned to find Abu Bakr leaning close to Umm Ruman, who now held the swaddled baby in her arms. The drama of the midwife appeared to be forgotten amid the family’s joy at her safe delivery.
He went up to his kinsman and smiled.
“The madwoman is gone,” he said.
Abu Bakr looked up at him and shook his head.
“She was not mad,” he said softly. “This little girl will bring death.”
Talha was stunned by these words.
“I don’t understand” was all he could say.
Abu Bakr stroked his newborn daughter’s soft cheek gently.
“She will bring death to ignorance, which will allow the light of knowledge to be born,” he said simply.
Abu Bakr took the girl from Umm Ruman and held her close.
“In a world of idolatry, she is the first to be born a believer,” he said softly. “She has already conquered death and has brought life.” He gazed into the child’s golden eyes, which were alert and seemed to exhibit an ancient intelligence.
“I will name her Aisha,” Abu Bakr said.
A name that Talha knew in the old language meant “She Lives.”
My first real memory is the day I witnessed death.
Ever since that day, I have been blessed-and cursed-with perfect memory. I can recall words said forty years ago as if they had been uttered this morning. The scent of a moment is forever impressed on my heart, as if I live outside time, and every moment of my life is now. The Messenger, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, used to say that I was chosen for that reason. That his words and deeds would be remembered for all time through me, the one he loved the most.
But there is a darkness behind every gift, like the veil of night that remains hidden behind the sun, waiting patiently for its moment to cast the world in gloom. My gift of memory is like that. For even as I can remember every moment of joy, every instant of laughter in my life, I can also remember the pain with absolute clarity. There are those who say time heals all wounds, but that is not so for me. Every wound I have suffered, I relive with terrifying precision, as if the knife, once embedded in my heart, leaves behind a shard of crystal sharpness ready to cut me again should I turn my thoughts in its direction.
It is that perfect memory that has made me the most prized recounter of hadith, the tales of the Prophet’s life and teaching to be recorded for future generations of believers.
And it is that perfect memory that brought war upon my people and splintered our nation forever.
But every memory, even one as pristine as my own, must begin in earnest one day. Mine begins the day of the great Pilgrimage. My father had decided that I was old enough to attend the annual ritual, where tribes from all over Arabia descended on the arid valley of Mecca to worship at the House of God.
I ran shoeless out of the house when Abu Bakr called, and my father sternly sent me back, telling me that I could not accompany him unless I wore the tiny blue sandals he had bought from Yemeni traders earlier that summer. I pouted and stamped my feet, but Abu Bakr simply raised his eyebrows and refused to open the gate until I hung my head and sullenly went back inside in search of them.
I hunted through the house, trying to remember where I had thrown them in one of my tantrums earlier that morning. I searched in my small bedroom, beneath the tiny cot with its knotted rope fibers supporting the soft Egyptian cotton mattress. I looked through the mountain of dolls and toys that were piled in a corner, throwing the little wooden and rag figures everywhere and making a mess that my mother would assuredly chide me for later that day. But that inevitable reckoning did not concern me, a young girl who only cared for the moment. The future, as every child knows, is little more than make-believe. All that ever exists, all that ever matters, is now.
Frowning, I ran out of her bedchamber and looked in the main sitting room, underneath the emerald brocaded couches from Persia that were among the few luxuries that still remained inside our home. My mother told me that our house used to be filled with beautiful and expensive furnishings in the Days of Ignorance but that Abu Bakr had sold most of his worldly goods since I was born, dedicating his wealth to the spread of the Truth. I always wondered why spreading the Truth should be expensive, since it was obvious and free to all, but when I asked Umm Ruman once, my mother gave me the stern glance that was her practiced response to my litany of impertinent queries.
Looking around in frustration, I suddenly saw a hint of blue in a corner. I ran over, my crimson hair flying behind me. There they were! My Yemeni sandals were tucked behind an intricate vase that my mother said was made in a faraway city called Damascus. I paused to admire the swirling floral designs in carnelian, citrine, and olive that circled the ivory vase in crisscrossing patterns.
Umm Ruman had taught me the names of the different blooms depicted on the vase-hyacinths, jasmine and lotus-flowers that grew in faraway cities with mysterious names like Aksum, Babylon, and Persepolis. I loved flowers, but so few grew in the hot desert sun. I had yelped with delight a month before when I had found a small abal bush growing in a gulley just outside the perimeter of the holy precinct, at the base of the sacred hill of Safa. I had plucked its red, lantern-shaped blooms, which I had seen the older girls use to rouge their cheeks, but its thorns had torn into my tiny palm and I had run home crying.
My mother had gently removed the needles from my hand and salved the little wounds with dried sap from the thornbushes that grew in our courtyard. After drying my tears, Umm Ruman had gently chided me for wandering so far away from home. From now on, I was to play only within sight of their house. Mecca was a dangerous city for little girls…especially girls whose families supported the heretic Prophet in its midst.
I remembered her words as I grabbed the sandals and slipped them on. They were pretty enough, with little white stars woven though the tiny blue throngs, but I didn’t like them. Although other girls were obsessed with shoes, spending hours in silly talk about the merits of various designs, the newest fashions arriving on caravans from north and south, I found shoes to be an irritant. Instead, I loved the tingly feeling of the warm sand on my bare feet, even the tiny pricks caused by the pebbles that littered the streets of the ancient city. Shoes made me feel restricted and caged, like one of the goats my father had kept in a pen behind the old stone house in preparation for the sacrifice at the apex of the Pilgrimage.
I ran back to my father, who was still waiting by the gate. Seeing the look of mild irritation on his face at the delay, I quickly kicked up my feet and showed off the little shoes, and then danced an excited jig around him, until his stern face broke into an exasperated smile. I always knew how to melt Abu Bakr’s serious mood. I was too full of life to allow others the luxury of gloom.
My father took my hand and together we walked through the dusty streets of Mecca. Smoke rose from the chimneys of hundreds of small stone cottages and mud-brick huts, clustered together in expanding concentric circles around the central plaza known as Al-Haram-the Sanctuary. As we walked toward the heart of the city I saw children racing through the streets, chasing one another or a variety of animals-goats, lambs, and a few wayward chickens-that had escaped their pens.
I also saw dozens of beggars, mainly women and bastard children who had been abandoned by their fathers. They held out their hands, their pathetic cries for compassion largely ignored. My father handed an old woman a gold dirham. Her eyes went wide in shock at his generosity, for she had come to expect little more than a copper piece accompanied by a grudging look. We were suddenly surrounded by what appeared to be every beggar in town, their hands reaching out for this source of bounty. I was frightened by this excited crowd of young and old, dressed in rags and smelling worse than the rabid dogs that prowled the streets at night. But Abu Bakr was patient with them, handing to each a single gold coin from his leather purse until he had nothing left.
They followed him through the streets, pleading for more, but my father simply smiled and shook his head.
“I will be back tomorrow with more, insha-Allah,” he said, using the phrase “if God wills” that was a signature of the Muslims. The Messenger had taught us that we should say insha-Allah whenever we spoke of the future, even if referring to events only an hour away. It kept man humble and forced him to acknowledge that he was not solely the master of his destiny.
My father managed to slip away from the more persistent and aggressive of the beggars, pulling me into a side alley and taking a circuitous route to the Sanctuary. We were now in the oldest section of the city, whose buildings were said to have stood for hundreds of years, since the earliest tribes had settled the valley. The ancient houses looked like grand towers to me, but in truth most were ramshackle constructions of wood and stone, few rising higher than a second story. I could see people standing on rooftop terraces, their eyes on the horizon as the steady stream of Bedouin pilgrims emerged from the dead hills in search of Mecca ’s gods-and its life-giving wells. My eyes went wide as I watched the strangers ride by, their camels covered in colorful mats of wool and leather, their faces cracked and blackened by years of harsh work under the unforgiving sun.
My father sensed I was dawdling and he pulled forward with a gentle tug until we had cleared the narrow stone alleys and stepped onto the red sand that marked the boundaries of the Sanctuary. The plaza was spread open in a wide circle and my eyes immediately fell on the Kaaba, the grand temple that was the heart of Mecca and all of Arabia. Shaped like a majestic cube, it towered forty feet above the ground and was the tallest building in the settlement. The granite walls were covered in a variety of rich curtains of wool, cotton, even silk-crimson, emerald, and sky blue-that were brought by tribes from every corner of Arabia to mark their Pilgrimage to the sacred house.
As we approached the Kaaba, I saw my father frown. The plaza was covered with a bewildering collection of idols, stone and wood icons that represented the various gods of the desert tribes. There were 360 in all, one for each day of the year. Some were elegantly fashioned, chiseled in marble to an almost lifelike representation of a man or an animal-lions, wolves, and jackals seemed particularly popular. But others were little more than misshapen clumps of rock that required much imagination before any semblance of recognizable form could be imputed to them.
My eyes fell on two large rocks that looked vaguely like a man and woman entwined in the act of love. My friends had giggled and told me that they were once two romantics named Isaf and Naila who had consummated their lust in the Kaaba and had been turned to stone for defiling the Sanctuary. I was not sure why these two sinners who had been punished for their indiscretion should now be worshiped as gods, but they were apparently quite popular, and many young men and women bowed before them and tied tiny strings in the nooks and crannies, praying for the deities to win them the heart of their beloved, or at least bring ill fortune to their rivals in the game of love.
“Barbarism,” my father uttered under his breath. He grimaced at the sight of middle-aged women kneeling before a red-flecked rock shaped like a pregnant woman with bulbous breasts and hips. This was Uzza, one of three “daughters of Allah” who were worshiped by the pagans. She was said to be the goddess of fertility, and her favor was much sought after by those who wished to conceive. The women, their eyes brimming with hope and despair, tore open their tunics and rubbed their naked breasts against the cold stone, pleading in loud wails for Uzza to reverse the course of time, to begin their cycles again so that they could bear the children that had been denied them.
I was fascinated by these strange rituals, but my father pulled me away and led me toward the Kaaba. A crowd of hundreds of pilgrims was steadily circumambulating the House of God, moving like the stars around the earth, circling seven times while praising Allah, the Creator of the Universe. The pilgrims were dressed in a variety of robes reflecting their wealth and social power, with the tribal chiefs wrapped in silk and endowed with glittering jewels commanding the right to walk closest to the temple, while others encircled at the outskirts in filthy rags-and a few even danced around the Kaaba naked.
“Don’t look at them,” my father warned sternly as my eyes fell on these hairy nude men, their organs hanging like the sagging genitals of a dog in the open. I giggled, but a stern look from Abu Bakr forced me to hide my amusement. We walked around the holy house at a steady pace, while my father prayed aloud for the mercy of God on his wayward and ignorant people.
When we finished the sacred rite, my father, who was now drenched in sweat from the noon sun, led me away from the Kaaba and guided me to a blue pavilion at the outskirts of the Sanctuary. Under the merciful shade of the tent was the well of Zamzam, which had provided the city with a steady supply of water since the days of the first settlers. Its miraculous existence in the middle of an otherwise dead wilderness had made Mecca a necessary stop for all trading caravans that traveled between the fertile lands of Yemen to the south and Syria to the north.
This strategic location and life-giving water supply had brought much prosperity to the city’s traders-but not for most others. For the merchants of Mecca believed in only one rule-the survival of the strong. Those who were smart enough to take advantage of the opportunities provided by trade deserved to lord their wealth over others. Those too weak to do so best hurry up and die, freeing up the resources they left behind for those who were more worthy. It was this heartless mind-set that the Messenger of God had challenged, and his calls for economic justice and redistribution of Mecca ’s wealth were a direct threat to the philosophy of the city’s ruling class.
As we joined the line of thirsty pilgrims eager for a drink of the sacred water, I saw a newly arrived caravan of Bedouin pilgrims approach the Sanctuary. Their leader, his face scarred and his beard dyed red, disembarked from a gray camel and helped the others of his clan climb off their horses and mules. Their faces had the dark complexions and high cheekbones of the men of Yemen, and I realized even at my tender age that they must have traveled at least twenty days in the harsh desert to attend the Pilgrimage. Their faces were covered in coarse sand that was turning into mud under rivers of perspiration.
As I watched them, I saw a tall man dressed in rich silk robes approach them, a blue turban on his head. Abu Sufyan was not the king of Mecca, but he certainly acted like it. He walked with a royal flourish, his hands held wide in welcome of the new arrivals. Beside him I saw a short boy of about fifteen years of age with a hooked nose and unblinking black eyes that made him look like a hawk. Muawiya, Abu Sufyan’s son, was more reserved than his expressive father and looked over the newcomers with shrewd appraisal. I sensed that he was calculating their wealth and value to Meccan trade even as his father embraced the Bedouin leader as if he were a long-lost relative.
“Welcome my brothers, my friends!” Abu Sufyan’s voice boomed with the practiced good cheer of a salesman. “Welcome to the House of Allah! May the gods bless you and grant you all that you seek!”
The Bedouin leader wiped his brow as the river of sweat threatened to blind him.
“We seek water, for the journey has been trying and the sun god merciless.”
Abu Sufyan’s eyes fell on the heavy emerald rings that covered he chief ’s fingers and he smiled greedily.
“Of course, my friend.”
And then Abu Sufyan’s saw that the traders were carrying arms. Swords and daggers in sheaths on their rough leather belts, and spears and arrows tied to the sides of their horses. Necessary protection for their journey through the wild-but a potential threat to order inside Mecca itself.
“But first, I must ask that you lay aside your weapons, for they are forbidden inside the precincts of the holy city,” Abu Sufyan said with an apologetic smile.
The Bedouin looked at him for a moment and then nodded to his fellow pilgrims. They removed their various weapons and dropped them at their feet.
Muawiya stepped forward to pick up the blades, but the Bedouin leader moved to block him, his eyes filled with suspicion at the boy.
Aware of the sudden tension, Abu Sufyan immediately put on a gracious smile and stepped between the scarred Bedouin and the youth.
“My son Muawiya will take personal responsibility for all your weapons,” the Meccan chief said smoothly. “He will hold them in trust at the House of Assembly, and will return them to you at the conclusion of your Pilgrimage.”
The Bedouin spat on the ground at Muawiya’s feet.
“We are warriors of Bani Abdal Lat,” he said, his face hard. “We do not leave our weapons in the care of children.”
Abu Sufyan’s ingratiating smile vanished. The pride and power of his lineage suddenly shone through.
“My son is a lord of Quraysh, and there are no children among us. Only men of honor,” he said, his cold voice suggesting that the Bedouin had overstepped the bonds of hospitality.
Muawiya quickly interceded. “I will serve as surety over your goods,” he said, demonstrating the natural diplomacy that would serve him well in years to come. “If you do not receive them all back when you leave, you may take me as your slave in return.”
The gruff Bedouin looked over the small boy, who gazed at him steadily, never breaking eye contact. The pilgrim finally nodded, satisfied.
“The boy is strong. He has the eyes of an eagle,” the man said in clipped tones. “Your surety is accepted.”
He nodded to his people, who stepped aside as Muawiya quietly gathered the blades, spears, and arrows. Abu Sufyan’s gracious smile returned and he led the dust-covered pilgrims toward the tent of Zamzam. But when he saw my father and me standing near the well, a dangerous look came into his eyes. It was if he were communicating a wordless warning to my father. Abu Bakr met his gaze without flinching and then turned to me and held me up by my arms so that I could reach for the bucket of water he had pulled out of the well. I grasped a small bronze cup that hung from a ring at the side of the wooden bucket and drank to my little heart’s content.
Abu Sufyan turned back to his visitors.
“Behold the sacred well of Mecca, which never runs dry, nor do its waters suffer from disease or pollution. A sign of God’s favor on this blessed city.”
The Bedouin gathered around the well and dipped their leather pouches into its waters, scooping up the precious liquid and consuming it in quick gulps.
My father looked at Abu Sufyan and then laughed loudly.
“You are a strange man, Abu Sufyan,” my father said. “You acknowledge God’s favor on Mecca, and yet you still refuse to obey Him.”
The chief of Mecca turned red with suppressed anger.
The Bedouin leader saw his reaction and gazed at my father with sudden interest.
“Who is this man?”
Abu Sufyan turned his back on us.
“Just a madman spouting nonsense,” he said, waving his hand in dismissal. “Unfortunately the time of Pilgrimage draws many such fools, like the flood brings out the rats.”
Hearing him speak of my father like that ignited a fire in my child’s heart. I broke free of my father’s grasp and ran over to Abu Sufyan. “Don’t talk about my father that way! You’re the fool! You’re the rat!”
The Pilgrims laughed at my childish outburst, and my father quickly pulled me back with a scolding look.
“Aisha! We are Muslims. We do not speak to our elders with disrespect. Even if they are unbelievers.”
Now the Bedouin were intrigued. Their chief stepped forward
“What is a Muslim?”
Which was, of course, the question my father had been waiting to answer.
“One who has surrendered to God alone,” he said solemnly, like a teacher imparting wisdom to a young pupil.
But Abu Sufyan was not about to let this happen. He stepped right in front of my father and looked down at him with fury.
“Do not pester these pilgrims any further, Abu Bakr,” he said through gritted teeth. “They are tired and thirsty. Let them drink the sacred water of Zamzam in peace.”
Abu Bakr looked at the Bedouin, quenching their thirst from the well.
“I will do as you say. If you can tell me why this well is so sacred.”
Abu Sufyan stiffened.
“It is sacred because our forefathers have said so. That is enough for me.”
My father turned to the Bedouin.
“Tell me, my brother, is that enough for you?” he asked softly. “Do you know why the water you drink is blessed?”
The Bedouin looked perplexed. He ran a hand over the scar that disfigured his left cheek.
“I have never asked. But now I am curious.”
The Bedouin glanced at Abu Sufyan, but the tribal chief had no response.
And then my father turned to me.
“Tell them, little one,” he said with a gentle smile.
I looked up at the dark and dusty men from the desert and recited the story I had been raised with.
“The well of Zamzam is a miracle from God, written in the Book of the Jews and Christians,” I told them. “When our father Ishmael was sent into the desert by Abraham, his mother, Hagar, looked for water so that her child would not die of thirst. Seven times she ran between those hills.”
I pointed to the peaks of Safa and Marwa that overlooked the city. Even then, dozens of pilgrims were racing between the hills as part of the Pilgrimage ritual, though they had long forgotten its meaning or origins.
“But when she could find no water, she came back here,” I continued. “And the angel Gabriel appeared and told Ishmael to strike his foot. And the well of Zamzam sprang from beneath his feet, bringing water to the desert. And life to Mecca.”
As I spoke, I could tell that I had caught the attention of the Bedouin. They listened raptly to the story I wove, which suddenly brought a new meaning to the ancient rites they had crossed the desert to perform.
Abu Sufyan snorted.
“A child’s fable. Come, let me take you to the House of God.”
The Bedouin looked at me and my father, intrigued.
“Perhaps it is a child’s tale, but it is a good one,” he said, his eyes wide with wonder.
Abu Sufyan could no longer hide his irritation. He pushed his Bedouin guests toward the Kaaba as if they were wayward mares. My father and I followed. Even though we had completed our rites for the morning, Abu Bakr had sensed that the Bedouin were ready to hear more about our faith. We would wait until the men had finished their circumambulation and Abu Sufyan attended to other newcomers. And then my father would likely take them back to the House of the Messenger, where they could hear the Truth and be saved.
But as we approached the Kaaba, where the perpetual whirlwind of pilgrims was in motion, I heard shouts from across the Sanctuary. The enraged, booming voice of a man echoed through the plaza and drowned out even the loudest of prayers.
“What is it?” I asked my father, more intrigued than frightened.
“It is Umar. As usual.”
Ah, of course. Umar ibn al-Khattab, one of the most virulent of the lords of Mecca in his opposition to God’s Messenger. I saw him across the open space, towering like a giant over a small African man I immediately recognized as a former slave named Bilal. My father had bought Bilal’s freedom from his ruthless master, Umayya, who had tortured the poor man after he had embraced Islam. Umayya had dragged his rebellious slave into the marketplace, tied him to the ground under the blazing Meccan sun, and placed a heavy boulder on Bilal’s chest until it cracked his ribs and made it almost impossible to breathe. Umayya demanded that Bilal return to the worship of his master’s gods, but all the courageous slave would croak out under torture was “One God…One God…” Bilal would have died there that day had my father not intervened and paid Umayya’s outrageous price of ten gold dirhams for his freedom.
And now Umar tormented the poor freedman, who lay prostrate on the earth before the House of God, a gesture that immediately identified him as a follower of Muhammad’s new religion.
“You son of a dog! Get up!” Umar’s voice was like an elephant’s cry, terrifying and unearthly at once. He was the tallest man I had ever seen, with a bushy black beard that grew down to his waist. His arms were as thick as tree trunks, the muscles bulging clearly from the thin fabric of his red tunic. Umar reached down with hands that were larger than my head and grabbed Bilal by the scruff of his threadbare white robes. Bilal did not struggle but looked into Umar’s eyes with a serenity that only seemed to enrage the monster more.
Umar slapped Bilal hard, and I saw a flash of white as one of the African’s teeth flew out of his mouth. Alarmed, my father ran over to his side.
“Umar, leave Bilal in peace. Do not profane the Sanctuary with your wrath.”
The son of al-Khattab stared at my father, who barely came up to his chest, with contempt.
“It is you who profane the Sanctuary with your lies, Abu Bakr!” his voice thundered. “You spread discontent and rebellion, turning slaves against their masters!”
My father remained calm, refusing to let Umar get a rise out of him.
“Bilal is no longer a slave to any man,” he said firmly.
Umar spat in contempt.
“Just because you bought his freedom does not make him any less a slave.”
Bilal looked at his tormentor with a steady gaze. When he spoke, it was with a deeply melodious, musical voice. A voice for which he would be renowned in years to come.
“You are right, Umar. I am still a slave. A slave to Allah.”
Umar’s face reddened until it became the color of an angry sunset.
“You dare speak to me about Allah before His very House!”
Umar kicked Bilal hard in the gut, knocking the small man to the ground. The tiny African cried out in pain, grasping his stomach and writhing in pain. Umar pushed my father out of the way when he leaned over to help Bilal and then kicked him again.
Furious, I ran over to Umar and kicked him in the shin.
“Stop it! Stop hurting him!”
By then, a crowd of pilgrims and locals had formed around us, watching the ongoing drama. When I lashed out at Umar, many laughed at the madness of a child taking on one of the most feared men in Arabia.
Hearing their jeers, Umar looked up and saw the men for the first time. Alarmed at the sudden public spectacle his temper had created during the sacred Pilgrimage, Umar attempted to reassert his dignity and power over the bemused crowd.
“Step back! I am a guardian of the Holy Kaaba!”
But I wouldn’t let him get away with that.
“No! You’re just a bully!” I threw my tiny arms around his legs to prevent him from kicking Bilal again, causing a greater eruption of laughter from the spectators. I looked up to see that while some were mocking, others, especially pilgrims who were foreigners to the city, were shaking their heads in disgust at the violent display before the House of God.
And then I saw Talha, my favorite cousin, push his way through the crowd. My face lit up. Of all my relatives, he was the one I was closest to. There was a natural sweetness to him, like the honey from a bee’s comb. And he was so handsome, with his flowing brown hair and expressive gray eyes that always showed what he was feeling. And in them now I saw terrible anger.
Talha stormed up to Umar, unafraid of the towering blowhard.
“How brave of you, Umar. Fighting a man half your size, and then a little girl. Shall I bring you a cat to test your prowess next?”
Umar stepped back, stunned by Talha’s reproach. He looked confused, as if he could not understand how a powerful man like himself had lost control of the situation so quickly. He finally stared down at Bilal, eager to have the last word.
“Leave the Sanctuary and darken not its stones again with your black flesh,” he said contemptuously.
Bilal stood proudly, wiping blood from his mouth.
“God made me black and I praise Him for it,” he said with dignity. And then he raised his beautiful voice to recite a verse from the Holy Qur’an.
“We take our colors from God, and who is better than God at coloring?”
There was a murmur of interest from the crowd at the lyrical sound of the holy words. I saw several of the dark-skinned nomads, who were accustomed to being treated with contempt, take in these words with a look of delight. They started whispering to one another, and I knew that soon they would learn about the Messenger from whose mouth these strange words had emanated. Words that broke the rules of Arab culture and yet touched the heart. Words that could give a slave strength to stand up to a tyrant. Now the crowd wanted to know more about these words and who was spreading them.
I saw in his sudden flash of regret that Umar had realized this as well. In his explosion of rage, he had only managed to bring attention to Muhammad’s message. Shaking his head, he grumbled to himself as he turned away from us.
“You are all mad,” Umar said dismissively. And then he faced the crowd and raised his hands for their attention.
“Know all present that I would not have harmed this girl,” he said, pointing at me in the desperate hope of regaining some dignity. “Umar ibn al-Khattab does not hurt children.”
Umar turned to walk away from the scene, when Talha laughed bitterly.
“Really? So why did you bury your daughter alive, you pagan wretch?”
Umar froze.
Time itself seemed to stop at that moment.
When Umar turned around to face Talha, there was a terrifying madness in his eyes.
“You…you dare…”
My father realized that Talha had gone too far.
“Leave it be, Talha,” he warned.
But my cousin was filled with righteous indignation. It was an open secret in the city that Umar’s wife, Zaynab bint Madh’un, had recently given birth to a girl. Ashamed and embittered that Zaynab had failed to produce a son, Umar had taken the infant child into the desert. In accordance with the practices of the idolaters, he had left the child on the searing sand and covered her with stones until she died. The Messenger of God had condemned this horrifying practice, which had further alienated him from the rulers of Mecca, who viewed infanticide as a man’s privilege.
“Murderer!” Talha cried, burning with the fire of outrage. “When you are raised on Judgment Day, you will account for your crimes!”
And suddenly, as if a dam had broken, Umar rushed at Talha and threw him to the ground.
Abu Bakr tried to pull Umar off him, to no avail. Umar threw my father aside as if he were one of my rag dolls. I saw him hit his head hard on the ground, drawing blood.
“Father!” I ran to his side in horror. I had never seen my father bleed before and it terrified me. As I helped my father up, Umar violently hit and kicked Talha, who endured his painful blows with dignity.
“Go…go find Hamza…” my father said softly. “He went to Mount Hira…I am too weak…”
Hamza was the Messenger’s uncle, a bear of a man who was the only one of the believers of sufficient strength and stature to challenge the formidable Umar. I raced out of the Sanctuary toward the surrounding hills that led to Mount Hira.
I DESPERATELY CLIMBED THE ROCKY hills in search of Hamza, hoping that I could somehow get him back in time to save Talha’s life. The thought of losing him, the cousin I loved the most, terrified me. Talha was the only one who did not treat me like a baby. He was strong and handsome and charming and always made me laugh. My gossipy friend Rubina thought I had a crush on him and teased me relentlessly that we would marry someday. Once she said this loud enough for him to hear, to my mortification. But Talha did not mock me. Instead he looked at me with a warm smile and said, “It would be an honor of which I am unworthy.”
Oh, poor Talha. There are times that I think I should have left him to die at Umar’s hand. Then he would have been the first martyr and no man would question his honor or place in paradise.
But I was only a child and did not have the gift of prophecy. All I could see was that he would die at that moment unless I could save him. And I, whose name meant life, would not let him die.
I stumbled on the rocks and cut my hand against the edge of a jagged boulder. A streak of blood ran down my palm, but I ignored it and clambered up toward the hilltop.
And then I saw a sight that has been forever burned into my soul. Two men and a woman, emaciated and roasted by the sun, tied to the thorn trees like scarecrows. I recognized them immediately. Sumaya, who was often in my mother’s kitchen, fussing over the proper number of onions to put in the lamb stew. Her quiet, kindhearted husband, Yasir, and their small but stout boy, Ammar.
I stood frozen, my young mind unable to process what I saw.
THIS WAS NOT THE fate Sumaya had wanted for her family when they left their lives as wandering goat herders and sought a more sedentary experience in the city. She had come to Mecca hoping to find a wife for Ammar and steady employment so that her son could build a life for himself and perhaps one day his children. But all they had found was misery.
Sumaya quickly discovered the rule of Mecca that newcomers had no rights unless they secured the protection of a powerful clan. But protection was expensive, and the few goatskins they owned would not suffice. So her family worked like slaves for whoever was willing to offer a few copper coins. Cooking and cleaning were her lot, while her son and husband would tend to the animals of the wealthy or provide help with their hands, laying stone and brick for the expanding mansions of the town’s wealthy lords. Sometimes the pay was good. But if their money was stolen, as it often was, they had no recourse. If their employers beat them and refused to pay after a hard day’s work, they could not protest or raise any objection. Without the protection of a clan, their lives were worth nothing in Mecca, and if they were killed no one would notice, much less raise a sword to avenge them.
And then Sumaya had met the Messenger of God. She had been warned to stay away from his house by the families she cooked and cleaned for. Muhammad was a dangerous sorcerer, they said, and he would place a spell on any who came near. But after a week without food and no one willing to pay for their services, Sumaya, Ammar, and Yasir wandered over to the forbidden quarter of the city where the sorcerer was reputed to live. She had found a small crowd of beggars gathered outside his house, and saw a lovely woman named Khadija handing out fresh meat to the desperate poor. Sumaya had fallen before the noble lady’s feet and begged her for food and work. Muhammad’s wife had brought them inside, and given her family warm soup and shelter for the night.
And then she was brought before the Messenger, heard his gentle words of hope, his teaching that the poor would sit on thrones of gold in Paradise if they renounced false gods and dedicated themselves only to Allah. It was a message that Sumaya and her family had embraced eagerly. And it was their embrace of the message that had now brought them here, tortured and left to die in the wilderness.
SUMAYA’S SON, AMMAR, GAZED at me, his eyes alert and full of pain.
“Aisha…daughter of Abu Bakr…help us…”
For an instant, I forgot all about Talha. I ran toward them and desperately tried to tear apart their bindings with my small hands. His father Yasir was unconscious. Still breathing but weakly.
“Who did this to you?” I asked, unable to keep the horror out of my voice.
“Abu Jahl…”
And then I understood. The Meccan lord who was the most vehement foe of Islam. The monster whose name was told to Muslim children when they were naughty. “Behave, or Abu Jahl will come for you.”
Abu Jahl had come for them.
I tore the flesh from my hand trying to break the cruel knots, but to no avail.
“I can’t do it!” I felt hot tears coming to my eyes. Today was a day of death and destruction. Everyone I loved was in trouble, and I was powerless to help them.
And then I heard footsteps. Someone was coming. Ammar heard it, too. He looked down the hill and saw a figure approaching.
“It’s him! Hide!”
I turned and saw a man dressed in rich purple robes, a lavender turban wrapped across his head, climbing toward us.
Abu Jahl, the monster of my childhood nightmares, was here.
My heart in my throat, I looked around desperately. And then I saw a fallen tree trunk lying to the side. I jumped inside the trunk, ignoring an enraged spider whose web I tore apart as I hid from this demon.
Abu Jahl clambered over the ridge and stood only five feet away from me. He did not look like a monster. In fact, he was quite elegant in his rich robes, laced in gold filigree. His face was handsome and evenly proportioned, his cheekbones high, and his skin unusually fair for a native of the desert heat. He had a small and well-trimmed mustache that gave him a dapper look. His real name was Abu al-Hakam, which meant “Father of Wisdom” but the Muslims always called him Abu Jahl, “Father of Ignorance.”
I saw that his hands were full. In his right hand, he held a spear, the jagged head polished to sparkle in the sun. In his left, I saw an idol. A small, curvaceous stone made of shining obsidian. Even from the distance, I could tell that it was an icon of Manat, Abu Jahl’s patron goddess, to whom he attributed his remarkable wealth.
He looked at the three prisoners whom he had been left to die here. Abu Jahl smiled almost apologetically.
When he spoke, his voice was soft, almost soothing.
“I hope the sun god has taught you reason, Ammar,” he said, without any hint of the rage or madness that possessed Umar.
Ammar looked him in the eye, ignoring the persistent flies that were buzzing around his sweat-drenched face.
“There is no sun god. There is only Allah, the Lord of the Worlds.”
Abu Jahl shook his head, looking deeply disappointed. He sighed, as if filled with regret.
“Even to the end, you remain dedicated to your heresy,” he said. “Think, boy. If Allah cared about your singular devotion so much, why would He leave you to die in the desert?”
Ammar’s lips curled in fury.
“You did that, not Allah.”
Abu Jahl shrugged and turned to Sumaya, who looked up at him serenely despite her pain.
“You are Ammar’s mother,” he said, his voice eminently reasonable. “Tell me, Sumaya. Do you remember his birth? The agony of labor. The pain almost killed you. Yet your midwife prayed to Manat and you lived. Without the mercy of the goddess, how could you have endured those pangs?”
He held up the idol and dangled it right in front of Sumaya’s face.
“Manat ended your pain and gave you and your son life that night. And she can give it you again. Right now.” He leaned forward, holding the idol close to Sumaya’s lips. “All you have to do is kiss her holy image. And I will release you and your family from your bonds.”
Sumaya looked at him, and then at the idol.
I held my breath, praying that she would do it. The Messenger had said that anyone who was forced to renounce his faith for fear of his life, but kept it in his heart, would be forgiven by God. My soul screamed to Sumaya from inside the darkness of the tree trunk: Do it! Save yourself! Save your son!
Sumaya smiled at Abu Jahl gently, almost gratefully.
And then she spit on the idol of Manat.
And then I saw Abu Jahl change. Something terrible came over his face. Not rage, like Umar’s, but an emptiness. A lack of feeling. In that instant, he looked more like a corpse than a living man. And he frightened me more with the rigid calm of his face than Umar had with all his bluster.
“So you would choose death over life,” he said softly.
Sumaya laughed suddenly, as if she finally realized that she had been wasting her time arguing with an imbecile.
“No…I choose life…eternal life,” she said. She steeled her eyes on him, and I saw no fear. “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.”
Abu Jahl gazed into her face, and then nodded. He stepped back, locking his eyes on hers.
And then, in one fluid movement that was so fast my eyes barely captured it, he stabbed her through her vagina, pushing the spear up into her womb!
“No!” Ammar’s scream was the most terrifying sound I had ever heard. I bit my hand in horror, letting my own stifled cry shudder through my body.
Sumaya cried out in terrible agony. She writhed on the tree trunk as blood poured out from her womb and into a thick crimson puddle at her feet. Abu Jahl continued to push the spear higher, tearing open her intestines and stomach from the inside.
And then her screams ended. And there was only silence.
As Ammar wept, I saw Abu Jahl casually remove the spear. He used Sumaya’s threadbare tunic to clean the blood off his weapon, before turning to face Ammar.
“The gods have won,” he said simply, as if stating an obvious truth to the child.
Somehow Ammar found his voice in the midst of terrible grief.
“No…my mother has won…she is the first of the martyrs.”
Abu Jahl allowed a small smile to play on his full, sensuous lips.
“She will not be the last.”
He turned and climbed back down the hill, whistling a happy tune.
When he was gone, I emerged from the tree trunk. I felt like I was in a dream. The entire day had to have been a nightmare. Nothing I witnessed could happen in the real world.
I stared at the dead woman, hanging ignominiously, her lower body drenched in the blood that had only moments before flowed through her veins.
This was not real. It couldn’t be.
And then the screech of vultures tore me out of my trance and I ran away, racing from the specter of death that would forever haunt me, even as the midwife had prophesied the night I was born.
Alone figure knelt on the sacred ground of Mount Hira, where the Revelation had begun. He flexed his powerful muscles and then raised his hands in prayer to the One God that had chosen his family to redeem mankind.
Hamza had always known that his nephew Muhammad had been destined for greatness. They were close in years and the man who was now called Messenger of God had been more of a younger brother to Hamza than a nephew. But even when they would race each other across the stone alleyways of Mecca, or wrestle playfully in the sand, Muhammad had never quite seemed like a child. There had been a wisdom in his eyes, a sadness that seemed to belong to someone who had already lived a lifetime of struggle, loss, and triumph. Perhaps it was the sorrow of an orphan, having lost his father before he was born and his mother at the age of six.
But there was something else different about the boy. A sense of destiny that hung around him like an aura. It was a power that others in the family had sensed as well, and not all were comfortable with it. Hamza’s half brother, Abu Lahab, in particular had taken an early dislike to their nephew, seeing Muhammad as a dreamer and an idealist, someone who refused to adapt to the harsh realities of life in the desert.
When Muhammad had come to Hamza and told him about his vision, in a cave not far from where Hamza sat now, he had been fascinated but not really surprised. Still, Hamza had been set in his ways and found it difficult to renounce the gods of their fathers. But as he watched the growing opposition of the Meccan lords to his nephew’s teaching and their increasing cruelty toward his followers, he had felt a growing passion within his breast. Hamza had always believed in living life with honor and justice, and he began to see that the followers of the old ways displayed few of those traits.
And then one day he heard how the wretch Abu Jahl had insulted Muhammad viciously while he prayed at the Kaaba, raining obscene curses on him and his family, and his nephew had simply taken in the abuse and walked away with dignity. At that moment, Hamza had made a decision. He had taken the powerful bow with which he had famously killed lions and cheetahs in the desert and strode over to Abu Jahl, who was rallying a crowd against the Muslims in the Sanctuary. Without hesitating, Hamza struck Abu Jahl across the forehead with the bow, knocking him to his knees. And then, before the whole city, he proclaimed faith in his nephew’s religion.
And now he sat here, praying as the Messenger had taught him, his knees on the ground, his head bowed in surrender to God. He found peace at Hira, and he could understand why his nephew found solace here. The air was pure, crisp and clear, not filled with the smell of the burning offal of the city. And instead of the cacophony of loud voices, squawking chickens, and braying camels that arose from the streets of Mecca, there was silence. It was a silence so deep, so still, that a man could finally hear the beating of his own heart, the gentle whispers of the soul.
And then the silence of mountain was shattered by a child’s cry.
“Hamza! We need you!”
He turned and saw me scrambling up the rocks like a redheaded spider. My dress was torn from this terrible journey and my face covered in the gray dust that covered the mountain like soot.
Hamza moved to intercept me. He climbed down several sharply inclined boulders that I could never have scaled. We finally reached each other and I collapsed in his thick arms, panting for breath.
“Aisha? What is it?”
I wheezed, trying to get the words out, as my heart beat in my ears.
“My father…Sumaya…They need you…Abu Jahl…Umar…No one can stop them…”
I didn’t make much sense. But I didn’t need to. Mention of Abu Jahl and Umar was enough.
“God will stop them, little one.”
He rose and took my tiny hand and then gently led me down the rocky slope.
There was one more death that day.
Hamza carried me on his iron shoulders as I guided him to the hilltop where the three prisoners of Abu Jahl were still tied to the thorn trees. Hamza checked on them and found that only young Ammar still breathed. His father, Yasir, had succumbed to the heat, having never regained consciousness. Perhaps it was the mercy of God that he had died without knowing the horrific suffering his beloved wife, Sumaya, had endured.
While I stood to the side, sucking my thumb in a gesture of insecurity that should have been long behind me, Hamza released Ammar, who immediately sank to his knees, his body shaking with shock. Hamza poured water from his cowhide flask directly into Ammar’s mouth, but the lad barely moved to drink it. His eyes never left the corpses of his parents. The Prophet’s uncle then untied the bodies of Sumaya and Yasir and laid them side by side.
“Can you walk?” Hamza asked Ammar gently. “If so, come with me back to Mecca. We will bring a party of believers to bury your parents.”
Ammar shook his head.
“I’ll stay with them.”
Hamza nodded. He put a comforting hand on Ammar’s shoulder, but knew there was nothing he could do or say to ease the young man’s pain. So he turned to me.
“You are very brave,” he said, rustling my hair affectionately.
“We have to go! Talha and my father need us.”
Hamza lifted me on his shoulders and stormed off toward Mecca. I looked back to see Ammar stroking his mother’s hair, his eyes staring ahead, vacant.
IN THE END, HAMZA arrived when he was no longer needed. Umar had beaten Talha to a bloody pulp but had spared him his life. Even the fiery son of al-Khattab was unwilling to risk the retaliation of Abu Bakr’s clan, the Bani Taym. Not that he was afraid, he boasted loudly to the crowd that watched him ruthlessly break Talha’s arm. “But this little worm is not worthy of a challenge to my life.” And with that, he had stormed off to get drunk, hoping to erase the memory of Talha’s insult-and his wretched guilt over an infant girl who had lovingly squeezed his finger even as he covered her with stones.
When Hamza heard that Abu Bakr had taken the badly injured Talha to the Messenger’s house, he left the Sanctuary and strode quickly there. I was slow to follow, my young mind still reeling from the madness of the day’s events. As I picked up my pace to catch up to Hamza, I saw an embarrassed-looking Abu Sufyan attempting to convince the grim-faced Bedouin to stay and spend his gold in the marketplace.
“My people have performed their duties and wish to depart,” the Bedouin chief said. “Send your son to retrieve our weapons.”
“But you have just arrived!” Abu Sufyan gesticulated in exagerated surprise. “Come, I will arrange for guest lodgings.”
“That will not be necessary.”
But Abu Sufyan had the persistence of a born merchant.
“You must come to the bazaar in the morning,” he said smoothly. “We recently received a shipment of the finest silk from Persia.”
The Bedouin shook his head.
“My people have no need of silk.”
Abu Sufyan’s frustration was beginning to show.
“But there is so much more that Mecca has to offer!”
The Bedouin grimaced as he looked back to the scene of the bloody brawl just outside the gates of the Sanctuary.
“I have seen today what Mecca has to offer. I wish to see no more.” And with that, he turned his back on Abu Sufyan and rejoined his people, who were already beginning to pack their camels’ bags with food and water for the journey home.
Abu Sufyan shook his head in frustration at the loss of commerce. I turned to rejoin Hamza, when my legs froze.
Walking toward me in all his purple finery was Abu Jahl. His face was calm and undisturbed and there was not a shred of evidence that he had just ruthlessly killed an innocent woman.
For a moment a mad terror engulfed me. Had he seen me running down the hill? Would he now seek to kill me to cover up his crime?
Abu Jahl approached and my heart skipped a beat.
And then he walked right past me, blissfully ignorant of a redheaded child who had seen the depth of his evil up close.
Abu Jahl walked to Abu Sufyan, who was still scowling over lost business
“More incidents like today’s will drive away pilgrims,” Abu Jahl said with a disapproving tut of his tongue. “If these renegades persist in challenging us, the Pilgrimage will end. Without the Pilgrimage, we will be without trade. And without trade, Mecca will vanish into the sands.”
Abu Sufyan nodded.
“This has gone too far. It is time to act.”
Abu Jahl smiled, his eyes gleaming.
“I agree.”
As the two walked away in quiet converse, I managed to regain strength in my knees and I ran off to the House of the Messenger.
That night I sat by my father as the Messenger of God held council with his family and most trusted followers.
There were two dozen of us, mainly the original families that had embraced Islam in the early years and had proven loyal to the Prophet in the first days of persecution. My mother, Umm Ruman, sat next to my father, her auburn hair hidden behind a modest blue scarf. To her left was my elder sister, Asma, now fourteen years old, her brown eyes intent and darting about the room like a bird. I was wondering what she was looking for, and then I saw a tall young man with perfect white teeth enter and Asma seemed to stop breathing. It was your father, Zubayr, and I suddenly understood.
We were in what had once been Muhammad’s grand guest room, where the family would entertain friends and visiting dignitaries from the trading caravans. The room was vast, at least to my young eyes, forty feet wide and twenty-five in length. Sturdy pillars supported a row of rounded arches that buttressed a circular balcony from the living quarters above. The roof soared thirty feet above my head and was not flat in the ordinary custom of the city but curved upward to form a majestic dome. An architectural style adopted from the Byzantines with whom the Messenger had had much interaction as a merchant in his youth. It would be a motif that would become commonplace among our people in years to come when the lands of the Greeks fell to our swords.
But as I sat there in a clandestine meeting with a handful of believers, such a mighty destiny would have seemed laughable, a fantasy unworthy of even the most foolish drunk sleeping in the gutters of Mecca. Who could entertain thoughts of empire when our movement was pathetically small and now appeared ripe for extinction? Abu Jahl had been right when he said that Sumaya’s death would not be the last. The dread of what was to come hung over us like a cloud of locusts, gathering in preparation for an unstoppable swarm.
But when the Messenger of God entered the room, for a moment a ray of light broke through those dark clouds and we felt hope again,
How can I describe to those who were not there what it was like to be in the presence of the Prophet? It was as if I had entered another world or was seeing this world through reborn eyes. In the years that followed, I would share his life and his bed, and yet every time I saw him, my heart would beat faster. It was as if he were life itself.
You will remember him, my nephew, from your own youth. Yes, by then he had changed some, there were a few gray hairs in his beard, caused by the burden of war and politics that would preoccupy his final years. But he was naturally ageless, and as I sat looking at him that night, I marveled to think that he was two years older than my father and yet looked a dozen years younger.
Muhammad, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him, was middling in height, but his wide shoulders and barrel chest exuded power and strength. His hair in those days was ebony black, darker than the veil of night, darker than the deepest levels of sleep when even our dreams vanish and only silence remains. His skin was white like alabaster. As I became older and more aware of my own beauty, I prided myself on the fairness of my skin, a rarity in our sunburned land. But the Messenger of God’s face was still fairer than mine, almost ethereal, like the sparkling white of the moon.
His hair was not straight but curled gently, flowing like a lion’s mane from his forehead down below his ears. His beard curled similarly and was thick and always well brushed. I often wondered at some of the believers who claimed to imitate him by donning beards and then let them grow wild like the quills of a porcupine. The Messenger of God would never be seen looking like a mangy dog dragged in from the desert, although there are many who style themselves worse and proclaim themselves followers of his way, his sunna. He was a man of dignity who loved beauty and grace and exhibited these qualities in the way he groomed himself.
But the most striking thing about the Prophet was his eyes, so black that it was difficult to discern his pupils and yet always filled with light. Few men could gaze deep into them for long. It is said that the eyes are the mirrors of the soul. In the case of the Messenger, his eyes were the mirrors of our souls. Anyone who looked into those majestic obsidian orbs would see the depths of his own heart reflected back. And not everyone could bear what he saw.
The Messenger smiled often but rarely laughed, although in later years I was one of the few who could make him throw his head back and rejoice with hearty abandon. His laugh, uncommon as it was, was deep-throated and infectious. And when he laughed, few could resist joining in.
The same was true for his tears, which came more often. And tonight he had shed many. After Hamza had returned and told him of Sumaya and Yasir’s fate, the Messenger had wept deeply. Together they had led a small band of believers into the wilderness, where they had rescued Ammar, still sitting forlorn by his dead parents, and then buried the first martyrs of Islam.
The Messenger had returned with a heavy heart and had found comfort, as he always did, in the arms of his wife, Khadija. I looked at her now as she sat next to him on the marble floor of the palatial house that she had owned before she met and fell in love with the young Muhammad. Together they looked like king and queen, except that they had no thrones. Most of the luxurious furnishings in the house had long ago been sold, the proceeds given to the poor, and the beautiful mansion with its whitewashed walls and polished floors was almost as empty as a tomb.
The Prophet squeezed Khadija’s hand and she smiled at him encouragingly. Looking at them, it was clear that there was a substantial age difference. Muhammad had only been twenty-five when she hired him to manage her trading caravans. Rumor had it that Khadija was a wealthy widow of forty years when she first saw him and that she had been so taken aback by his nobility and generous spirit-and his handsome features-that she had proposed shortly after he had returned from Syria with a substantial profit for her account. Others said she was only twenty-eight, just three years older than him, when she made him her husband, and that her age had been exaggerated by the pious in order to signify her wisdom.
I think the truth is somewhere in between. When I looked at her, she was still beautiful, but her dark hair had turned to silver, although there were only a few lines around her eyes and mouth. She had borne him six children in the first ten years of their marriage-four girls who had lived and two boys who had died as infants. As a woman, I find it hard to believe that Khadija would have been so fertile at an age when most other women’s courses had long ceased. But, after living with the Messenger of God myself, I have seen many strange and improbable things, so perhaps the rumors of her advanced age may indeed have been true. And it was certainly the will of God that she alone would bear him children that would survive, while my womb, young and fertile as it was, would remain inexplicably barren.
The Messenger looked at Khadija for a long moment, before turning to those he had gathered in council.
“Today has been a sad day for the believers,” he began softly, when Hamza, who had been pacing back and forth with barely restrained fury spoke up.
“They have crossed all boundaries!” the Prophet’s uncle said, his face racked with emotion.
My father stirred next to me.
“This day was long coming,” Abu Bakr said, trying to calm the agitated giant. “Sumaya and her family did not have the protection of the tribes. Abu Jahl knew he could act without fear of retaliation.”
Hamza sat down, growling like an angry lion.
“Now that they have tasted Muslim blood, they will hunger for more.”
Across the room I saw Talha, whose face was bandaged and right arm was cast in a sling of leather, lean toward the man who had belatedly appeared to rescue him.
“So what do you counsel?
Hamza looked across the room at the Messenger.
“Emigrate! We must send the rest of our people to Abyssinia,” he said forcefully.
There was a murmur of assent among the believers. A year before, several of the poorest Muslims had emigrated with the Prophet’s blessing across the western sea to the African nation of Abyssinia. The land was ruled by a wise Christian king called the Negus, who had taken the refugees in and offered them protection. The Meccans had sent Amr ibn al-As, one of their most charming and diplomatic envoys, to the Negus with gold and promises of discounted trade for his people-if he surrendered the Muslims, whom Amr branded as criminals. The Negus had been impressed by the faith and devotion of these Arabs to the God of Abraham and had denied the request. His clemency came despite the grumblings of his Christian priests, who saw the Muslims as troublesome heretics who denied that the prophet Jesus had ever claimed to be divine. The Muslims had been safe for the past year, and Hamza’s suggestion was well received by the believers.
But the Messenger turned his attention to his cousin Ali.
“What do you think?”
The lad was now seventeen years old, but his strange and ethereal personality had not changed from his boyhood. The believers still felt a rush of complex emotions when the Prophet deferred to the youth. They trusted the Messenger but found his singular faith in this dreamy young man to be unusual and hard to understand.
Ali stood up, his eyes looking to an empty corner of the room as if he could see something no one else could.
“I do not advise it. Uthman already has his hands full,” he said, referring to the Messenger’s son-in-law, who had married Muhammad’s ravishing daughter Ruqayya before leading the Muslims across the sea to Abyssinia.
I heard a small cough from across the room and turned to see your father, Zubayr, rise. At the same moment, I felt my sister, Asma, who was sitting to my left, tense with excitement, as she always did when the dashing young man spoke.
“The Negus has treated us kindly. Surely it is worth pursuing for those who have no clan protection,” he said, his voice measured and calm as it always was. He had great influence over the community as a cousin of the Prophet, the son of his aunt Safiya, and as one of the earliest believers.
Ali looked at Zubayr with his intense green eyes and shook his head.
“The Negus is under pressure from his priests to expel the newcomers. So far, he has restrained them. But under the current climate, it would be unwise to send more refugees into that nation. It could make the situation worse for those already established.”
But Zubayr did not give in that easily.
“We must do something. The Quraysh will soon call a counsel against us.”
And then a deep voice resonated from the entry hall and we all whirled in surprise.
“They already have.”
A shadow fell across the doorway behind me, and I looked up to see a bent old man with a frosty beard enter slowly, his hands wrapped around an ivory walking stick. Here was Abu Talib, the Messenger’s uncle and father of Ali. He had been like a father to Muhammad, raising him after he was orphaned and standing by his side as the lords of Mecca turned against his new religion. The Prophet rose when he saw him, a sign of his deep love and respect, even though Abu Talib still clung to the way of their ancestors and worshiped the pagan gods. We all followed suit. Ali walked across the room and helped his father step across the black-and-white marble floor until he came to sit by the Messenger and Khadija.
Abu Talib looked frail and his hands shook, but his voice did not waver.
“The leaders of Quraysh are meeting in the House of Assembly to tonight to determine how to deal with your people,” he said with an air of regret. “Son of my brother, please listen to reason,” Abu Talib said to the Prophet. “Once the fire of Quraysh’s wrath is kindled, it will not be quenched. Your followers will all be consumed, as that poor woman was today. If you do not wish to follow our gods, that is your right. But please do not speak out against them anymore. Let the people of Arabia follow their traditions in peace. Despite their misgivings about your beliefs, the Quraysh respect and admire you, and I am sure they will be willing to offer anything you ask-if only you desist from denouncing their gods.”
A silence fell over the crowd of believers. We looked at the Messenger uncertainly, wondering how he would respond to a plea from this beloved old man to compromise with the idolaters.
I saw the Messenger turn to Khadija, who looked him in the eye and nodded firmly. Whatever he decided, she would support him as the Mother of the Believers.
The Prophet looked down for a moment, breathing slowly and deeply. When he finally raised his head, I saw a fire in his eyes that both excited and terrified me. He took Khadija’s hand in his right, and Ali’s in his left.
“By God, even if they place the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left, I will not be dissuaded from my mission.”
That was it, and we all knew it. There would be no compromise, even if the Meccans declared war on the Muslims.
Abu Talib shook his head despairingly.
“But my nephew-”
Khadija interrupted, holding the Prophet’s hand high for all to see that her fingers remain firmly clasped in his.
“You have my husband’s answer, dear uncle. He is Al-Amin, the Truthful, and he can no more hide the truth than the sun can rise in the west. God has commanded him to speak the Truth to Mecca and all mankind, and he will do so, regardless of the schemes of those who spin webs in the shadows.”
Her words stirred my heart and I could see that they had the same effect on the others. One by one, each member of the community, man or woman, adult or child, loudly voiced assent.
Seeing our unity and determination, Abu Talib finally bowed his head, accepting his nephew’s choice. He rose to his feet, gripping his cane as he prepared to leave.
“Then I fear for you. All of you,” he said sadly. “May your God protect you from that which is coming.”
“But what is coming? What is it that they are planning? If we know, we can protect ourselves.” It was the quiet voice of Fatima, the Prophet’s youngest daughter. She was a shy girl, about ten years older than myself, with a perpetually sad face. Unlike her older sisters, who were gregarious and full of life, Fatima was like a ghost who appeared and disappeared wordlessly and was rarely noticed by others. I saw several people start at the unexpected sound of her voice and I realized that I was not alone in wondering when she had entered the room or if she had been there the whole time without anyone noticing.
Abu Talib answered the girl by turning to face his son Ali.
“The doors of the Assembly have been shut to me this night. But I fear the worst.”
Ali put a kind hand on his father’s arm.
“Fear not, my father. God promises us that ‘the righteous will neither fear, nor will they grieve,’” he said, quoting the holy Qur’an.
“I wish I could share your faith, my son,” he said, and I heard real regret in his voice. “But alas, I am old and all I know is that nothing good can come out of secret counsels held by angry men.”
As Ali led his father out of the room, I looked around. There was a hubbub of commotion as the believers argued and debated among themselves as to what to do. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, but it was all speculation. Without knowing what was said in the Hall of Assembly, there would be no way to defend our people against this new threat.
And then an insane idea came to me. Of course I thought it was ingenious at the time, but I was a child, and did not know the difference between brilliance and madness. There are many who believe I have never learned the difference, and perhaps they are right.
I saw that my father was preoccupied by the debate, and my sister was preoccupied with staring at Zubayr. No one noticed or cared what I was thinking, and no one noticed or cared as I quietly slipped away toward the door.
But as I turned to leave, I thought I saw from the corner of my eye the Messenger watching me with an amused smile.
The Hall of Assembly sparkled like ruby in the moonlight. It was the second largest building in Mecca, with only the Kaaba standing taller. It had been built years before by Qusay, one of the most revered of the ancestors of Quraysh, a statesman who had ended the blood feuds of rival clans and created a unified oligarchy that brought stability to the Pilgrimage and prosperity to the city. The Hall of Assembly was the symbol of his legacy. A sprawling complex that spread out over two hundred feet of polished red stone and marble, it was the closest thing to a palace in the wastes between Yemen and Syria and served as a meeting ground for tribal leaders, as well as a festival hall and the seat of rough desert justice.
Normally, the arched doors, inlaid in silver and polished bronze, were flung open to the public, allowing the average citizen of Mecca the necessary illusion that he had access to the corridors of power. In truth, everyone knew that decisions made in the Hall were based on the cold calculations of gold and political expediency; but the semblance of justice was necessary to prevent complete social breakdown.
But today the needs of appearances were secondary to the demands of secrecy and the mighty doors were shut to all except those who wielded unquestioned power. Guards in heavy leather armor, ringed in steel, stood outside each of the doors, bearing long swords held to the ready. The deliberations tonight were essential to the future of the city, and they had been ordered to cut down anyone who attempted to enter without permission.
A sound like a footfall made one of the guards, a grim-faced brute named Husam, turn his head with a start. It had come from around the corner, where a small alley ran between the southern wall of the building and the gated home of Abu Sufyan. The guard signaled to his broken-toothed colleague Adham. Weapons poised, they stealthily turned around the corner, prepared to kill anyone hiding in the shadows.
They saw nothing except a gray cat looking up at them with unblinking yellow eyes. Satisfied, the two men returned to their posts protecting the eastern gate to the Hall.
I LOOKED DOWN FROM my precarious perch ten feet above the ground as the two angry-looking guards exited the alley. I had often played hide-and-seek with my friends and the alley beside the Hall of Assembly was one of my favorite haunts. I had always been a limber child and I had climbed up the iron drainpipe before, confident that the playmates trying to find me would not think to look up. I loved spying on them while they were unaware. That little skill had proved useful to me that night and had likely saved my life.
When the guards had disappeared from my sight, I allowed myself to breathe again. Looking up, I saw a window on the second floor that was partially open, the gap just small enough for a cat to climb through. Or a small child.
My heart beat with the excitement that comes more from doing the forbidden than from any awareness of the danger I was placing myself in. I dug my fingers into the pipe, my fingernails already black with grime and pigeon droppings, and climbed higher, until I was just parallel to the window. If I had looked down, I probably would have fainted from vertigo, but I had always been a focused girl, and right now my eyes were on nothing except the small sill that jutted out beneath the window. I closed my eyes for a second and said the benediction that I had been taught almost as my first words: Bismillahir-rahmanir-raheem, In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
And then I swung over like a monkey and grasped the sill, clinging to its jagged stone outline. With a grunt that I prayed would not be heard by the nearby guards, I heaved myself higher until my skinny body was lying flat on the sill. Then, with the impossible dexterity of youth, I managed to squeeze through the window opening and tumbled inside.
I blinked, adjusting my eyes to the dark interior. I was on the floor of what appeared to be a circular walkway overlooking the central assembly chamber. Doors spread out to either side, leading to smaller meeting lounges. For an overly inquisitive girl, this vast building, with its many passages, doors and mysteries was a treasure trove of discovery. But I had a self-appointed mission tonight and exploration would have to wait for another day.
The sound of voices pulled me toward a wood railing made of expensive acacia imported from the Sinai. I peered through the lattices that had been designed in swirling geometric forms-stars, octagons, and other pretty shapes that I didn’t recognize-and peered down on the meeting in progress.
I immediately recognized most of the men as tribal chiefs who had come to my father’s house at various times to plead with him to end his preaching and abandon the new religion that was undermining their trade. My heart froze at the sight of Abu Jahl, dressed in robes of rich blue, a black velvet vest covering his broad chest. Of course he would be here. His decision to elevate the persecution of the Muslims to murder had been the basis of tonight’s emergency council.
And then I saw something that surprised me. Among all the men with their bright turbans and ceremonial daggers tied to leather belts was seated one woman.
Hind bint Utbah, the wife of Abu Sufyan and daughter of one of the most powerful chieftains of Quraysh. I had seen her before in the marketplace, examining jewelry or rows of cloth with an expert eye. Unlike the other women of Mecca, she did not haggle over prices. She immediately knew what an item was worth and never asked the merchant. She would the name the price, and there would be no argument. The traders often gave her an extra discount in a kind of backward negotiation where they sought to gain more in Hind’s favor and political patronage than they lost on their merchandise.
She had a proud, steady walk, graceful and terrifying at once, like a lioness in motion. She was the tallest woman I had ever seen, easily dwarfing many of the men in the room. Her hair fell to the small of her back in waves, the dark locks fashionably streaked with henna. Her skin was olive and glistened like a polished mirror. But it was her eyes that always caught my breath. Yellow green like a cat’s, piercing in their intensity. They exuded pride and disdain, as well as a clear hint of danger. Whatever demons hid behind Hind’s cruel gaze, it was safer to leave them undisturbed.
“Muhammad’s followers have become a grave problem for the people of Mecca,” Abu Sufyan proclaimed, his voice booming with authority. “It is time that we take action.”
Abu Jahl stepped forward smoothly.
“Today the first of their blood was spilled. More must follow if we are to put an end to this.”
The crowd murmured its assent and I saw Hind smile. And then I noticed that there was a friend among the gathered nobles.
The Messenger’s uncle Abbas rose. While he had not embraced our faith, he was always kind to Muslims and we counted on him to be a voice of reason among the lords. A role that he was clearly alone in tonight.
“It is time for patience, not hasty deeds,’” Abbas said, his silky voice seeking to quench the fire that had been ignited by Abu Jahl.
But his sympathies were an open secret among the chiefs, and Abu Jahl turned to face Abbas with a cold eye.
“Is it patience that stays your hand, or cowardice?”
Abbas bristled with the pride of his clan, the Bani Hashim. He walked right up to Abu Jahl until their beards were almost touching.
“You dare call me a coward? How much courage does it take to kill an old woman tied to a tree?”
Abu Jahl’s handsome smile suddenly curled into a cruel grimace. A dead silence fell over the crowd. For an instant, I thought he would draw his dagger and plunge it into Abbas’s chest to avenge this open attack on his honor.
And then Hind stepped between the men, her long elegant fingers positioned on the chests of the adversaries as she separated them gracefully.
“Enough! Save your rage for our common enemy, Muhammad.”
Amr ibn al-As, the Meccan envoy with the honeyed tongue who had unsuccessfully sought to repatriate the Muslim refugees from Abyssinia, politely raised his hand. I saw that it was covered in silver rings with expensive stones-garnets, carnelian, and amber.
“But alas, what can we do against Muhammad? He is protected by the clan of Hashim.”
Even as he spoke, all eyes fell on another member of the Messenger’s tribe, his uncle Abu Lahab. Fat, bald, and perpetually sweating, he always reminded me of a garden slug, although with a less appealing personality.
Abu Lahab snorted in contempt at the thought of his wayward nephew. Unlike his half brothers Abu Talib and Abbas, Abu Lahab despised Muhammad, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, and had made no secret of his belief that the Messenger was simply creating a new religion to monopolize the city’s lucrative Pilgrimage trade.
“The sanctuary of our clan will not last forever,” Abu Lahab said. “My brother Abu Talib is old. When he dies, I will lead the Bani Hashim and will revoke his protection.”
Abbas gave his brother a contemptuous stare, which Abu Lahab met with studied indifference.
Abu Jahl shook his head.
“We cannot wait that long,” he said bluntly. “The tribes will grow weary of his disruption of the Pilgrimage. They will take their pilgrims-and their gold-to Taif and the temple of the goddess Allat.”
Abu Jahl had chosen his words well. Taif was a prosperous trading center to the southeast, on the caravan route to Yemen. The denizens of that settlement had long envied Mecca’s preeminence and had built a sprawling shrine to the “daughter of Allah” to rival and, they hoped, one day eclipse the Kaaba. If Muhammad’s preaching against their gods made the annual Pilgrimage an inconvenience and source of turmoil for the desert tribes, it made sense that many would switch their allegiance to the goddess. And take their trade with them.
Seeing that he had hit he proper nerve with the other chiefs, Abu Jahl smiled.
“We must make a decisive move now,” he said forcefully. “Muhammad must die.”
There was an immediate uproar as various members of the Assembly shouted their opinions on this extremely controversial suggestion. I could see Hind smiling, her eyes glowing. She stood motionless in the middle of the loud debate, like the heart of a whirlwind. There was something both terrifying and mesmerizing about her at that moment, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck tingle.
Finally Abu Sufyan raised both his hands and spoke loudly, asserting his authority over the tumult.
“No,” he said firmly. “If we attack Muhammad, his clan will be forced to avenge him against the murderer. It will start a blood feud that will consume Mecca.”
He glanced at Abbas, who nodded coldly. Abu Lahab looked to his feet, knowing that no matter how much he wished it were otherwise, what Abu Sufyan said was true. His cousins in the Bani Hashim would slaughter anyone who attacked Muhammad.
Abu Sufyan’s calm voice served to quell the passion of the crowd, to Abu Jahl’s clear annoyance. But the weight of his words had put an end to this dangerous line of talk. Abu Sufyan, perhaps better than any of them, understood the threat posed by Muhammad’s movement, but he also knew that killing him would be like using oil to put out a kitchen fire.
Satisfied that he had cut off Abu Jahl’s provocations before they could grow like weeds in a garden, killing the fruits of wisdom that kept the peace in Mecca, he stepped back.
And then Hind spoke, and everything changed.
Why do you fear the spilling of a little blood, my husband?” Hind said in a husky voice. “No nation can stand that will not pay the price of order.”
All eyes were on her as she moved toward her husband. Abu Sufyan saw the hungry yet terrified gaze of the crowd on his beautiful wife and his face reddened at her blatant defiance of his authority.
“A wise merchant always weighs the price with a cold heart,” he said, an edge entering his voice. “He does not allow himself to be swayed by the emotions of a woman.”
Hind turned to face her husband and I saw a dangerous look in her eyes. I saw her right hand move back as if to slap him, and my eyes fell on a golden armlet that wrapped around her olive-colored forearm. It looked Egyptian in design, two snakes curling around her wrist, their jaws meeting behind her hand, a glittering ruby held between their savage fangs. It was beautiful and terrifying, much like Hind herself.
But if she had desired to strike her husband in public for his de-meaning words, Hind thought the better of it, and she merely turned her back on him in open contempt.
Seeing the spell her sultry voice had cast on the men and their looks of despairing desire as she moved, Abbas walked to the center of the room to regain their attention.
“Abu Sufyan is right,” he said loudly. “Killing Muhammad will prove too costly. Even if the blood feud were settled, his followers would proclaim him a martyr. A ghost is the most dangerous adversary, for it can never be killed.”
Abu Sufyan nodded in assent, although he could not completely hide his irritation that his wife’s gambit had allowed one of his rivals to state his primary case. But before he could add a word in support of Abbas, Abu Jahl clapped loudly, his hands coming together in slow, mocking strokes.
“Spoken like a true advocate for your nephew.” he sneered. “I think it is safe to say that your loyalties lie with your kinsman and not with the people of Mecca. And it is the people of Mecca who are suffering under the lies of this sorcerer. Our city cries for a hero, a man who stands tall and does what needs to be done, without fear of consequences.”
This high-flown but calculated appeal to idealism struck an immediate chord with the Arabs, a people who prided themselves on their epic stories of heroes who risked their lives for the honor of the tribe. Abu Sufyan watched in frustration as the fire of aggression he had extinguished began to blaze brightly again.
It was a shift in sentiment that Hind sensed as well. She raised her hands above her head, posing like the alluring idol of Astarte, the Phoenician fertility goddess, which stood in the Sanctuary.
“Who among you is a real man? A man who does not fear retribution? A man who will stand for Mecca and the religion of our fathers, even if it means his own death? A man who prefers the honored sleep of eternity to the shameful comfort of a coward’s bed? Is there no such man among you?”
Her words were dripping with promise and warning. Even as a little girl, I knew what was being said beneath those words. Who among you is man enough to please me? To give me everything that is inside you, even if it means losing yourself in the flame of my heart?
I saw the lords of Mecca looking at one another in confusion and uncertainty. Hind’s passion was too extreme, even for them. And then a man arose, one of the few who stood taller than the queenly Hind. It was Umar. There was a dark intensity in his face similar to what I had seen earlier in the day when Talha had humiliated him.
“I will do it. I will bring you the head of this liar who has profaned the Holy Kaaba.”
There were gasps of surprise-or perhaps relief-that Umar had taken up Hind’s challenge. He was essentially agreeing to his own death. While no one had any doubt that Umar had the courage and pure physical viciousness to take on the role of assassin, even he would not be able to defend himself against the retaliation of the men of Hashim.
Hind smiled at him and I saw a glance pass between them that I did not understand. But whatever it was that I saw, I was not alone, for Abu Sufyan caught it as well and looked away, his face red from anger. Or humiliation.
Realizing that Umar’s declaration meant almost certain death for his nephew, Abbas tried to reason with him.
“Think, Umar, of what you are saying-”
Umar responded by unsheathing his sword.
“No! I have thought enough!” Umar turned to face Abbas and Abu Lahab, the two representatives of the Messenger’s clan. “Know, O sons of Hashim, that I fear not your reprisals. I will kill this renegade, and if any among you has the courage to hold me accountable, then do so. You will find my blade a worthy match.”
Abbas saw the madness in Umar’s eyes and looked down quickly, before the giant brute lost control and smashed that broadsword on his skull. I saw his brother Abu Lahab smirk with glee. If Umar succeeded in ridding Mecca of his troublesome nephew, Abu Lahab would counsel his clansmen to forgo retribution and allow Umar to pay a blood debt to Muhammad’s family rather than risk an all-consuming blood feud that would destroy Mecca. With the Prophet out of the way and the clan divided over how to respond to Umar’s act of violence, Abu Lahab would be perfectly positioned to seize the scepter of authority from his aging brother Abu Talib.
I watched as Hind moved forward, her body flowing like silk in the wind, and touched Umar on the cheek with affection.
“I always knew you were the greatest man of Quraysh,” she said, her words like nectar dripping from her full, red lips.
Her husband Abu Sufyan turned and walked out, unable to bear the humiliation of his wife’s open flirtation with the son of al-Khattab. In later years, I would learn that Umar’s affair with Hind had been the worst-kept secret of Mecca, but the two had been discreet in public until this moment.
A strange look came over Umar’s face as he gazed at Hind. The harshness vanished and for a moment he looked like a child seeking to please his mother. Or perhaps more accurately, a condemned soul seeking forgiveness from his judge.
“Tomorrow, I will end this scourge,” he said, his booming voice suddenly soft like a dove. “Muhammad will die. And the gods will be appeased.”
He broke free of Hind and walked out, preparing to kill and be killed. And I later learned the thought that tore through his heart at that moment. That when he died under the vengeful blows of the men of Hashim, perhaps the child he had buried alive would be avenged.
The next morning Umar set out to fulfill his mission. As he rounded a corner, the Messenger’s house came into view and he froze, looking at it with the perverse curiosity of a man peering into his grave. Umar hated Muhammad with a passion and was glad that he would be the one to eliminate this blot on the holy city. It was not that Umar cared deeply for the cult of his ancestors. He was intelligent enough to sense that most of the rituals of worship in the Sanctuary were a cheap amusement offered to the gullible and the hopeless, two categories of mankind that were predominant in Arabia and perhaps in all the world. He didn’t care for the crude idols and icons that littered the Haram like prostitutes around an army camp.
But ever since he was a boy, he had felt something special around the Temple, the Kaaba itself. He was not a poet and had difficulty putting the emotions the House of God inspired into words. Perhaps it was impossible for any man to do so when faced with the Divine.
As a youth, Umar and his friends had made a sport of spending evenings inside old caves or abandoned huts that the superstitious claimed were haunted by djinn. But he had never felt anything supernatural at any of those places. Yet whenever he approached the granite cube that soared over Mecca, his heart skipped a beat. Every time he entered the confines of the Sanctuary, he felt as if he were being watched from all sides. Umar had a reputation for being fearless, a reputation that he nurtured and protected with great care, and in truth nothing on earth really did frighten him. Not the sword of an enemy nor the jaws of a lion. He knew how to deal with foes that bled, enemies that had weaknesses, that could be killed by strength and cunning.
But whenever he approached the Kaaba, he was afraid. Whatever spirit was there, it was invincible and could not be killed. And that truly terrified him. The night after he murdered his infant daughter, Umar had gone to the Kaaba in hopes of silencing the guilt and horror that gripped his heart. But when he crossed the circle of the Sanctuary and stood before the gold inlaid door of the House, his knees had given way and he felt something pressing him from all sides.
He was alone in the courtyard, but he kept hearing terrible whispers all around him. Whenever the wind rose, he could have sworn he heard cold laughter in its echo. The world began to dissolve and swim before his eyes and Umar felt as if he were falling. Convinced that he was dying, that the power that haunted the Kaaba had come to claim him, he had cried out to Allah, begging for mercy and a chance to expiate his sins by serving as a protector of the Holy House.
And then the delirium left him and all was silent. Yet he felt that whatever presence dwelt in those ancient stones had heard him and would hold him accountable to his oath. Since that day, Umar had lived up to his vow, standing watch whenever the pilgrims came, a self-appointed Guardian of the Kaaba. If a drunk or beggar profaned the grounds, he quickly tossed them off. Once he had caught and beaten a teenage thief who had picked the pocket of a wealthy pilgrim from Taif who was circumambulating the shrine. When the grateful merchant offered him a reward of silver from his purse, Umar had refused, explaining proudly that he was there to serve the Sanctuary and could not accept any compensation.
With Umar’s formidable presence, the Pilgrimage had become a safer experience and the numbers of pilgrims had increased every year. He had fulfilled his vow to the Spirit whom he could still feel watching him every day.
But now Muhammad and his heretics had decided to use the Pilgrimage as a venue to preach and spread their new religion, and the peace of the Sanctuary was again threatened. Incidents like the one the day before, when slaves spoke arrogantly to their betters, threatened to tear apart the social fabric of Mecca and poison the atmosphere for worship and trade. Umar realized that the Spirit of the Kaaba was testing him and he resolved that would not be found wanting. If killing this sorcerer Muhammad would restore peace to the Sanctuary, then Umar would fulfill his oath-even at the risk of his own life.
With these thoughts raging in his head, Umar stepped onto the cobbled path leading to the Prophet’s house. As he approached the gates, his hand moved closer to the hilt of his sword. He would likely have only one chance to tear it loose from the scabbard and strike the deathblow before the sons of Hashim brought him down. But Umar was not afraid. The Spirit of the Kaaba was with him, and it was greater than this magician. He muttered a final prayer to himself as he stood outside the iron gate from which he would likely not emerge again.
“O Allah, give me the strength to do what is right, that Your House may forever be sanctified.” With that, he reached to push open the latch.
And then a shadow fell on him from behind.
Umar whirled, his hand reaching for his sword instinctively. And then he saw that it was a member of his clan, a slight fellow named Nuaym who was perpetually cheerful and posed no threat.
Nuaym smiled and clasped his hand and then looked carefully at his tall clansmen’s face.
“Umar! Are you all right? You look feverish.”
Umar stared at the little fellow with irritation. He was not about to be distracted from his mission by this silly fool.
“I burn with the fire of justice.”
Nuaym raised his bushy eyebrows in surprise.
“What are you talking about?”
There was no harm in telling him. He was a member of his own clan and could be trusted. And if Umar did not emerge alive from the house, Nuaym would tell the other sons of the Bani Adi to sing songs of his heroism.
“Today I have sworn a vow to kill that heretic Muhammad and end this sedition in our city.”
Nuaym’s mouth fell open in shock.
“Are you mad? The Bani Hashim will kill you in retaliation!”
Umar shrugged, his shoulders rising and falling like two mountains in an earthquake.
“So be it.”
Nuaym put a friendly hand on his clansmen’s arm as if to pull him away from this madness.
“Come, let us return to my house,” he said brightly. “The heat of the day makes it hard to think wisely. We can talk about this over a cold drink in the shade.”
Umar removed Nuaym’s hand, squeezing the fingers painfully in warning.
“Get out of my way, old friend.”
“Umar, listen to reason-”
Umar gabbed Nuaym by his collar and lifted the small man off his feet until their eyes met.
“No! I have sworn a vow to set things right today, and no man can stop me.”
He dropped his clansman and turned back to face the house. Unsheathing his sword, he pushed open the gate.
“If you wish to set things right, you should look closer to home!”
Umar froze. Slowly, like a stubborn boulder finally giving way under the force of an avalanche, he turned to face Nuaym.
When Umar spoke, his voice was soft. But there was an edge there that was more terrifying than the roar of a thousand charging elephants.
“What are you saying?”
Nuaym looked deeply frightened, but he managed to meet Umar’s gaze. He hesitated, his eyes flicking to the sword that now glittered lethally in the assassin’s hand.
“Your sister Fatima is one of them.”
Umar’s eyes went wide. Of all the possible things that Nuaym could have said, this was the one he had not expected.
“You lie!” Umar’s sword began to rise into attack position.
“She has embraced Muhammad and follows his path. Ask her yourself.”
Umar’s face turned bright red. He stepped forward and for a moment Nuaym believed the sword would soon slice open his neck. Umar bent down until his face was right next to his clansman and Nuaym could see the redness that ringed his dark eyes.
“If you are spreading calumny against my family, your blood will join Muhammad’s on my sword.”
And then, without another word, Umar turned and stormed down the path toward his sister’s home.
Nuaym fell to his knees and buried his head in his hands, grateful to still be alive. At that moment, I emerged from the shadows of the alley where I had been secretly watching Umar’s approach.
I walked over to Nuaym and saw that he was shaking. Not knowing what else to do, I put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Nuaym started at my touch, half expecting that Umar had returned to finish him off. When he saw it was just me, he breathed deeply to calm himself. And then he took my hand in his. I could feel the cold dampness on his palm.
“Thank you, little one, for your warning.”
Even though I was a child, I knew what Nuaym had done. He had run out of options, but I was still upset that he had betrayed Umar’s sister Fatima, who had been a secret believer for the past year and had always been kind to me and my family.
“But Umar’s sister-”
Nuaym shook his head, and I could see shame written on his gaunt features.
“I had no choice,” he said, regret filling his voice. He stared down the path where Umar had charged off, still bearing his sword. “May God protect her from Umar’s wrath.”
Fatima bint al-Khattab sat inside the small living quarters of her stone hut in the southern quarter of Mecca. She had covered her mousy brown hair with an indigo scarf that her brother Umar had given her for her wedding. Her husband, Said, knelt beside her, his head bowed reverently as she read from the leather hide that she had received that morning from Ali, containing words from the holy Qur’an that had just been revealed to the Messenger the night before.
She swayed back and forth like a candle rustling in the wind as the Words of God fell from her lips in the form of majestic poetry.
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
Ta Ha.
It was not to distress you that We sent down the Qur’an to you
But as a reminder for those who hold God in awe
A Revelation from the One who created the Earth and the high Heaven
The Lord of Mercy Established on the Throne.
Everything in the Heavens and on Earth
Everything between them
Everything beneath the soil
Belongs to Him
Whatever you may say aloud
He knows what you keep secret
And what is even more hidden.
God-there is no god but Him
The most excellent Names belong to Him.
As she recited in her soft, melodic voice, she saw Said wipe tears from his eyes. She understood his emotion, although she had always kept a tight lid on expressing her own. A trait learned under the harsh hand of her father, al-Khattab, who brooked no weakness in his off-spring, whether male or female.
Said was so different from him and from her fiery brother, Umar. He had a gentle soul and was more comfortable playing with children and tending to sheep than engaging in the cruelties of war or the hunt. Other women might have thought him weak, but Fatima loved the softness of his heart. For a girl who had been raised in a house where anger was demonstrated more than love, his kindness and sweet touch were like the calm breeze that brought peace when a storm had subsided.
Said gently touched the cowhide parchment in her hands, stroking it like a lover. Like most men she knew, he could not read or write and relied on her to express the sounds that came with the strange lines and jots that he had never been taught to understand. Though Fatima had much bitterness toward her father for the roughness of her upbringing, she was grudgingly thankful that he had forced her and her brother to learn to read and write. Said had long felt ashamed that his wife was better educated than he, but when he discovered that the Messenger of God himself was illiterate and relied on his wife, Khadija, to read to him and write his correspondence, he had been comforted.
“What do those words mean at the beginning?” he asked. “Ta Ha. I’ve never heard that before.”
“I don’t know,” she answered with a small shrug. “I asked Ali and he said they were sacred letters wrapped in mystery, and only God knew what they signified.”
Said nodded. He was a simple man and he easily accepted that there were things that were beyond his comprehension. The fact that God was actually speaking to them right now, in their very city, through the mouth of Muhammad, was itself more than his mind could comprehend, and he had no desire to burden himself with deeper mysteries.
“Read it again,” he said, and she nodded.
She began to recite again, letting the rhythm of the words flow through her. It was when believers read the holy Qur’an out loud that they were closest to God. The very words that the Lord of the Worlds had spoken vibrated through her being and lifted her soul.
But when she said the words “He knows what you keep secret,” the stillness of her home was shattered and her heart jumped into her throat.
“Fatima! Fatima! Come out here!”
Umar’s voice boomed from just beyond the door. Panic gripped her. Had her brother heard her recitation? She looked down at Said and saw that his rosy cheeks had drained of color as the same thought crossed his mind.
And then, without any further prompting, she realized that the end was at hand.
“He knows” was all she could say, her throat closing in on her in terror. Umar began to bang on the door and she knew she had no time to place the leather hide with the holy verses in its proper place, a silver jewelry box that she kept on the top shelf of their kitchen cupboard.
Even though she hated treating the Words of God without proper decorum, she had no choice but to slip the parchment inside her dark woolen tunic, close to her breast.
She squeezed Said’s hand and took a deep breath, and then opened the door.
Umar stormed inside without any greeting, his face livid. She saw that he was carrying his sword in his hand and her stomach sank. Umar slammed the door behind him and then pushed up uncomfortably close to his sister, his weapon held in a steel grip.
“What was that gibberish I heard you reciting?” There was a dangerous rumble to his voice that Fatima recognized. It was the tremor before the earthquake was unleashed.
“We were just talking,” she said with a small laugh that immediately sounded false to her.
Umar grabbed her by the arm with crushing strength.
“Don’t lie to me!”
Said stepped forward. Although he was as terrified of Umar as his wife, he knew that his brother-in-law was violating every rule of Arab etiquette and he hoped that a stern call to honor would calm the brute.
“Who are you to come into our home and proclaim us liars?” he said with as much bravado as he could muster.
Umar looked at him incredulously, as if noticing him for the first time in his life. And then he raised his sword threateningly, the razor-sharp edge glistening in the morning light that poured in from the windows.
“I am a Guardian of the Kaaba who has sworn to kill any who follow Muhammad!”
In later years, Said would say that he had no idea where he had found the courage to stand up to Umar. But seeing the look of fear in the eyes of the woman he loved, she whose strength he always admired, set his blood on fire, and he took his hand and pushed the sword out of his way.
“You have lost your mind! Get out of my house!”
Umar was shocked at Said’s sudden defiance, as men always are when those they assume are weak finally reveal a backbone.
“Tell me the truth!” he said, and Fatima could almost hear a desperate plea in his voice. And then when Said did not answer, Umar grabbed him by the neck and threw him across the room. Said fell against a table made of carved olive wood, which splintered with the force of his fall. Said dropped hard amid the jagged wreckage and lay there unmoving.
“No!” Fatima could hear herself scream, but it sounded strangely distant, as if echoing across a canyon in the barren wastes of the Najd to the east. Forgetting about her brother’s sword, which could at any moment sever her head in the madness of fanaticism, she threw herself on Umar and slapped him ferociously.
Umar pushed her off him and she felt as if she had been grabbed by a dust devil and flung across the sky. And then her flight was cut short by a cold, cruel stone wall. She struck her head on the whitewashed rock and fell to her knees as lightning seared through her skull.
Fatima’s eyes blurred and she felt as if warm water were flowing down her face. And then she realized it was blood. She touched her forehead and saw that her palm was stained in crimson.
Umar was looking at her, breathing hard, as if he had climbed high into the mountains. His eyes were fixed on the blood that flowed steadily from the cut just above her right eye.
Fatima saw that his sword was raised and she realized that the demon that had possessed him would soon kill her. She touched her breast and felt the comfort of the leather strip on which the verses of the holy Qur’an were written. If she was going to die, at least the she would meet her Maker with His Words embedded next to her heart.
“You want the truth? Then, yes! We are Muslims and we believe God and His Messenger! Go ahead! Kill me! Kill your sister like you did your own daughter!”
She did not know what madness possessed her to say the last, but Umar staggered as if he had just been struck by a spear in the gut. He dropped his sword, which fell to the ground with a clang that echoed relentlessly.
Umar sank to his knees and buried his face in his hands for a long moment. And then, when he finally looked up, there was confusion on his face, like a child awakening from a bad dream.
“What is this spell he has cast on you?” he asked, and she knew he referred to the Prophet.
She managed to get to her feet and stumbled over to check on Said. He was regaining consciousness and she helped him sit up slowly. After checking to make sure that no bones were broken, she finally turned to her brother.
“It is not a spell but a Revelation,” she said softly as she found a clean rag and wiped the blood from her face. The blood had stopped flowing and had begun to clot. “God himself speaks through Muhammad, and His words can change men’s hearts.”
Umar looked at her for a long moment. When he spoke, there was weariness in his voice.
“Show me these words and let me judge for myself.”
She looked into his eyes and saw no sign of the demon. Fatima hesitated, then reached into her blouse and removed the leather strip.
Umar held out his hand for the parchment, but she shook her head.
“Only the clean may touch the Word of God.”
Umar saw that she was serious. He rose and took a jug of water from the kitchen. First he poured it over her wound and helped her wash away the rest of the blood that stained her cheek.
And he followed her instructions as she taught him wudu, the sacred ritual of ablution that Muslims performed before praying or reading the holy Qur’an. He washed his hands, face, and feet as she instructed.
Fatima finally handed him the strip of cowhide, the text standing out in bright green paint. Umar looked down at the page, his brow creasing as he read the mysterious letters that opened the text.
Ta Ha…
We waited inside the Messenger’s house in silence, a cloud of dread hanging over the small community of believers. I saw my father looking down at his hands, unable to meet the eyes of Nuaym, who sat across from him on the cold marble floor. It was Abu Bakr who had asked Nuaym to intervene with his clansman after I returned that night, breathless from my tale of intrigue inside the Hall of Assembly. I had expected my father to be angry with me for taking such a mad risk, but he had listened gravely and then gone to the Messenger with news of the plot. My mother, however, had been furious when she heard how I had risked my life and had spanked me until my throat was sore from crying.
My rump still sore from the beating, I sat on my haunches. I had never seen the Messenger so quiet. The Prophet had been deeply distressed to hear that his life had been saved by placing Umar’s sister, Fatima, at risk. He stared out a window at a palm tree that grew just outside the wall of his wife’s home, as if he could find some hope in its steady defiance of the desert winds that buffeted the city that morning. Perhaps I imagined it, but I did not see him blink at all for minutes. He seemed to be in a trance, but it was not like the terrifying seizures that overtook him when the Revelation came. He seemed like a man sleeping with his eyes awake, his powerful chest moving up and down steadily as he breathed.
The silence in the Prophet’s house was so strong that it was an eerie sound in itself. And then a loud steady knock resounded through the hall, like the trumpet of the angel shattering the stillness of death and summoning men to the Resurrection.
Ali rose from his place at the Messenger’s feet. He walked over slowly to the main door and peered through a tiny peephole before turning to face the gathered crowd.
“It is Umar,” he said matter-of-factly. “He comes bearing a sword.”
A murmur of fear spread among the believers. My sister, Asma, suddenly burst into tears, assuming the worst for poor Fatima. The Messenger’s uncle Hamza stood up.
“Let him in. If he has come with good intent, we will give him a mountain of good in return. And if his intent is evil, we will kill him with his own sword.”
Ali looked to the Prophet, who stood up with dignity and moved toward the door. I noticed again how his strides were not like those of any other man I had ever seen. Though the Messenger was not as tall as Hamza, he walked with a speed and determination that made those with longer legs pant to keep up with him. It was as if he were the wind itself, forever outracing the fastest of the sons of Adam.
The Prophet stopped a few feet away from the door. He was now positioned so that his followers were grouped behind him, as if he would single-handedly shield us from Umar’s vengeance. Hamza stood behind his right shoulder and Ali was to his left. The Messenger nodded to his young cousin, who threw open the door.
We all stopped breathing. I thought I could hear the steady thrum of our hearts, as if they were pounding in unison.
And then Umar stepped inside, his sword unsheathed and glistening in his hand. I looked with morbid curiosity to see if there was any blood drying on the blade. But if he had killed his sister, as we all expected, Umar had wiped the sword clean before returning to fulfill his vow.
I watched his face with fascination. He appeared different from the man I had seen only a few hours before. There was no more rage on his face, and he appeared uncertain, almost afraid, as he stood before the Messenger.
For a moment, no one moved. It was as if the slightest tremor would set into motion events that would change everything.
And indeed it did.
The Prophet stepped forward and grabbed Umar by his studded belt, suddenly pulling the giant who towered a full head over the tallest men in the room as if he were an unruly child. He dragged Umar unceremoniously to the center of the hall, where the assassin was forced to stand among a crowd of two dozen believers staring at him with fear.
“What has brought you here, O son of al-Khattab?” the Messenger said, his eyes never leaving his adversary’s bushy bearded face. “I cannot see you desisting until God sends down some calamity on you.”
Umar hesitated. I saw him move his sword arm and Hamza instantly had his bow in his hand, an arrow nocked and pointed right at Umar’s chest.
And then I saw something that made my heart leap into my throat.
Tears welled into the giant’s eyes and poured down his weathered cheeks like the well of Ishmael suddenly erupting from the bowels of the desert and bringing hope of life where there had been only death.
Umar dropped the sword at the Messenger’s feet and knelt in humility until his head was positioned beneath the Prophet’s chest. And then he said words that no one in all of Mecca would have ever expected.
“O Messenger of God, I have come to you that I may declare my faith in God and in His Messenger and in what he has brought from God.”
There was moment of stunned silence. This had to be a trick, some ruse Umar had devised to startle us and lower our guard so that he could strike unexpectedly.
But then the Prophet smiled warmly, his face glowing like the sun breaking through dark clouds.
“Allahu akbar!” the Messenger cried in a voice that thundered throughout the hall and poured out into the dusty streets of the holy city. “God is great!”
And then Muhammad, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, embraced Umar like a brother whom he had not seen in many years.
We looked at one another in wonder. And then I started clapping, a flurry of giggles erupting from my lips. The sound of my laugh was throaty and contagious, and soon others joined in. We raised our voices in joy, marveling at the power of faith and the inexplicable depths of the human heart.
A few hours later, Umar strode through the streets of Mecca, walking as if in a dream. Everything had changed the moment he had read the Words of God. It was as if someone had reached inside his breast and torn out a deadly snake that had been wrapped around his heart, squeezing out any love for life or his fellow man. And then he had understood. The Spirit that he sensed around the Kaaba, the Being that he had vowed to serve at the cost of his own life, had a voice, and it had spoken to him through a book revealed to an illiterate man. All this time, he had been fighting the very force to which he had dedicated his soul.
Umar had read the words that were painted on the leather strip and had fallen back as if struck by an invisible hand. He had started shaking with violent tremors and his head had felt warm and dizzy. But he knew that he was not suffering from fever or plague. It was the same dizzying sensation that had torn through him the day he had sought solace for murdering his daughter by kneeling at the Sanctuary. But this time, instead of cruel laughter mocking him, he heard a gentle voice in his heart, filled with compassion, saying: “Go to him.”
And like a child who does not dare question his elders, Umar had gotten up without a word to his sister and walked straight to the Messenger’s house. When he had declared his newfound faith, he felt as if a stone had lifted from his shoulders and that someone who had been imprisoned inside of him had suddenly been set free. The man Umar had once been was gone, like a shadow that vanishes when light is shone upon it.
He had not cried since he was a child. His father, al-Khattab, would beat him ferociously each time he sniffled, calling him weak and threatening to cut off his male organ if he kept weeping like a girl. But today he had wept for hours, as if a dam had burst and all the pain he had bottled inside himself for years had come out. He could not control it if he wanted to. And, in truth, he did not want to.
The Messenger had accepted him and forgiven him his treachery, but Umar found he still could not stop crying. He kept seeing the image of his precious baby daughter looking up at him with a smile even as he covered her tiny body with stones. She had kept squeezing his finger until the breath had finally left her and her little hand had dropped.
He had looked at the Messenger and asked that God punish him for his sin. He had handed his sword to Muhammad and begged him to avenge the girl and cut off his head. But the Prophet had put a gentle hand on his arm, his own black eyes welling with tears of empathy.
“You have already punished yourself enough, son of al-Khattab,” he had said softly. “Islam is like a river. It cleans those who immerse themselves of their past sins.”
Umar had bowed his head, still not willing to accept the forgiveness he was offered.
“You say that all men will be resurrected one day and the girls who were slain by their fathers will confront them on the Day of Judgment,” he said, repeating the teachings that he had reviled and mocked only a few hours before. “What will I say to my little girl when I face her?”
The Prophet looked past Umar’s shoulder, as if staring at some grand vision on the horizon of his mind’s eye.
“I see her holding you by the hand, squeezing your finger, as she leads you to Paradise.”
At that moment, Umar ibn al-Khattab was freed. The man he had been, the murderer, the drunk, the adulterer, died. And the man who now walked purposefully through the cobbled alleys of Mecca had been born.
He noticed that people in the streets were staring at him, looking confused as he passed them. And then he realized it was because he was smiling. Not the smile of a man with a deadly scheme in his heart, but one of pure and unconditional joy. As he passed by a street merchant selling coral combs, agate rings, and vials of rosewater perfume to a group of black-veiled Bedouin women, he caught a reflection of his face in the polished silver mirror the merchant had erected to promote his wares to the vanity of his customers.
He did not recognize himself. The cruel scowl that he had once believed to be a sign of power and masculinity was gone, replaced by a look of childlike wonder. Umar grinned and found that he liked the way the lines around his lips and cheeks crinkled when he did so.
And then he forced himself to adopt a serious, stoic face. For now he was on a new mission and he could not allow himself to be distracted by the unfamiliar face that stared back at him from the mirror.
Umar moved forward with steady strides, his eyes focused on a grand house of yellow stone, the walls decorated with carved flowers and wreaths of silver. He knocked harshly on the dark wooden doors made of cedar imported from Lebanon.
He heard the sound of movement and caught a glimpse of a dark eye gazing at him through a tiny peephole. And then the door swung open and Abu Jahl emerged, his face eager with expectation.
“Is it done? Is the man dead?”
Umar looked at him for a long moment. He had once secretly envied Abu Jahl’s chiseled good looks, but now he saw only a demon whose ugliness was evident in the cruel gaze of his eyes.
“One man is dead,” Umar said slowly, pronouncing each word as if it would be his last. “Another has been born.”
Abu Jahl furled his brow in confusion.
“What are you saying?”
Umar leaned close to him, a triumphant smile slowly crossing his face.
“I have come to tell you that I believe in God and His Messenger, Muhammad, and that I testify to the truth of what he has brought.”
Abu Jahl stared at him blankly. And then his face twisted into a violent scowl, and his handsome mask was shattered, revealing a darkness that few had ever witnessed beneath his studied diplomatic veneer.
“God curse you, and may His curse be on the tidings you have brought!”
Abu Jahl slammed the door in Umar’s face. The redeemed assassin stood quietly for a moment and then burst out laughing, his beard shaking with violent mirth at the precious sight of Abu Jahl’s discomfiture.
He turned and walked back toward the Kaaba, where he would proclaim his rebirth before the entire city. And for an instant, he thought he heard in his ears the joyful laugh of a little girl who should have lived to see this day.
Abu Sufyan leaned back on the dais as the dancing girls whirled before him. Their dark skin contrasted vividly with their pink and saffron robes, their skirts twirling sensually with their measured steps, revealing just enough to ignite a man’s desire before disappearing in a swirl of mystery.
His eye fell on a doe-eyed girl of fourteen who smiled at him, flashing ivory teeth that seemed to sparkle in the torchlight that lit the audience hall of his grand manor. He felt a stirring within his loins and he glanced over to his wife, Hind, who had her eyes on the same courtesan. She met his gaze and winked, and he knew that she would be open to having the harlot join them in their bed tonight.
Normally the thought would have pleased him, but his mind was distracted tonight. He brooded over the mad scene at the Sanctuary that morning, when Umar had proclaimed his conversion to Muhammad’s religion and had announced himself a guardian of the Prophet. With Umar and his terrifying sword in Muhammad’s hands, the balance of power in the city had shifted decisively. The Muslims were no longer a troublesome cult of dreamers but an influential tribe of their own, backed by the protection of one of the most powerful leaders of Mecca.
As he glanced sideways at Hind, who was watching the buxom dancer like a cat waiting to devour a mouse, he thought bitterly that the only good thing that could come out of Umar’s betrayal was that he would no longer be a cloud darkening their marriage. Abu Sufyan had endured the rumors and innuendoes, publicly denouncing any who would sully the reputation of his honorable wife. But he secretly knew that her frequent evening visits to “her aunts” were mere diversionary tactics and that her true destination was Umar’s bed.
Why had he put up with it for so long? He had a wise fear of Umar’s temper like everyone else. But in his heart he knew that he would not have interfered even if Hind had taken up with some lesser man whose sword was more easily faced in battle. Was it because his marriage to her had sealed his alliance with her powerful father, Utbah, and guaranteed his unchallenged leadership of Mecca? No, he would like to think that he was politically skilled enough to retain his position as the chieftain of chieftains even if he divorced Hind or killed her to restore his honor.
But the thought of leaving her, or worse, murdering her, left him feeling cold and sick. He looked over at her and saw the faint smile on her lush lips, the savage glint in her eyes that hinted at dark thoughts and darker lusts. And he knew the truth, painful as it was. He loved Hind, more than he loved anything else in this world. Abu Sufyan could not imagine life without her, and he was willing to turn away from her dalliances with men-and women-if only to preserve their marriage. Even after all these years, she ignited his passion as no other woman could. And even more important, she comforted his soul with her innate understanding of the difficulties of leadership and the loneliness of power. She was the only person he could talk to, to unburden his mind when the pressure became too great.
As it had tonight. Abu Sufyan clapped to signal he was tired of the performance. The musicians who had been steadily pounding drums made of camel hide and bone ended their play and the girls stopped their sensual dancing, the rustle of their skirts quieting like the sudden fall of a heavy wind.
Abu Sufyan threw them a handful of gold coins and waved them away. The dark-skinned dancer with the luminous eyes looked at Hind, who nodded, and then she joined her sisters in the adjoining antechamber, where they would be fed roasted lamb and poured wine by the servants before being sent on their way.
When the last of the dancers had left and they were alone, Hind turned to face Abu Sufyan, putting her long-fingered hand over his. He always marveled at the heat she exuded, as if she were a walking torch.
“What is wrong, my husband?” she said softly, her piercing eyes tearing into his soul.
“Umar’s conversion is a turning point,” Abu Sufyan said with a sigh. He quietly noted the flicker of emotion that crossed her face at the mention of the man who had only days before been her lover and was now an open enemy. “These Muslims are no longer afraid. They will spread their poison openly now, knowing that Umar will protect them.”
Hind looked away for a second, her eyes on the lush maroon carpet where the dancers had been swaying only moments before.
“Umar is but one man,” she said, as if trying to convince herself. “He cannot hold back the wrath of Quraysh.”
Abu Sufyan laughed bitterly.
“What wrath? Our tribe is like a hamstrung camel. Even Abu Jahl is now afraid of igniting an all-out war with these heretics. We cannot risk killing any of them as long as Umar’s sword hangs over our heads.”
Hind turned to face him, and he saw the raw cunning in her eyes that both excited and terrified him. She stroked the golden snake armlet that she always wore, and he felt his desire rising.
“You men always see things so simply. Night and day. Sun and moon. There are no stars in your world, no clouds or mists. You lack subtlety.”
Abu Sufyan leaned closer. “What do you mean?”
“One does not need to kill another man in order to wage war on him,” she said, squeezing his hand until he winced in pain. “What is Mecca known for, besides its gods?”
Abu Sufyan had learned over the years to answer her questions, as they were usually meant to guide him to a truth he had not yet seen but was already evident to her.
“Its trade. Our merchants are the heart of all commerce between Yemen, Byzantium, and Persia.”
Hind leaned even closer and he could feel her firm breasts rub against him, arousing his desire again.
“And what happens when blood from the heart fails to reach an organ?”
His own organ was engorged with blood and he had difficulty thinking because of the pounding in his loins. But as he let her words penetrate the haze of lust, understanding began to dawn on Abu Sufyan.
“It dies,” he said simply.
Hind smiled, and her hand touched his excited flesh.
“Exactly.”
He ran a finger across her neck, long and elegant like a gazelle’s.
“We will use trade as a weapon.”
Hind smiled, delighted as always that the pupil had finally caught up to the teacher. She reached over to a basket of red grapes and took one in her lips. And then she kissed Abu Sufyan and let the grape fall into his mouth. He sucked on it and her tongue at the same time.
She finally broke off the kiss and looked him deep in the eyes.
“You do not need to kill them. If you starve them, they will kill themselves.”
The full plan was now coming into view, with all its cold brilliance. Abu Sufyan gazed at Hind with admiration.
“If the Quraysh would accept a woman as their leader, they would have chosen you,” he said.
Hind did not deny this. She ran her nails across his chest, feeling the harsh beating of his heart.
“But since they would not, I chose you.”
Abu Sufyan smiled.
“I thought you married me because you loved me.”
She kissed him again, letting her soft pink tongue play across his lips.
“I do.”
And then Abu Sufyan leaned back and looked at her as if appraising the true value of a rare gem.
“Is it me, or is it my power that you love?”
Hind smiled mischievously.
“Defeat Muhammad, and you will never need to know the answer to that question.”
She leaned forward and kissed him for a long moment. When she broke free, he saw that they were not alone. The dancer with the lustful eyes had returned to the hall unbidden, perhaps summoned by the magnetic heat that Hind’s body exuded.
His wife smiled and pulled Abu Sufyan up with her right hand. She held out her left and grasped the dancer’s small fingers, and then she quietly led the two back to her bedchamber.
I stood holding my father’s hand as Abu Sufyan, dressed in the formal black robes of judgment, led a group of similarly clad chieftains before the golden door of the Kaaba. I saw that he held a heavy lambskin parchment in his hand and that Abu Jahl stood to his right, a triumphant smile playing across his face.
When they were all gathered in the courtyard of the Sanctuary, I counted over forty of the most powerful men, not only of Mecca but of the Bedouin tribes who grazed their flocks just beyond the black hills that served as the borders of the city.
My eye caught movement to my left, and I saw Abu Talib, the Prophet’s uncle and the head of the clan of Bani Hashim, standing with his brothers, Hamza and Abbas. He looked even more aged and tired than when I had last seen him, and Hamza held his shoulder firmly to help Abu Talib maintain his balance. I saw the three brothers looking at the gathering of the chieftains, from which they had been pointedly excluded, with evident concern.
And then Hamza scowled and I followed his eyes across the courtyard to see his half brother and spiritual enemy, Abu Lahab, standing by his wife, Umm Jamil. She had become one of the most vocal female voices against the Prophet and his Message. Umm Jamil’s petty vindictiveness was legendary, and I remembered how the Messenger had limped to my father’s house after she had carefully strewn thorns behind him while he prayed at the Sanctuary so that he when finished and turned to leave, his feet had been torn and bloodied.
The persecution by his own uncle and aunt had so upset the Messenger that God had come to his defense, sending a Revelation that condemned both of them to hell for eternity. This had only enraged Umm Jamil even more, and the next time she had seen the Messenger, she had thrown a pot full of steaming goat feces and entrails over his head.
Now she and her slug of a husband stood gloating as the lords of Mecca moved to destroy our faith once and for all.
Abu Sufyan looked sternly at our small crowd of believers, who had been summoned to hear the proclamation that had been decided in secret council that morning. And then he read from the document, his voice firm with authority.
“In your name, O Allah, we the leaders of Quraysh proclaim this solemn oath. The Children of Hashim have harbored a dangerous sorcerer named Muhammad, a madman whose lies defile the sanctity of Your House and Your children, the gods of the Arabs. His sedition has driven men away from the sacred Pilgrimage and has covered Your holy city with the shadow of poverty and fear. As custodians of Your Sanctuary, we can no longer stand by and watch corruption spread through the earth. We therefore proclaim this day that the clan of Hashim is outlawed. No man of Quraysh may marry a woman of Hashim or give his daughter in marriage to a man of Hashim. And no one of Quraysh may sell anything to anyone of Hashim, nor purchase anything from them. And this proclamation shall stay in force until the Bani Hashim lifts its protection of the heretic Muhammad or the sorcerer renounces his false claim of prophecy.”
He finished reading and raised his head to face us again.
“So say we all.”
The other tribal chiefs loudly declared their support of the proclamation, raising their right hands in affirmation.
I saw my father’s face fall as he watched the chiefs move forward one by one to place their individual wax seals on the document. A crowd of hooligans and rabble-rousers had been strategically gathered by the chieftains, and they now played their designated role by shouting practiced curses and slurs at the Muslims, inviting the gods to rain punishment on us from the heavens.
Abu Sufyan bowed to the angry mob with a deep flourish, as if accepting the will of the people. He took the proclamation and climbed the stone steps leading up to the gold-embossed door of the Temple. I gasped, as I had never seen anyone go inside the Kaaba. It was said that the lords of Mecca would enter the Holy of Holies only on extremely rare occasions when the future of the city was at stake, such as when a Yemeni army had besieged Mecca fifty years ago, shortly before the birth of the Messenger.
Clearly, this proclamation of exclusion was seen by the chieftains as requiring the highest divine endorsement. Never before had the lords gathered together to denounce and expel one of their own, not just one man but an entire clan, and deny by common agreement a whole caste of people any source of food or income to survive.
Abu Sufyan entered the Kaaba, his head bowed in humility and recognition of the fact that he was stepping on sacred ground that was normally forbidden. When the doors swung inward and sunlight flooded the normally dark interior, I saw a flash of crimson inside and caught sight of a towering cornelian quartz idol that I had heard about but never seen before.
Hubal, the god of Mecca, an ancient idol that had been brought all the way from Syria hundreds of years before. Its carved right hand had broken off during the long caravan ride from the north, and the ancestors of the Quraysh had fashioned for the idol a new hand of solid gold. The Messenger had said that of all the pagan abominations that corrupted the sacred ground of the Sanctuary, none was more hateful to Allah than this monstrosity that sat inside the House of God, its jagged face smiling obscenely at its usurpation of the authority of the One.
As Abu Sufyan stepped inside and nailed the proclamation to the dark stone wall behind Hubal, I saw his ally Abu Lahab look across the courtyard to Abu Talib, a victorious gleam in his beady eyes. The ban had cut Abu Talib’s leadership of the Bani Hashim at the knees, leaving Abu Lahab rich ground to agitate for new leadership. And then Abu Jahl approached Abu Lahab, shaking his black-turbaned head and placing his jeweled fingers on his friend’s meaty shoulder. Abu Jahl sighed in exaggerated sympathy, speaking loud enough so that we could all hear him.
“If only your clansmen had your vision, my friend,” Abu Jahl said pointedly. Clearly the campaign to replace the head of the Bani Hashim had begun in earnest.
Abu Lahab wrung his hands in mock despair.
“They have been blinded by my nephew’s magic. But the ban will wake them from their dream.”
“I hope so,” Abu Jahl said. “And then perhaps they will choose someone who can lead the clan of Hashim back to its hallowed seat at the table of Quraysh.”
Clucking like old women who have been scandalized by the foolishness of the young, they walked away together, leaving us to the jeers of Abu Sufyan’s hired demonstrators.
Abu Talib watched sadly as his estranged brother departed. Having swallowed the worst humiliation of his years as a chieftain, the old man turned to leave the Sanctuary. Hamza and Abbas helped Abu Talib cross the courtyard slowly, his head held high in dignity even as the drunken crowd flung insults upon him.
I watched as Abu Sufyan emerged from the Kaaba and closed the glittering doors with reverence. He turned to join the gathered chieftains and thank them for their unified support of his plan to expel the Bani Hashim from Mecca. And then he saw me, a thin little girl who would soon be denied food and medicine under his orders, and I thought I saw a flash of shame and regret on his face before he turned his back on me.
I was young, but I understood enough of what had happened to know that the world had changed and that we were in an extremely precarious situation. I tugged on my father’s sleeves.
“If no one will buy or sell to us, how will we eat?”
Abu Bakr bent down and put a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“When the Children of Israel fled Pharaoh and wandered in the wilderness, God gave them food. Even so, He will feed us.”
His face was calm and composed as always. But in his eyes, I saw fear.
The boycott by the Quraysh forced the Muslims to evacuate the city. Forbidden to buy food or the basic necessities of life within the boundaries of Mecca, we sought refuge in the blackened hills beyond its precincts. But as we quickly learned, the borders of a city are determined not by walls, rivers, or mountains but by the sphere of influence dictated by the might of its armies, by the network of its merchants. And Mecca’s circle of power extended well beyond arbitrary lines drawn in the sands of Arabia.
With neighboring Bedouin herders and passing caravans refusing to take our money or accept our services in trade, the believers were forced to forage in the wilderness like jackals or vultures. We pitched camp by a small wadi owned by my father. A tent city sprang up by the muddy stream that provided our only source of water in the midst of a gray wasteland.
I was only six years old, but whatever innocence of childhood I possessed had died. My pale face had become the shade of burned copper and my small hands were chafed from carrying pails of water that were almost as tall as I was. My knees were perennially scratched and scarred, the tender flesh torn from climbing through the rocky hills looking for precious eggs at the first sight of a hovering pigeon that might have built a nest nearby.
I rarely laughed anymore and had adopted the grim stoicism that I saw carved on my mother’s worn face. Her soft skin had lost its luster and had taken on the hardness of dry leather. At night, I could hear her crying in the small weather-beaten tent next to the one where Asma and I slept. Our mattresses were nothing more than a collection of rags that served many purposes in the camp of the exiles. At night we would spread them on the ground and lie upon them. In the morning, they would be rolled up and used to clean any pots that had been fortunate enough to be filled with food the night before. And once they had been washed in the questionably potable water of the spring, they would serve as our change of clothes for the day.
Childhood should be a time of play, of running through the streets with joy in one’s heart, of flying kites and letting the soul soar with them beyond the dome of the sky into a world of dreams and possibilities. In my old age, I look back and remember the countless crimes our enemies subjected us to in the early days of Islam. I have forgiven most of these transgressions, as the Messenger enjoined us. But the pain of those childhood years, spent hovering under the shadow of starvation, pestilence, and death, has been so deeply imprinted in my heart that I cannot let it go. Whenever I think back on those dark days, I feel anew the rage and despair that come with being small and powerless in a world that rewards only cruelty and strength.
It was the memory of that deprivation and fear that would drive me in years to come to seek power when I should have sought wisdom. And my grief is that many men would die because of a child’s terror of the scorpions that crawled past her as she lay on hard desert ground in the night.
Eventually the end came, as it always does. If I have learned one thing in the years of my existence, one nugget of wisdom from having lived in the midst of disputations over faith and the nature of the world, it is that everything ends. This is both the blessing and the punishment of God upon the foolish tribe that calls itself man. We can embrace the end or we can weep, but the ghost of time closes all doors with a finality that can never be gainsaid.
So it was that one night, I emerged from a torn green tent and looked out at the dozens of believers, dressed in dirty rags, sitting by makeshift campfires along the tiny riverbed. The sparks crackled and flew into heaven, like desperate prayers. I felt a terrible weight in my heart, for I carried news that would extinguish many hopes tonight.
I saw my father at the edge of the camp, gathering acacia leaves from a scattered copse of trees. We had been reduced to rationing these prickly green sprouts that even our animals were dubious of as our supply of dried meat dwindled. Some of the refugees would eat them raw, while others, especially the children, could stomach them only if they were cooked into a thin broth.
Abu Bakr saw the look on my face as I ran over, and he stopped in his tracks, dropping the basket of leaves.
“How is Khadija?” he said, a hint of dread in his voice, as if he already knew the answer.
I had spent the last two days at the side of the Mother of the Believers. She had been struck by the potentially deadly camp fever and had been fading in and out of consciousness for the past hour.
“She is still feverish,” I said, panting to catch my breath. I paused, fearful to say what my father already suspected. “Mother worries for her life.”
I saw the color drain from his tired face.
“I seek refuge in Allah! Without Khadija, I do not know how he will go on.”
Abu Bakr looked across the camp and I saw that he was gazing at the Messenger, who stood alone at the top of the hill, his head bowed in prayer or sadness. Or both.
And then I felt the ground shudder as Umar stormed over. His dark face was contorted in rage as usual. He stared at the emaciated faces of the refugees kneeling by the wadi and then turned to my father with a now-familiar rant.
“It’s been two years! When will this end? Where is God’s help?”
My father was the only one besides the Messenger who seemed to have a soothing effect on Umar’s volatile emotions. Abu Bakr was as much of a doctor as a friend to this volcano of a man, whose fire easily consumed lesser souls.
“Calm yourself, Umar,” my father said patiently. “The people need you to be strong.” He did not add what I knew he was thinking-especially if the Mother of the Believers died. The Muslims would need men who were made of granite rather than flesh to guide them through the madness and despair that would follow.
But Umar as usual failed to read that which was underneath the words. He was never a subtle man.
“How can you be so calm?” he said with increasing fury, like a child demanding an answer to an inexplicable mystery. “You’ve lost everything. You were once one of the wealthiest men of Mecca, and now there is no difference between you and the slaves whose freedom you bought!”
Abu Bakr sighed. Even my father’s impatience with this moody giant had its limits.
“Whatever I had was on loan to me from God,” he said. “Were I given tenfold what I have lost, I would gladly spend it all for God and His Messenger.”
Apparently, he had found the words that Umar needed at that moment, and the son of al-Khattab stopped shaking. A gentle calm descended on him. My father looked again to the Prophet, who now sat down upon a mottled gray rock and buried his head in his hands as if weeping. I saw deep pity on Abu Bakr’s face. Few knew as well as he the anguish of the Messenger, who had been preaching One God for almost ten years and had achieved nothing but exile and starvation for his followers.
“Go to him,” my father said softly. He knew that the Messenger saw me as one of the few bright lights in this vast blanket of night that covered his life. Even though I rarely laughed on my own anymore, I was still a performer at heart, and I had been the only one who could bring a smile to his face with my games and antics.
I walked over to the Prophet and saw that his face was wet with tears. For a moment, I stopped breathing. If the Messenger of God had been reduced to despair, what hope would there ever be that I could find joy in my dead heart again?
I put a hand on his shoulder and tried to keep it from shaking.
“Don’t be sad,” I said, and it was more of a desperate plea than a compassionate request. “God is with us,” I added, despite all evidence to the contrary.
The Prophet raised his head and looked at me for a long moment. He took my hand and squeezed it gently, and I pretended to cry out in exaggerated discomfort and then danced a silly jig at his feet. He laughed, then scooped me into his arms, smiled into my golden eyes. It was as if my presence gave him renewed strength and purpose. Looking at me, he saw the future that he and his followers were struggling to create.
And gazing into his unfathomably dark eyes, I sensed that I had reminded him of the past as well. In later years, the Messenger told me that my childish defiance of the world, my embrace of life when those with allegedly greater wisdom had resigned themselves to death, had taught him again the lesson of his own youth. For I was the same age as he when his mother had died and he lost what little standing and hope he had in the strict social hierarchy of Mecca. It was a harsh lesson that the orphan had learned that night and relearned again and again, every night for two decades, until God had brought him to Khadija and ended one chapter of his life to begin another. It was the cruel but necessary truth that pain is an unavoidable part of any struggle, as are the inevitable defeats and humiliations of the journey. Loss is the fire that tempers steel and forges it into a sword of victory. Failure is the currency by which success is eventually purchased in bulk.
And then I saw the Messenger’s face change. The smile that lingered on his lips froze. I watched in shock as his dark eyes flew back up into his head until all I could see was the ivory white orbs that encased them. His hands began to tremble and he let go of me as tremors tore through his body like terrifying bolts of lightning.
I fell to the ground, my throat constricted in fear. I felt rather than saw my father come running up behind me. Abu Bakr scooped me into his arms and held me tight, but his eyes never left the Messenger, whose face was bathed in sweat and who fell to his side, convulsing like a fish that had suddenly been pulled out of the sea.
The Trance of the Revelation.
We had both seen this happen before, but it never ceased to fill us with awe and terror. For we knew that the Messenger’s body shook with the unimaginable power of two worlds colliding. Of the entire might and vastness of heaven itself curling into a ball and descending into the tiny and weak form of a mortal man.
It was at the moment of the Revelation that we had a sense of the power of an Infinite Mind that had created the cosmos with a single word. And now that very same power, the overwhelming energy of the Divine Word, was tearing into the sinews and muscles of this one man who had been chosen to be its herald to mankind.
I saw Ali approach with a blanket. He wrapped the Messenger around the shoulders and sat by him, brushing his dark curls lovingly as he shivered and shuddered under the weight of the Revelation.
And then, so fast that I gave a little scream of surprise, the Messenger’s eyes flew open and he bolted upright. The tremors immediately ceased, but I could still feel the air around him vibrating, as if the world itself shook with the force that coursed through his soul.
And then Muhammad, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, spoke. But the voice was not his own. It was deeper, unearthly, like an echo rising up from a chasm between life and death. And it said:
“Do you suppose that you will enter the Garden
Without first having suffered like those before you?
They were afflicted by misfortune and hardship
And they were so shaken that even their Messenger
And the Believers with him cried,
‘When will God’s help arrive?’
Truly God’s help is near.”
I saw a crowd of believers gathering around us, their eyes wide with wonder as the Words of God descended into their midst. The Lord of the Worlds was speaking right now, through the tortured tongue of the man whom they had followed willingly to what appeared to be their deaths.
People were crying, not from grief or fear but from joy. God had just reminded them that this terrible period they had endured was nothing more than a test that would end at its appointed time.
And strangely enough, they found deep comfort in the admission of despair on the part of the Prophet. God had lifted the stoic veil over their leader’s heart, revealing that the doubts they had all secretly harbored were in fact shared by the Messenger himself. Their fears were his.
There is no greater revelation in life than to learn that those whom we admire share our faults and our weaknesses. In that moment, stone idols fall from their pedestals and the gulf between the lover and the beloved vanishes in the joyful embrace of the beautiful imperfection of humanity.
The Messenger blinked and I saw that the angel had departed and his soul had returned to him.
He took me by the hand and ran his sturdy fingers through my crimson hair.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?” I could not imagine that the most important person in my life, the man whom my father and mother called master, would have any reason to thank me.
He smiled and spoke loud enough for the eager crowd of believers to hear.
“For reminding me that God’s help is always near.”
And then he stood and raised his hands in gratitude to God. And even though we were all still cold and hungry, standing there on the dead hill that was our wretched home, I felt as if a curtain had lifted. The air smelled different. The stench of disease and decay was gone.
And in its place was the unmistakable, and inexplicable, scent of roses.
I walked proudly beside my father as we broke the law and stepped onto the ground of the Sanctuary for the first time in two years. We were followed by several dozen of the believers, as well as a crowd of sympathizers from the city who had grown ashamed of watching their kinsmen struggle like rats in the shadows.
We should have been afraid of retaliation. Of an arrow shot by one of Abu Sufyan’s men positioned on the rooftops. Or a turbaned warrior emerging from an alley at a warhorse’s pace and letting his sword sing the harsh ballad of Meccan justice.
But we were not. The Messenger, when he had recovered from his trance, had told us that an army of angels would surround us and protect us from the wrath of the idolaters.
I did not see any winged beings of light. But as I looked around at the men and women of the city pouring out when they saw us, many clapping with joy, their eyes wide with wonder at our defiance of the elders, I wondered if he had been talking about them. They were the masses of the poor, the wretched, who had benefited in the old days from the largesse of our charity. The last two years had been hard on them as well. Through us, they had experienced the possibility of another Mecca, one in which the powerful aided the weak rather than exploited them, and then it had been torn away from them. But having seen a few rays of light illuminating their lives, they had been changed forever and would not go easily back into the darkness.
I realized at that moment why we were so dangerous to the lords of Mecca. Once a fire is ignited in the brush, it cannot easily be put out. Perhaps it was for that reason that we were allowed to move through the city unmolested. Whatever guards or assassins had been positioned to stop us saw the enthusiastic crowd that cheered us and realized that swordplay would likely spark a riot and then a revolution. As I was to learn to my grief in later years, once the passion of rebellion has been unleashed, it cannot be easily countered or controlled
As we approached the holy Kaaba, I saw our greatest enemy, Abu Jahl, standing before it, arms crossed, a look of contempt on his face but a hint of fear in his eyes. He was surrounded by seven of the largest men I had ever seen, black as night, their muscles rippling like the flesh of a running lion as they raised their swords to the ready. Abyssinian slaves, but not gentle and small like my friend Bilal. These were warriors who had been purchased specifically for their might and cruelty.
My father stopped and stared at Abu Jahl, who smiled in challenge. Clearly he was willing to risk violence in the streets to maintain the ban. My father let go of my hand and stepped forward alone.
As Abu Bakr strolled toward the House of God, Abu Jahl nodded to his men, who stepped forward in perfect unison. They crouched like panthers preparing to strike, their ugly swords glinting red in the morning light.
And then I saw a flash of indigo robes out of the corner of my eye and saw Abu Sufyan enter the circle of the Haram. I watched him assess the situation. The agitated crowd, the drawn swords facing an unarmed old man. His politician’s instincts overcame his outrage at our defiance and I saw his angry face become calm and neutral as he calculated the best way to resolve this standoff to his advantage.
And then Abu Sufyan moved forward, placing himself strategically between my father and Abu Jahl’s soldiers.
“What is the meaning of this, Abu Bakr? You are banned from the Sanctuary!”
My father walked confidently until his face was only inches away from his adversary.
“The ban is over, Abu Sufyan,” he said, to loud cries of support from our army of beggars.
Abu Jahl went to place his hands on a nearby idol, that of Abgal, a god from the northern sands of Palmyra, a ferocious-looking boar with giant tusks carved out of ivory.
“Blasphemer! The ban was placed in the name of Allah, and only Allah himself can lift it.”
My father looked at him with an amused smile that appeared to infuriate Abu Jahl more than his proud defiance.
“You speak the truth for once,” he said, pointing his finger at the golden doors of the Kaaba. “Go inside and see for yourself.”
Abu Jahl looked at my father as if he were insane, but Abu Sufyan saw something in his eyes that troubled him. And then without any ceremony, he turned and walked up the seven stone steps and pushed open the gate of the Holy of Holies.
Abu Sufyan walked quickly past the three marble pillars that held up the roof from within, toward the crimson idol of Hubal, its gold hand sparkling from the rays of sunlight that poured inside.
He walked over to the back wall, where he had hung the proclamation two years before, and gasped.
The wall was infested with an army of red ants. They marched across the granite interior in majestic unity, coursing right and left as if guided by an invisible hand. The feared desert insects with razor pincers that could tear a man’s flesh to shreds in seconds had unleashed their hungry wrath on the sheepskin hide that memorialized the ban. The document was gone as if it had never existed.
Abu Sufyan leaned forward in shock to see that one small section of the parchment remained untouched. Indeed, the ants seemed to be moving around it in a circle, much as the worshipers did around the Kaaba itself.
It was a sliver of sheepskin that simply said: In your name, O Allah…
Despite the objections of Abu Jahl and a few diehards in the Hall of Assembly, the ban was formally lifted that night. Abu Sufyan knew that the passions of the crowd had been excited by word of the “miracle of the ants” and that the superstitious citizens of Mecca believed that God had spoken. In truth, he understood that the shame of expelling a whole clan, including women and children, had burdened the hearts of the citizens. Mecca prided itself on being a city of hospitality, and yet every time a trading caravan or a train of pilgrims approached its borders, they had to cross a pathetic tent city of hungry people who had been driven from their homes. The ban had proven bad for business, and many of the chieftains had been looking for any excuse to end this embarrassing chapter in their history.
The next day, I helped my mother and sister pack what few belongings we still had left-a copper pot, six rusty ladles, a knife whose blade had long since dulled to the point of uselessness, as well as the rags that had once been pretty clothes that Asma and I would proudly wear when we went to visit our friends’ homes in the city.
I had never felt such excitement as Asma and I raced down the black hills toward the haze of chimney smoke that covered Mecca. The world felt reborn. The sky was bluer than I had ever noticed, and everywhere I looked, I saw hints of emerald beneath the rocks, as if a new spring had come to the deserts. Even the stones sparkled, their veins of quartz and calcite glittering under the blazing sun.
There were no welcoming crowds when we crossed the threshold of the city. The poor of the town had decided not to press their luck after demonstrating their unity and courage the day before. It made more sense to let the Muslims return and engage in the commerce of the city without further fanfare that might upset the Meccan lords and compel them to reconsider their magnanimity.
Asma and I walked hand in hand through the quiet streets as we headed home. I looked at her and smiled. She winked at me, and then I saw a hint of sadness in her eyes. I realized that returning to the city meant different things for us. She was now sixteen and unmarried, an old maid by the standards of our people. The past two years had been particularly hard on her and had taken away the youthful vibrancy that could have helped her attract a husband. Her curly hair was now a tangled mess of rushes, and I had a sudden image of her wearing a bird’s nest on her head that would have made me laugh if I were truly heartless. Her skin had suffered worse than mine in the unforgiving desert air, and there were unhealthy splotches of white across her sunburned face and neck that were never to disappear. Her breasts, once ripe and plump, were shrunken such that her bosom looked more like mine, and I was ten years her junior. Asma had never been beautiful, but now she looked utterly wretched and I suddenly felt sorry for her.
But your mother, Abdallah, was always strong, and if she suffered, she did so in silence. A smile played across her face as she recognized the orange and yellow facades of the stone huts that stood by the cobbled street leading to our house.
“Race you,” she said to me with a grin. Asma knew that I prided myself on my speed and I was immediately off and running to our home. She tried in vain to catch up, but I moved like a falcon, soaring with ease over the cracked stones and potholes that lined the route back to our personal sanctuary.
I laughed with delight as I rounded the corner that would lead to our gate. But when I saw our house, I stopped so suddenly that I almost lost my balance.
Our once-beautiful home, with its blue and green walls and lofty marble pillars, was a ruin. Angry vines rose from our weed-infested garden and wrapped themselves defiantly around the gates, which were rusted to an ugly orange. The windows that we had boarded against burglars had been torn open and I could see rats crawling on the sills, watching us approach, without trepidation.
The paint that my mother had so carefully renewed every year was faded and peeling. But there was new and unwelcome paint strewn across the walls by vandals, spelling out words of contempt for my family: Traitors…Gutter filth…Blasphemers…
My vision blurred as tears welled in my eyes. I heard Asma come up behind me, panting for breath, the laughter dying in her throat when she saw the building.
In that moment, I realized that Mecca was no longer our home. The ban may have been lifted, but the hate had not been vanquished, and like a stubborn disease, it would reassert itself inevitably. The hope of return to the past was an illusion, and we would now need to find a new home, a new hope. A new future.
That evening, as my family began the arduous process of cleaning and restoring the house to its former dignity, I had a nagging sense that we were wasting our time. Even as I slept for the first night in two years inside the delightfully cool walls, on a soft bed with cushions, my heart felt trapped. The house was no longer our haven but a prison holding us until the day of execution. We had to escape.
As the annihilation of sleep finally took me in its embrace, I had one last terrifying thought. An image, really, but one more vivid than any my childhood imagination had ever conjured.
A vision of Hind standing over me, looking down with a smile that was neither welcoming nor comforting. Then the gray walls were closing in on me until my bed was surrounded on all sides and I was trapped in a constricted space like a shallow grave. I felt my breathing become more desperate. In my mind’s eye, I saw Hind raise her long arms and the golden snakes that wrapped around her wrist came to life and slid down into the darkness with me. I could feel their slippery flesh gliding up my hips, their coldness wrapping around my waist as they slithered higher.
I wanted to move, but my legs were tied by the writhing snakes that squeezed as they climbed and wrapped themselves around my throat, cutting off the scream of horror that was struggling to burst free. And then darkness covered me and the steady stream of time dried up forever…
Death is always a catalyst, and it was death that finally forced the believers to face the truth that my young heart knew already. That we needed to leave the city, before the unsteady truce ended and the dogs of war were unleashed.
A few weeks after we had restored ourselves to the city, Talha ran breathlessly up to our home. “The exiles have returned!” he said, his voice quivering with delight. For a moment, I was confused. What was he talking about? We were the ones who had been exiled to the barren hills, and we had long since come back. And then I remembered.
Abyssinia. Nearly fifty of our people, mainly the weakest and the poorest of the believers who lacked clan protection, had escaped across the sea three years before and found refuge with the kindly Christian king known as the Negus. They included some of my favorite playmates, like Salma, the daughter of an unwed Bedouin woman who had worked the streets as a prostitute before she had embraced Islam. I had despaired of ever seeing them again, and when Talha’s words finally registered, a broad smile erupted on my face and I clapped with glee.
My mother immediately packed a shank of roast mutton she had been preparing for dinner into a leather sack and without another word raced out the door toward the house of the Messenger. Asma and I joined Talha on her heels.
The house of the Messenger was livelier than I had ever seen it. Word had spread through the city like a brushfire after a lightning storm and the main hall was packed with well-wishers seeking to welcome our long-lost brethren. I squeezed through the crowd and for a moment I had an uncomfortable understanding of the life of a chicken fighting its way through a coop to peck at a few seeds.
I finally crawled under a pair of stout legs and shimmied between two short women, twin sisters wearing olive-colored abaya s. I found myself near the center of the spacious room, where the Messenger was tearfully embracing his reclaimed brood.
I saw the Prophet hug a remarkably attractive young girl whom I did not recognize, and I felt a stab of jealousy that at the time did not make sense to me. I was confused, since the Prophet always maintained a respectful distance from his female followers, and I had never seen him touch a young girl so lovingly before.
And then I saw her intense dark eyes and I immediately realized that she was no stranger for whom the embrace would be a source of rumor and scandal. It was Ruqayya, the Prophet’s daughter, who had married the Meccan nobleman Uthman ibn Affan and had emigrated with him when he had been designated the leader of the Abyssinian exiles. The Prophet’s other daughters Zaynab and Umm Kulthum were both lovely creatures. Even his youngest child, Fatima, would have been considered pretty had she ever bothered to put on a little rouge or scent her hair like others. But Ruqayya was a woman from another world. She was then, and remains today, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her skin was flawless, even paler than her father’s, and her auburn hair peeked out from beneath the modest silk scarf she wore over her head. She had the tiniest waist I had ever seen. Her aquamarine robes did nothing to hide the generous curve of her breasts, and she seemed to exude a natural scent of tangerine. Staring at her perfect poise and grace, I was reminded of the ancient Greek idol of Athena that stood in the Sanctuary, brought by an Arab trader who had found the goddess in ruins outside Byzantium and carted her back to be displayed by the Kaaba.
I caught my own reflection in a bronze mirror that hung on the wall to my right, and I suddenly felt small and ugly. That sensation worsened when I saw a tall man with a perfectly groomed beard step up next to Ruqayya. He bowed his head before the Messenger and kissed his hand. When he rose, I realized that he was Ruqayya’s husband, Uthman, and he was a match for her in beauty. A perfectly proportioned face, with steady gray eyes that always seemed misty and sparkling, like the well of Zamzam in the dawn light. He was elegantly dressed, with embroidered green robes that sparkled with the hint of tiny gems set in the hem. When he smiled, he exuded unlimited kindness and compassion.
Admirable traits that would one day be his undoing and would plunge our nation into a chaos from which it has never recovered.
But that future was long away and could never have been divined by any in the room, except perhaps the Messenger himself. In my final days, looking back at my life to see if I could have read the signs better and prevented the bloodbath for which I was partly responsible, I remember that every time the Messenger looked at Uthman, I would see a hint of sadness in his eyes.
Muhammad never claimed to predict the future-only God knew the details of His plan for mankind-but I believe the Messenger had a remarkably astute sense of the men and women in his life, both his friends and his enemies. And in Uthman’s case, he may have felt more than known that his generous soul, his childlike innocence, was ripe for being manipulated by the unscrupulous, with terrifying consequences for the Ummah.
But that is a tragedy to be told at another time, and one that you know too well in any case, Abdallah. Returning to the events of that day, I watched as Khadija stepped up to greet the newcomers. She looked so old and frail, her once-smooth skin crushed into a sea of wrinkles. Her face was thin, as was her now snowy white hair. The years in the desert, and her recent bout with camp fever, had aged her to a frightening degree. As the Messenger supported her with a loving hand, I saw how he looked more like her son than her husband, his hair still glossy and black, his masculine face unlined and only a strand or two of gray in his beard.
It was a contrast that the exiles had not been prepared for, and I saw tears welling in Ruqayya’s crystal eyes. Khadija could see the shock on her daughter’s face, and I can imagine that it broke her heart, but whatever pain she felt, the Mother of the Believers was an expert at hiding it behind her gentle smile.
“My beautiful daughter,” she said in a hoarse voice and put her arms slowly around the girl, who shook with open grief. Khadija stroked her hair with her bony fingers and then she let go, a look of extreme exhaustion on her face. The Prophet’s cousin Ali moved quickly to her side and helped her sit down on a velvet cushion. Khadija breathed in with an evident struggle, and her hand flitted to her chest as if to remind her tired heart to keep beating.
Ruqayya knelt down beside Khadija, alarm clouding her perfect face.
“Mother, what’s wrong?”
Khadija smiled weakly, her eyes distant and unfocused.
“I’m just a little tired, dear,” she said faintly.
The Messenger’s youngest daughter, Fatima, sat beside her, taking Khadija’s hand in hers. She was such a remarkable contrast to her glamorous sister Ruqayya, her black hair tied haphazardly in an old yellow scarf, her tunic made of harsh wool, and her face devoid of even the most basic cosmetic enhancements that might reveal her femininity.
“Mother is sick, but she won’t admit it,” Fatima said reprovingly.
Khadija’s eyes flashed and for a moment I saw the strength and dignity that I had long associated with the Mother of the Believers.
“Nonsense!” she said proudly. “My feet are old, that’s all. But enough about me. How have you returned?”
Uthman bent down and kissed her on the forehead, kneeling before Khadija like a slave before a queen.
“We heard about the ban and the suffering of the Muslims. We could not sit in comfort in Abyssinia while you starved.”
I felt Asma stiffen behind me and I immediately saw why. The Prophet’s handsome cousin Zubayr stepped through the crowd and clapped his hands on Uthman’s shoulder in greeting.
“By God’s mercy, the ban has been lifted. We are free to live and trade in Mecca as before.”
Uthman’s lovely features lit up with his incomparable smile.
“Allahu akbar! God is great!” he proclaimed, hope dancing on his tongue. “The tide has turned, then.”
And then my father stepped forward, his face grave. Unlike the Messenger, who was two years his senior, Abu Bakr’s now-salty beard could not deny its age.
“I fear that there will be many more turnings of the tide, for good and for ill, before all is done,” he said, shaking his head sadly.
As the men began to talk with the newcomers, I found myself gazing at Ruqayya and Uthman like a child pulled into a dream by a campfire. I suddenly heard the rustle of a skirt beside me and looked to see that Fatima had come to sit at my side.
“They are beautiful, aren’t they?”
I blushed hot, realizing that my eyes had betrayed me. But Fatima smiled in silent understanding. I looked at the quiet, plain girl and asked an impertinent question that a more mature lady would not have voiced.
“Is it hard, having a sister who looks like that? I mean, when you-” I stopped, realizing suddenly that I was being horribly rude. But the question to my childish mind was a legitimate one. I was the pretty girl in the house, and I often wondered how my sister, Asma, felt, knowing that even as a girl who had not yet bled, I attracted attention from men, who rarely gave her a second look. Still, it was a stupid thing to say out loud, and I immediately regretted my wild tongue.
But Fatima did not seem to take offense.
“When Ruqayya is in a room, all other girls disappear, like the stars vanish when the sun rises,” she said with a shrug. “One grows accustomed to it.”
There was something so simple, so unpretentious, about Fatima that I felt an immediate liking for her. Seeking to change the topic to more pleasant and hopeful affairs, I turned to face her with an enthusiastic smile.
“Your sisters are all married. When will you join them?”
Fatima looked at me with those dark eyes, so much like her father’s. When she returned my smile, there was a sadness in her gaze that chilled my heart.
“I don’t know if I will ever marry,” she said bluntly.
I was surprised at this answer.
“How can you say that? Every girl gets married!” Which was true. In the end, even the homeliest girl in Mecca eventually found a mate, although he was unlikely to be a prize catch.
Fatima’s eyes twinkled mysteriously, as if tears welled in them, although they remained dry.
“I am not like every girl,” she said softly.
But before I could ask her what she meant, I heard the harsh croak of painful coughing. I looked up in alarm to see Khadija holding her chest tight, her face drained of all color.
The Messenger was immediately at her side. He leaned down and spoke to his wife in whispered tones that I could not decipher. She nodded slowly and then covered her mouth as another eruption of coughing coursed violently through her chest and throat.
And when she finally lowered her hands, I saw they were covered in blood.
There were screams of horror and everyone came running to her side.
“Stand back!” Ali rose and pushed the frightened crowd back forcefully, giving Khadija room to breathe, however weakly.
Fatima had disappeared from my side, although I never saw her move. It was as if one moment she was sitting beside me, and the next she was holding her mother’s hand and helping her to her feet. I always marveled at her remarkable ability to appear and disappear without anyone noticing, but I always dismissed it as a trick of the eye, the inheritance of her father’s fast gait combined with her naturally quiet demeanor. Now I wasn’t so sure, and looking at this strange, ethereal girl who moved like a ghost, I felt a sudden chill go up my spine.
The Mother of the Believers, the foundation stone of our hopes, was dying. As the Messenger and Ali helped her up the winding marble staircase that led to the family’s private rooms on the second floor, my father took it on himself to restore calm and order to the gathered crowd of believers.
After clearing the Prophet’s house of all except the closest members of his family and a few trusted advisers such as Umar and Uthman, we climbed upstairs to check on Khadija. I held on to the cold brass banister like a girl clinging to the edge of a cliff. Every footfall I made on the polished stone seemed to thunder like the beat of a war drum, announcing the arrival of death and pestilence in its wake.
When I followed my mother and father into the Messenger’s bedroom, I saw that Khadija was lying on a mattress of goose feathers that been imported from the north. The Messenger had rid himself of nearly all luxuries since the beginning of his mission, but he could not part with this one item that brought comfort and ease to his aging wife.
She looked so peaceful, lying there with her bony hands across her chest, that for a moment I thought she was already dead. But the gentle rustle of her gray tunic as it rose and fell with her breathing said that her soul still dwelled among us for a short while longer. Beads of pearly sweat ran down her lined face and her daughters quickly moved to wipe her brow with a clean rag.
The Messenger dropped to his knees beside her and closed his eyes, his hands uplifted in fervent prayer. I had never seen him so focused, so utterly unmoving. If I had not caught the steady pulse of a vein in his temple, I could have imagined that he had been turned to stone from grief, like the very idols that he despised.
Silence fell upon the room like the closing doors of a crypt. Even the wind outside became utterly still, like the mournful quiet before the rains are unleashed. No one moved; all eyes were on the elderly woman on the bed. Hours passed as if they were moments, and eventually Fatima left her mother’s side to light a small copper lantern as the sun’s rays dipped beneath the horizon.
When the disk of the sun vanished and the evening star ruled the sky, Khadija’s eyes opened and I saw her smile at the Messenger, who was looking at her like a frightened child. Seeing the lost look on his face, this man who was the center of our community, the rock that gave us stability while the deadly waters of the world raged and churned about us, I suddenly felt very small and alone.
I realized at that moment that it was Khadija who had been the heart of Islam the whole time. Without her initial acceptance of his vision, Muhammad would have dismissed his experience on Mount Hira as a dream or a delusion engendered by a capricious djinn. Had she not believed him and encouraged him, he would have eventually become like the madmen I saw wandering the streets of Mecca in putrid rags, whose disturbed minds had tortured them until even their families had driven them out and left them to die. Whatever this new religion called Islam was, whatever it was going to be, was the product of one woman’s faith in a man. And now that woman was dying and I was left to wonder whether our faith would die with her.
I saw a figure enter the room, a man with a deeply pockmarked face and thinning hair, despite his youth. It was Zayd ibn Haritha, the adopted son of Muhammad and Khadija. He had just returned from an unsuccessful hunt in the hills where a leopard had been seen the night before and had been told by the believers what had transpired at the Messenger’s house this morning.
Zayd leaned down beside Khadija and she ran her hand across his cheek. He had once been her slave, but he had grown so attached to her and her husband that they had freed him and adopted him as a son after the tragic death of their own infant boy Qasim. Next to Ali, Zayd was the closest person to a male heir in the Messenger’s household, and many of the believers looked to him as a future leader of the community. The fact that a slave could rise to become a master over the believers was a matter of great pride for the Muslims and a subject of intense mockery for Abu Lahab and our other enemies.
I watched as Khadija gestured to Zayd, Ali, and her daughters to come close. The rest of us kept respectfully back. The fact that we were even allowed in the inner sanctum to share her final moments was enough. Family had certain rights and prerogatives that needed to be respected.
As each member of the Ahl al-Bayt, the People of the House, approached, Khadija said a soft, almost inaudible prayer of benediction upon her loved ones and then whispered into each of their ears. I saw them nod and rise after she shared her private farewells, tears streaming down their cheeks. First her eldest daughter, Zaynab, then Ruqayya, even more beautiful as her black eyes shone with grief, followed by rosy-cheeked Umm Kulthum and dour Zayd.
And then she took Fatima’s hand in her right and Ali’s in her left and kissed them both on the foreheads. When Fatima stepped back, the look of grief on her face was so painful that I dropped my eyes for fear of being consumed by it.
“Aisha…”
I was startled to hear my name and looked up to see Khadija looking at me with compassion. She gestured weakly for me to come.
Stunned and unsure as to why I was being included in this special circle of family, I stood there, my finger in my mouth like a shy toddler. My mother, Umm Ruman, took my hand and pulled me to Khadija’s side, before stepping back and leaving me alone with her.
The Mother of the Believers ran her hands through my red hair like a child playing with a favorite doll. And then she moved her head a little and I sensed she wanted me to come close so that I could hear her better. I leaned forward until my ears were almost touching her cracked lips.
She whispered, but her words sounded through my heart like a trumpet.
“Take care of him when I’m gone,” she said inexplicably. “You were made for him.”
I had no idea what she meant, but there was something both exciting and terrifying in her words. As if she were using her final breath to pass on to me a secret that I was to guard with my life.
I sensed the Messenger standing behind me and scrambled back to my mother’s side, unsure of what to make of the strange words Khadija had bequeathed me.
When I looked up, I saw that the Prophet was crying. With what appeared to be a difficult effort, Khadija raised her hands and wiped his tears in front of us the way she had wiped them in private all those years. In that instant, I understood the truth of their relationship. The Messenger had seen his mother die when he was only six years old and had longed all his life for the nurturing touch of which he had been deprived. Khadija was more than just his wife and best friend, more than the first Muslim. She was also the mother that God had taken away from him once before, and I realized as I looked at Muhammad’s face that he was reliving the horror of the loss that had haunted him since he was a boy.
“I am summoned to the Abode of Peace…Beloved, it is time for me to go…”
I saw through my blurred eyes the Prophet lean down and place his cheek next to hers.
“I knew the moment I saw you that you were special…Had God never spoken to you, even then would I have known that you were His chosen…”
She was looking up, her eyes staring dreamily at the ceiling, at something only she could see.
“The men in white are here…I see where they are taking me…It’s so beautiful…so full of light…”
She turned to face the Messenger, peering deep into his fathomless eyes.
“There is no god but God, and you, my love, are His Messenger…”
She sighed and went still.
There was a moment of silence so great that it reverberated like an earthquake. And then cries of grief erupted all around me. I saw the Messenger of God touch the Mother of the Believers’ lips, stroking them in final farewell.
He looked like a shadow from another world. When he spoke, his soft voice cut through the din of mourning. He spoke the Words of God that had come to him in a Revelation at the moment of Khadija’s death, words that Muslims speak even today to grieve loss and to remember who we are and where we are going.
“Truly we belong to God, and truly to Him are we returning…”
IT WAS TIME TO leave Mecca. Shortly after Khadija died, the Muslims were struck with another loss. The Prophet’s uncle and guardian, Abu Talib, passed away, and the reprobate Abu Lahab became the chief of Bani Hashim. We could no longer count on the Prophet’s clan for protection from the dogs of Quraysh. The persecution would only grow worse and now there would be no recourse to the rough justice of the tribes. But where could we go? The Quraysh guarded the roads to the sea, so Abyssinia was cut off to us. But even if we could escape the nightly patrols and find a boat willing to take us west, the Negus was no longer in a position to give us sanctuary.
The great king had suffered politically for having given refuge to our people once before. The priests of his African nation had decried the Muslims as dangerous heretics, because we believed in Jesus as a human prophet but denied that he had ever claimed to be the Son of God. Our people were branded as the resurgence of the Arians, a group of Christians who had questioned the Church’s teachings on Christ’s divinity but had been denounced by the Byzantine emperor Constantine as unbelievers. The Negus still sent kindly letters to the Messenger inquiring about his views on matters of theology, but they contained nothing that would suggest an invitation to come in person and debate these great truths.
There was a cloud hanging over the Prophet in those bleak days, and my sister was already referring to it as “the Year of Sadness.” The Messenger had been struck by two powerful blows in sequence. The death of Khadija, the source of his spiritual support, and the death of Abu Talib, the foundation of his earthly protection. Having lost both poles of his compass, he walked among us like a man who was unsure of who he was, where he was going. In later years, he admitted to me that he had been crushed with self-doubt during those terrible months. If these visions were real, if what he saw was truly an angel and not some mischievous desert sprite mocking him, then why had his God abandoned him and left him without any light of hope?
But, as we all learned, the Divine is a teacher who sometimes shows men what they are made of by taking away everything they have, so that the truth of their character is finally revealed. At his lowest moment, the Messenger’s soul was now as naked and vulnerable as a newborn baby’s flesh.
And it is in that vulnerability, where there are no veils anymore between a quivering, tormented heart and its master, the Lord of the Worlds, that the inner eye awakens from its slumber and true Vision is born.
Perhaps because of a destiny that I did not yet know awaited me, I was given the precious gift of sharing in that Vision. So it was that one night, after a long day of struggling with the monotonous chores of the household, I crept into my small bed to sleep. I was tired and yet I tossed and turned for hours before finally rising to answer the persistent call of nature.
But as I passed a window on the way to the latrine, I saw a flash like a bolt of lightning. At first, I thought it might be the start of a rainstorm, which we desperately needed owing to drought. Pausing to look out the window, I saw that the sky was clear and not a single cloud blotted the twinkling army of stars. The full moon appeared low in the sky, hovering just above the sacred walls of the Sanctuary. And then I realized with a start that it was the twenty-seventh night of Rajab and the moon should have been a thin crescent waning into nothingness.
As I focused my eyes, I saw that whatever it was that rose over the Kaaba was not the pockmarked moon but a blue-white disk with no discernible features. A ball of pure light. And then, faster than any celestial body I had ever seen move across the heavens, the light rose upward like a shooting star in reverse and vanished into the northern horizon.
I stood frozen at the window, my heart racing. I suddenly had no urge to use the latrine and quickly ran back to my bed and hid beneath the woolen coverlet, trying to understand the strange event I had witnessed. I suddenly felt very drowsy and I surrendered as my soul slipped into the void. My last thought was that I would never know for sure if what I had seen was real. I should forget all about the strange light before my parents started worrying and asked the Messenger to drive away the djinn that were haunting me.
I would forget about it, and the world would never know.
But that was not God’s plan.
THE NEXT MORNING, MY father and I walked to the bazaar after my mother insisted that we trade a recent surplus of eggs from our coop of chickens for some fresh mutton. We walked down the streets carefully, my father’s eyes darting back and forth. With the death of Abu Talib, violence against Muslims was on the rise again, but Abu Lahab refused to pursue claims on our behalf in the Hall of Assembly. Just a week before, my poor cousin Talha had been attacked by the thugs in the middle of the street. When my father had sought to intervene and pay them off, they had beaten him as well and taken his purse. Abu Bakr and Talha had been left on the side of the road, tied together and covered in refuse, until a woman of the Bani Adi had had mercy on them and unloosed their bindings.
But there were no such incidents today. In fact, we were surprised at the emptiness of the cobbled streets, which were normally filled with people and animals heading to market at this hour.
And then we heard the sounds of raucous laughter coming from the Sanctuary, and my father turned and saw a large crowd gathered before the Kaaba. Over the din of jeers and catcalls, we could hear the distinctly rich voice of the Messenger.
“Let’s go,” my father said, and I followed him without hesitation. The Messenger had not preached openly in the Sanctuary since Abu Talib had died and Abu Lahab had warned him that the clan would not protect his followers from violence if they insulted the gods in front of the Holy House. Something had happened that made the Messenger risk a riot and speak before the pagan worshipers who had monopolized the shrine.
As Abu Bakr pushed forward, Abu Jahl suddenly appeared and blocked his way, his handsome face lit with a triumphant smile.
“What do you think of your Prophet now?” he said with unfettered glee. “He claims he went to Jerusalem last night and came back before the sun rose!”
My father paled at this strange news. The Messenger’s words always had the clear ring of truth, appealing to reason rather than superstition, and this was too fantastic a story to have come from his lips.
“You lie!” Abu Bakr said, refusing to let Abu Jahl spread obviously malicious stories against the Messenger.
“Don’t blame his madness on me,” he said with a smirk. “But what did you expect from a soothsayer whose craft is to befuddle simple minds? Yet in this, Muhammad has gone too far and his tall tales have been revealed for what they are. Even a child knows it takes a month for a caravan to travel to Syria and a month to return!”
And then Abu Jahl glanced down at me to further his point. I saw him pause and take a lascivious look at my small body. I realized that the softness on my chest was already becoming noticeable to the eyes of men. My courses had not begun, but I was clearly becoming a woman, and I felt my cheeks flame at his evident lust.
Something about his disgusting stare lit a fire of defiance in me, and I spoke words that I had promised to forget.
“It’s true, Father!” I said before I could stop myself. “I saw it with my own eyes last night. A star arose from the Kaaba and flew north! That must have been the Messenger!”
Unfortunately, my passionate defense of Muhammad’s audacious claim only increased the amusement of the crowd, and I heard cruel laughter now directed at me, as well as vulgar comments about my maturing body.
My father grabbed me by the shoulder.
“Quiet! Let me handle this.”
And then he took the small white scarf that I wore around my shoulders and put it over my head, wrapping the cloth modestly around the budding nubs of my breasts.
My father led me through the crowd until we saw the Messenger standing just outside the golden doors of the Temple. I caught my breath at sight of his smiling face, which looked as fresh and untroubled as a newborn’s. Gone was the sad and lonely man who had become increasingly quiet in the days since Khadija’s death. The vibrant, masculine man who exuded power and dignity had been resurrected.
Abu Bakr leaned close to him and whispered.
“Is what they say true? Did you go to Jerusalem and return in one night?”
The Prophet nodded. He lowered his voice until only Abu Bakr and I could hear him.
“Yes. And there is more. But they are not ready for it.” He paused and looked deep into Abu Bakr’s eyes. “Are you?”
My father looked into those bottomless black pools. And then without any hesitation, he turned and faced the jeering crowd.
“If he says he went to Jerusalem in one night, then it is true,” Abu Bakr said loudly, his voice echoing across the ancient stones of the Sanctuary.
The laughter of the crowd died instantly and was replaced by surprise and confusion at my father’s unashamed embrace of this ludicrous claim.
Abu Bakr strode forward, looking men in the eye as he passed them, his arms sprung wide.
“And why do you wonder?” he asked defiantly. “Muhammad tells me that he receives tidings from heaven every day, and I know that he is speaking the truth. And that is a miracle beyond anything you marvel at!”
There was an uncomfortable buzz, like the confused hiss of a bee that can no longer find the security of its hive. I saw men looking at Abu Bakr as if he were insane. But when he met their glare with utter confidence, they began to look at one another, as if wondering whether perhaps they were the ones who were insane.
The Messenger moved forward and grasped my father’s right hand and held it aloft.
“I hereby proclaim Abu Bakr by a title borne by no other man. As-Siddiq-the Great Witness to the Truth!”
It was a powerful honorific, and one that my father carried with dignity for the rest of his life. In the years that would come, certain vile men would question his loyalty to the Prophet, accuse him falsely of acting in his own interests rather than in accordance with the will of God and His Messenger. Yet standing there, I saw the look of deep love and trust in the Messenger’s eyes as he gazed at my father, and my heart overflowed with emotions that have no name.
If it be true that Abu Bakr was the calculating politician that his detractors have claimed, then I know not what truth there is to anything I witnessed in all my years at Muhammad’s side. For those who claimed in the days to come that Abu Bakr became an enemy to the Messenger, claimed that the Prophet himself was deluded and trusted in a false front. If the Messenger of God could call a man by the great title of As-Siddiq and that man proved to be a liar and a thief, then there is nothing to our religion but foolishness and cruel mockery.
They say that I am biased because I am Abu Bakr’s daughter. They warn that I am destined for hell for the crimes I have committed in the heat of passion. And for that I have no clear response. I accept their condemnation for my sins, and it may indeed be that I will go to hell for the blood that is on my hands.
But I will not see my father there.
When word spread of the miraculous night journey, the tribe of believers gathered excitedly in the Messenger’s home. It was the largest such congregation since Abu Talib’s death, as it was now considered unsafe for the Muslims to meet in large groups and potentially be accused of plotting insurrection. The main hall was overflowing, and I saw men and women of all ages cramming together to hear the full story. I marveled for a moment at how much we had grown. Despite the Quraysh’s best efforts to crush our movement, there were now several hundred committed believers, most still from the poorer classes but a surprisingly large number from the ruling elite.
One of the most improbable converts was a tall and proud woman named Ramla, the eldest daughter of Abu Sufyan. Her conversion had been a shock to the lords of Mecca, and the Messenger had arranged for her to travel across the sea and take refuge with the Negus in case her father sought to force her back into the fold. Though the Muslims could no longer count on his protection as a group, the Christian king had invited Ramla to come as a “princess of Quraysh” and be housed in a palace reserved for foreign dignitaries.
Ramla sat near the Prophet and I could see her resemblance to her father. With her steely eyes that shone with dignity and authority, she had the aura of a queen, even though she was dressed in modest white robes, her light brown hair covered in a blue scarf. I saw the coquettish way she looked at the Messenger, who was now a widower, and I felt my cheeks burn hot with jealousy. I was not sure why I felt so possessive about the Prophet, but Khadija’s last words to me kept echoing in my heart. She had asked me to take care of her husband, and I did not feel that letting him fall into Ramla’s seductive web was what she had in mind.
Of course, my nephew, you know the bad blood that existed between us in later years, and even now I have difficulty writing her name without my hand shaking in fury. What she did to me, in my moment of terrible grief, may be forgiven by Almighty God, but my human heart cannot extend to her that clemency.
In those early days, I did not know the depth of her cruelty, and yet I still had a visceral dislike for Ramla the moment I laid eyes on her. There was something about her that struck me as dangerous, far more so than open enemies like her father or her conniving stepmother, Hind. In one glance, she sized up others as if weighing them and calculating their worth, and I never knew for what purpose. And yet Ramla was charming and I saw how she could make the Messenger laugh with her worldly stories from her travels to the courts of Yemen and Persia as part of Abu Sufyan’s trading ventures. And I hated her.
In truth, I hated her because she was beautiful and young, and her breasts were well shaped and firm, unlike my own, nothing more than tiny buds that barely rose from my chest. Yes, I had childish fantasies that I would grow up and marry the Messenger someday, as did every other young girl among the believers, and seeing Ramla sitting near the Prophet and her cousin Uthman, I felt the cold, harsh flash of reality. I was a child and she was a woman.
When dreams shatter, Abdallah, they can leave mighty scars that are always raw to the touch.
That night we sat and listened as the Messenger told us more about his wondrous journey to Jerusalem. Of how the angel Gabriel had come to the Messenger while he had slept near the Kaaba, leading a wing horse named Buraq. Together they had flown to Jerusalem, where they landed at the ruins of the Jewish shrine the Temple of Solomon, which was called in the holy Qur’an Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa-the Farthest Place of Worship. There, amid the fallen stones of God’s other House, sister to the Kaaba, the Prophet had prayed with the spirits of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.
And then he revealed a secret that we were sworn to keep from the unbelievers, who were unworthy of the highest Truth. From a rock that stood at the site of Solomon’s Temple, the Messenger had ascended into heaven and traveled through the many realms of Paradise until he stood before the Throne of God. The Prophet had never before claimed to have spoken directly with Allah, who had communicated with him for the past ten years through angels as intermediaries. But this night, he had crossed the farthest reaches of Creation, past the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary beyond which even Gabriel could not ascend. And there, outside time and space, where there was neither light nor darkness, Muhammad communed with his Lord.
We listened with rapt attention, and many wept, as he described the glories of Paradise, the rivers of milk and honey, and wine that did not befuddle the senses. Of perfect trees that provided eternal shade and fruits whose scent was enough to quell the hunger of mankind for eternity. And there were youths like sparkling pearls that served the residents of Paradise with any food or drink that they desired, and houris, beautiful virgins whose touch made men forget all the earthly pleasure they had ever known.
At the mention of these delightful creatures, I saw many of the women’s faces fall. The thought of their men traipsing about in the afterlife with such perfect beauties did not seem like much of a paradise for them. But the Messenger kindly told us that all believing women who entered Paradise would become houris themselves and that there would be no jealousy or loneliness in eternity. Men and women would enjoy one another’s company and the ecstasies of one another’s bodies in a way that would make the coupling of this world seem like brief and fleeting pleasure, like a tickle from a feather.
The Night Journey had given the Prophet renewed hope and faith. Now that he had seen the wonders of the spiritual realm, the daily struggle of life on Earth held little fear. But most important for the community, God had sent the Messenger back from heaven with a new set of rules for our daily lives.
First and foremost, the ritual prayers and prostrations that we had performed haphazardly over the past ten years were now to be organized and made a daily practice. Five times a day-before sunrise, in the early and late afternoon, after sunset, and in the darkness of night-the Muslims would be required to bow before God in formal worship. And perhaps most startling, God had commanded us to face the holy city of Jerusalem when we prayed. We were accustomed to facing the Kaaba, even though the Messenger had never specifically commanded it, but now we were being told to turn to the north, to a city most of us had never seen and knew of only through myth and legend. But the Messenger was clear. Jerusalem was the home of the Prophets, and he was the last in their line. So we grudgingly obeyed.
He listed for us further commandments that he had been given in heaven. We would be required to fast for thirty days during Ramadan, which was the sacred month in which the Revelation had begun ten years before. That meant no food, water, or sexual relations from first light until sunset. I saw the look of general dismay at word that even intercourse would be banned during the fast, and the Prophet smiled gently, reminding us that sexual relations were a blessing from God, just like food and water, and restraining our lust would purify our souls and allow us to couple with deeper meaning and intensity when the fast was over.
And finally, we would be required to pay zakat, or alms, to the poor. Before this day, we had been encouraged but not commanded to share our wealth with the less fortunate. But now one-fortieth of every believer’s wealth officially belonged to God and the community and must be given freely to feed and clothe the needy. I stole a glance at Ramla to see how this proud woman, reared in the wealthiest home in Mecca, would react to being forced to give up a portion of her riches every year, but she was all pleasant smiles and graciousness, which only angered me more.
These were the Pillars of Islam, the Messenger announced, commanded by God from His Throne. Along with the testimony of faith, that there is no god but God and Muhammad is His Messenger, they would serve as the formal tests of a Muslim’s basic commitment to his or her faith.
The Messenger paused and then added that there was one final Pillar, which was obligatory only for those who had the necessary wealth to undergo the journey and were healthy enough to perform its requirements: the Pillar of Pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, which every Muslim who was capable should perform once in his or her life.
We all looked at one another, confused.
Finally, Umar spoke up.
“But, Messenger of God, we all live in Mecca,” he said with his usual bluntness. “The Holy Kaaba is down the street. Why would we need to travel to perform the Pilgrimage when we do so every year with ease?”
I saw a strange look of sadness cross the Messenger’s face.
“It may not be so easy in the years to come, my friend.” And with that he rose, and we knew that the audience was over.
As the excited crowd cleared the hall, I saw the Messenger smile at Ramla and speak to her in low tones. A gesture of intimacy. My stomach twisted painfully.
And then, to my surprise the Prophet looked at me across the room and his eyes sparkled. And then he waved to my father to come to his side.
Abu Bakr nodded to my sister, Asma, and me.
“Go home. I will join you soon, insha-Allah.”
I did as I was told and stepped outside, before I realized that Asma was no longer at my side. I looked up to see her standing beside the gate to the Messenger’s house, speaking with his cousin Zubayr. The handsome young man leaned in and whispered something in her ear and she laughed, her cheeks flushing.
I smiled to see them together and walked home alone.
That night, after Asma returned home late to a harsh scolding by Umm Ruman for her unseemly flirtations, I sat in a corner of the living room, playing with my favorite dolls, ugly little things made from rags and robe fiber, which I had named Akil and Akila.
I acted out the wedding between these two figures, a favorite game, but in my mind’s eye, instead of my dolls, I saw my beloved sister finally wedding the boy she had secretly loved for years. Your father, Zubayr, was considered a great catch by the girls of the city, and I had never really believed that Asma had a chance with him. But the Messenger said that God holds the hearts of men between His two fingers, and turns them any way He wishes. It was evident that God had turned Zubayr’s heart to your mother at last.
I heard the door open and saw Abu Bakr return. I rose to greet him, but he looked at me with intense eyes.
“Go to your room, little one.”
There was something in his tone that frightened me, and I stood rooted on the spot.
“But, Father-”
“Go,” he said forcefully. “I need to speak to your mother.”
Somehow I knew that whatever had upset him had to do with me. I scoured my memory for all the naughty things I had done recently and I wondered which of them had finally gotten me in trouble.
Pondering my childish sins, I turned and went to my room and closed the door. But instead of playing with my dolls on my bed, I leaned up against the door to listen. I heard muffled voices and I strained to make sense of them. Finally I decided to risk it and I opened the door a crack, just enough to hear my parents’ words with some clarity. I grimaced as the acacia wood creaked against the marble floor and I wondered whether they had heard and knew I was eavesdropping.
“What’s wrong?” My mother’s voice was hushed but brimming with concern.
“Nothing is wrong,” my father said. “I…just need a moment.”
I heard my mother pour him a glass of water. After a moment, he spoke, and his words were filled with both fear and wonder.
“The Prophet had a dream,” he said softly.
“I know. He told us all about the Night Journey,” my mother responded.
“No. This was many nights ago,” Abu Bakr said. “It was only after his vision during the Night Journey that he decided it was time to share it with me.”
My father had always been respected as an interpreter of dreams, even in the days before the Revelation. He was like the prophet Joseph, a man who had been gifted with such a keen understanding of the human heart that he could easily read the symbols locked inside the hidden imaginings of the mind.
“The angel Gabriel game to him carrying a bundle of green silk,” Abu Bakr said slowly. “When the Prophet asked what was in the bundle, the angel said: ‘Your wife.’ And then he unrolled the silk and the Prophet saw a girl.”
Abu Bakr stopped. For a moment, I saw an image of Ramla wrapped in Gabriel’s silk, and I wanted to vomit. This beautiful and cunning daughter of Abu Sufyan would soon be in the bed of the Messenger of God. My heart beat fast with indignation.
But when my father spoke next, my heart stopped
“He saw Aisha.”
For the next several minutes, I heard nothing more. It was as if I had been struck deaf and even the torment of the damned in hell would have passed by my ears unnoticed.
When the world started again, the sounds came rushing at me faster than I could comprehend.
“What do we do?” My mother’s voice was shrill, like a lamb bleating at the first sight of the sacrificial knife.
“We obey God,” he said simply.
I heard my mother slam something down on the table and the door shook with its vibrations.
“But Aisha…she is promised to Jubayr ibn Mutim!”
This was news to me.
I had met Jubayr a few times, but I could barely remember what he looked like. I was aware that he was a cousin of the hated Hind, and I had heard rumors that he had been considering converting after Ramla had joined the new faith. Apparently, I was being used as a negotiating chip by my father to entice this powerful lord of Quraysh to embrace our faith. My heart, which had soared moments before to know that I was chosen to be the Messenger’s wife, now sank into rage and despair at the thought that my own family could bargain my life away so casually.
“Jubayr’s father has always opposed the marriage and will be relieved when we rescind the proposal,” he said matter-of-factly, as if discussing the proper value of onions in the marketplace. “If Jubayr is destined to come to Islam, God will find him a virtuous wife, I’m sure.”
I felt rage building in my young veins. Nowhere in this discussion had anyone mentioned or cared what I might have thought of any of this.
I heard my mother’s skirts rustling as she paced across the room, a habit whenever she was nervous or unsure.
“She is so young-” Umm Ruman objected, but my father cut her off.
“No younger than most brides these days,” Abu Bakr said simply. “The marriage will not be consummated until her cycles begin.”
There was a long silence in which the only thing I could hear was the pounding of my heart.
When my mother spoke again, I could hear deep concern in her voice.
“She will become the Mother of the Believers, a role only held by Khadija. How can a child take her place?”
“The Messenger understands the delicacy of her youth,” Abu Bakr said. “He will also marry an older, more mature woman who can run the household.”
I saw Ramla in my mind’s eye and felt my stomach sink. How could I be a cowife to the daughter of Abu Sufyan? She was so much prettier than me and was older, would know how to please a man. The Messenger would grow bored with me and toss me aside for a woman who was more his equal.
“Who?” my mother asked, with the excited curiosity of a gossipmonger.
My father paused, and I prayed to God: Please, don’t let it be Ramla.
“Sawda bint Zama,” he said at last.
I fell back with a thud and for a moment I was convinced that my parents had heard and knew I was listening. But they did not come into my room, and I sat in shock, absorbing this information.
And then I bit down on my hand to keep from laughing.
God had answered my prayer.
Sawda bint Zama was a sweet but elderly woman, a widow of considerable wealth, as Khadija had been. She was an excellent cook and would be a valuable addition to the Messenger’s household. But she was old and her body worn. If I were indeed meant to marry the Prophet, at least I would not have to compete with her in the bedroom. And even at that tender age, I knew that men valued young and beautiful women who could give them pleasure and bear them sons. Muhammad was the Messenger of God, but he was a man like any other in that respect, and I almost clapped with glee knowing that I could give him joys that Sawda would be incapable of providing.
When I crawled back to the crack of he door and listened, I heard my father speaking.
“I knew the night Aisha was born that she was special,” he said wistfully. “When the Prophet told me of his vision, I knew that the moment of her destiny had come.”
My mother sighed loudly
“Everything will change.” There was resignation in her voice and I knew that she had accepted the will of Allah.
“Everything must change,” my father responded. “With Khadija gone, the Muslims are in despair, walking like dead men. Aisha is a fountain of life. She will resurrect them.”
My mother was silent for a moment, lost in reflection.
“The midwife said our daughter would bring death.”
“Life and death are bound by a power beyond understanding. The power of transformation,” Abu Bakr waxed philosophical. “Aisha wields that power. She is the sword of transformation. Some things must die so that others may be born. That is her birthright.”
In later years, when my hand held that sword and rained death upon the Ummah, I wondered if my father had had some prophetic insight of his own.
“I am afraid,” my mother said simply.
And then I heard my father, the bastion of strength in our household, admit something that I could not have imagined.
“So am I, my love. So am I.”
I closed the door and crawled into bed. My mind was racing almost as fast as my heart.
God had chosen me to marry His Messenger.
It sounded laughable, but somehow it felt right. As if some part of my soul had always known that was my purpose. I took my dolls and put them aside with a pang of loss that comes when one period of life ends and another begins.
Yet I did not know where I was in the journey of life, or who I was to be, walking the path that I had been set upon.
I felt trapped between two worlds. I was no longer a child, but I was not yet a woman.
And yet, soon, I would be the Mother of the Believers.
One night, several months after I learned that I was betrothed to the Messenger of God, my father pulled me out of bed and told me to dress quickly. My mother and sister were still asleep and Abu Bakr told me to move quietly so as not to wake them up. We had an appointment tonight that it was best not to let them know about.
Confused and a little intrigued, I threw on a woolen robe over my cotton tunic. I tied my hair in a yellow scarf, but my father made me take it off and replace it with a black one that would not reflect the moonlight and draw attention to my presence. We tiptoed through the house, past my mother’s bedroom, where I could hear her snoring steadily.
I felt a sudden rush of excitement as we stepped out into the cold night. I knew that all this secrecy had something to do with my new status, and I was eager to unravel the mystery.
My father, wrapped in dark blue robes, his mouth covered by a strand of loose cloth from his brown turban, led me through the abandoned streets of Mecca. Normally there would be at least a few citizens sleeping in bunks outside their doors, as was the custom during the summer months when the cooling winds helped ease the raging heat that made sleeping indoors unbearable. But tonight was unusually cold and everyone was indoors.
I could see the air steam from my breath, and the chill only worsened as we left the city behind and crossed into the moonlit hills. I began to feel a tug of fear. What was this all about? Where was my father taking me in the dead of the night? For a moment, I had a terrible vision of Abraham leading his son into the wilderness in order to sacrifice him to God. I loved Allah and I loved my father, but I did not think that I could surrender willingly to the knife as the boy had.
Now that we were far away from Mecca and no one was likely to hear us, I tentatively spoke up.
“Where are we going?”
My father hesitated, as if debating whether to reveal his true purpose yet.
“To Aqaba,” he said finally, and pulled me along faster across the rocky earth.
Aqaba? That made no sense. It was barren area at the base of a volcanic mound where caravans stopped to let their camels rest before the final climb through the hills and into the heart of Mecca.
“But there is nothing there except stones and sand!” Suddenly I didn’t like this mystery at all.
“Tonight there will be more,” my father said. Despite my continuous barrage of questions, he said nothing else.
We climbed over the last hill that formed the official boundary of the holy city. My father stopped at the peak and looked down into the valley of Mina below. I could see a haze of campfire in the distance, illuminating a vast tent city that must have housed a thousand pilgrims. These were people who could not afford lodgings in Mecca itself and camped outside while they were performing the rites of Pilgrimage.
We started to climb down and I nearly lost my footing. My father grabbed my hand and held it tight as I saw a shower of pebbles race down the hill to shatter on the jagged rocks below. When we finally made it to the base of the hill, I started to move toward the tent city on the horizon, assuming it was our destination. But my father tugged on my hand and pulled me back. He started walking across the base of the hill away from the brightly lit camp until we reached a place shadowed between two hills and surrounded by rocky boulders.
The moon was behind the hills and no light shone down upon this craggy section of desert. It was pitch black, nearly impossible to penetrate, even after my eyes had adjusted to the darkness.
As we moved forward into this void that was darker than any cave, I finally saw the outlines of figures up ahead, heard the soft murmur of voices.
I suddenly heard a clink of metal and saw the quick flash of a blade in the dark. My father stopped dead in his tracks as a boulder moved and I realized that it was not a stone, but a mountain of a man-the Prophet’s uncle Hamza.
“Who goes there?” he snarled, and I sensed that the sword would slash down without any hesitation if he didn’t like the answer.
“Softly, Hamza. It is I.”
Hamza leaned forward until he could see my father. He nodded, but then his eyes went wide when he saw me standing beside Abu Bakr.
“You brought this child?” he asked incredulously. Whatever was happening here tonight, it was clearly not the place for a small girl. A conclusion I had already come to on my own.
“She is not like other children, a fact you know well,” my father said, a hint of pride in his voice. “It is fitting that she should be present at the Messenger’s side tonight.”
The mighty Hamza scowled, but he stepped aside.
My father led me toward the voices, and I saw a circle of unfamiliar men, along with a few women I also did not recognize. The Messenger of God was speaking in hushed tones to these strangers. When he saw my father and me, he smiled widely, but he continued conversing with the people in the group.
I tugged on my father’s sleeve.
“Who are these men?”
He bent down to whisper in my ears.
“Tribesmen of the Aws and Khazraj in Yathrib.”
Of all the possible answers, that was one I did not expect. Yathrib was an oasis ten days’ camel ride to the north of Mecca. It had the blessing of fresh water and plentiful date trees and was a regular stop for merchants heading to the markets of Syria and Persia.
But despite its strategic positioning, the city had failed to achieve the level of prosperity of Mecca, which lacked agriculture but had the benefit of peace. Yathrib was a cautionary tale for the people of Arabia. Divided between two rival clans, the Aws and the Khazraj, the city had been consumed by a century of blood feuds whose origins were long forgotten. Several Jewish tribes lived in the vicinity and had survived the constant state of warfare by strategically shifting alliances whenever the balance of power necessitated. I knew little about the politics of Yathrib, but I did know that the men of Aws and Khazraj hated each other, and I could not understand what these bitter enemies were doing here, meeting the Messenger in the dead of night.
“What do they want?” I asked, my curiosity having reasserted itself as apprehension waned.
My father looked at the Messenger with warm eyes.
“An arbitrator.”
And suddenly it all began to make sense.
The Messenger finished his converse with these foreigners and waved with his right hand to Abu Bakr to come join him. I walked rapidly by my father’s side, almost tripping over a troublesome rock that rolled under my slippers.
When I entered the circle by the Prophet, I saw his uncle Abbas talking animatedly with the newcomers.
“Why is he here?” I whispered. “He’s not a Muslim.” Abbas was known to be sympathetic to his nephew, but like Abu Talib, he had not formally embraced the new Way and had never been included in the secret deliberations of our community.
“No,” my father acknowledged. “But he loves his nephew and will do what he must to protect him.”
Abbas looked at the Messenger, who nodded, and the lord of Quraysh turned to address the small crowd.
“People of Yathrib!” he said, and his voice echoed in the small enclosure. “You know the esteem in which we hold Muhammad, and we have protected him from his enemies. But he has resolved to turn to you and bind himself to you. So if you think you can keep your promises to him and protect him, the burden will be upon you. But if you fear that you will betray him and fail in your obligations, then leave him now.”
I did not fully understand what he was saying, but the words he has resolved to turn to you hit me in the stomach. Was the Prophet leaving us?
A chief of the Khazraj, a thin man with a prominent wart on his left cheek, stepped forward. I would later learn that his name was Bara.
“We are ready, Messenger of God,” Bara said solemnly. “What say you?”
The Messenger raised both his hands. And when he spoke, it was as if a lion were thundering through the darkness.
“I make with you this pact on condition that the allegiance you pledge to me shall bind you to protect me even as you protect your women and children.”
Muhammad, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, then lowered his left hand and extended his right. Bara stepped forward and took his hand, his head lowered in humility.
“By Him who sent you with truth, we will protect you as you protect him,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “So accept our pledge of allegiance, O Messenger of God!”
As I watched, one by one the men stepped forward and took the Prophet’s right hand and pledged the same. Then my father lifted a silver bowl that was at the Messenger’s feet and I saw that it was filled with clear water. Muhammad dipped his right hand into the bowl, and the women of Yathrib came and placed their fingers at the other end of the bowl, the water linking them, a symbolic act through which the Prophet accepted the allegiance of the women while respecting their dignity.
As the women proceeded to make the same oath, I turned to my father, confused.
“What does this mean?”
His answer would change my life. As well as the history of the world.
“It means, sweet girl, that we are leaving Mecca.”
Despite our best efforts to keep our plans secret, the steady flow of Muslims out of the city soon became evident. An emergency council of elders was called, and the men gathered in Abu Sufyan’s sitting room. The chieftains had been summoned hastily when the word first spread of the silent exodus of Muhammad’s followers. Normally they would have met inside the lofty-pillared Hall of Assembly, but even the seat of Mecca’s power was infested with the spreading disease of rebellion and was no longer a safe haven for discussing matters of state. It was for this reason, more than any other, that Abu Sufyan hated Muhammad. His stubborn movement had forced the tribal leaders to deliberate in secret like criminals, for fear of inciting further strife. To Abu Sufyan, it was a sad-and dangerous-world where kings hid like rodents from their own subjects. And it was a state of affairs that could not be allowed to continue.
Abu Sufyan turned his attention to a tall man with a well-trimmed beard, a scar under his left eye marring his otherwise well-crafted features: Khalid ibn al-Waleed, the mightiest warrior of the Quraysh and captain of its armies. Khalid had been charged with organizing nightly patrols to make sure that no Muslims escaped the city, but his efforts had clearly failed.
“How could this have happened?” Abu Sufyan barked. “Where were the sentries?”
Khalid stepped forward. His robes were of midnight black and silver, and his leather belt was studded with dozens of emeralds-allegedly one for each man he had slain in battle.
“My men were positioned to the west to prevent escape by the sea,” Khalid said, no hint of apology in his proud voice. “But the refugees have turned north.”
Abu Sufyan raised his eyebrows. There was only one place he could imagine they would go. But it made no sense.
“To Yathrib?”
Khalid shrugged, but his brown eyes suggested that this was his own suspicion.
“The rumor is that they are seeking Muhammad to serve as an arbitrator in their never-ending disputes with each other,” Abu Lahab said, rising with some difficulty from the purple cushions that had been crushed by his generous posterior.
Abu Sufyan considered this. It was a surprising development. But perhaps a welcome one. The Aws and the Khazraj had been at one another’s throats for a century. Perhaps the gods had given them a great gift. Muhammad would eventually become a victim of their fratricidal hate, and the hands of the Quraysh would be clean of his blood.
“Good. Let them have this troublemaker,” Abu Sufyan said.
There was a murmur of agreement among the nobles, and Abu Sufyan saw on their weary faces the same light of hope that had just been lit in his heart. Maybe this nightmare would at last be over.
“Letting Muhammad go to Yathrib is a mistake.” Hind chose this moment to speak, and the tentative looks of relief vanished across the room.
“And why is that, my dear?” Abu Sufyan, said, hiding his irritation.
Hind stood up, ignoring her husband and addressing her response to the chieftains. He saw her move among them like a cheetah, exciting their passion as she had the night she had entranced Umar into her web.
“The men of Yathrib have long looked upon this city with envy,” she said, her voice cold with calculation. “They could use Muhammad’s religion as a rallying cry to attack us.”
Abu Sufyan snorted, trying to regain his authority.
“Unlikely,” he said flatly. “Mecca has always had good relations with the Jewish tribes of Yathrib, who benefit from the perpetual war between Aws and Khazraj. They will never allow them to unite.”
But Hind, as always, cut away at his confidence.
“And what if the Jews embrace him?” she taunted. “His religion is much like theirs, and he claims to be a prophet like their Moses. Would you risk bringing down their wrath upon us as well?”
Abu Sufyan tried to find a response, but for once he was struck dumb. He had never paid much attention to Muhammad’s theology. It was enough that his One God would obliterate the multiple deities of the Arabs, leading to the end of the Pilgrimage and Mecca’s prosperity. That was all he had cared about. But now, as he thought about what Hind was saying, he was furious to discover that she had a point. The Jews also worshiped One God and were expecting a prophet to come and grant them victory over the nations. If they fell for Muhammad’s delusions, a new and more devastating war might be ignited in Arabia.
The grotesquely obese Abu Lahab spoke out loud what Abu Sufyan was thinking but was still too proud to admit.
“Your wife is right,” he said. “Letting Muhammad go is too dangerous. Here in Mecca, we have some control over his poison. But once he is free from our watchful gaze, his words will spread like the sands on the wind.”
“We’ve been down this path before,” Abu Sufyan said. “Even if Muhammad is killed, the men of your clan will be honor bound to avenge him. Umar was willing to face the daggers of Bani Hashim. But who among us is willing to sacrifice his life to silence this man?”
As he looked at the perplexed men, he realized that there were no Umars among them. Even the brave Khalid had no desire to subject himself to the wrath of Muhammad’s fanatics.
He looked up to see Hind scanning their faces. Her cheeks flushed as she came to the same conclusion. Whatever hold her flesh had once held over Umar’s heart, she did not have any lovers among these old and tired men, at least as far as Abu Sufyan knew. And if she had bedded any of the chieftains, her charms had clearly proven to be a poor enticement.
Hind suddenly stormed over to Khalid and tore his jeweled dagger from its scabbard. She held it high and let the blade glint in the harsh sunlight. Her pose was like that of a goddess of war in an old Arab poem, and it had its desired effect.
“You men are such simpletons! Why must you send a single assassin to kill this heretic? If one man from each major clan of Quraysh joins in the deed, you will all share the blood guilt. Is there any among Bani Hashim who can take on all of Quraysh?”
She looked directly at Abu Lahab.
“Regrettably, the task would be too great for even the most avid supporter of Muhammad in my clan,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. “I would be forced to accept compensation to end the matter.”
Abu Sufyan looked at his wife’s triumphant smile and he shook his head, both surprised with the simple elegance of her plan and exasperated that it had taken a woman to come up with it. Maybe he should just step aside and let Mecca be ruled by this ruthless queen rather than his circle of impotent old fools.
Abu Jahl clapped loudly his assent, his eyes looking with approval at Hind.
“Then it is settled,” he said, beaming with satisfaction. “We will join together and kill Muhammad. And this madness will finally be at an end.”
“So be it,” Abu Sufyan said, rising to remind them that it was he, rather than his wife, who made the decisions in Mecca.
“When shall we act?” Abu Lahab asked, his pudgy hands clasped in excitement at the thought of his nephew’s imminent death.
“Tonight,” said Hind. “The new moon will provide a cover of darkness for the assassins.”
“Darkness for dark deeds,” Abu Sufyan said wearily. “I never thought we, the rulers of Mecca, would be forced to hide in the shadows like thieves in our own city.”
Hind reached forward and ran her hand across his leg. Despite his best efforts at control, his member hardened. She took the studded leather pouch from his belt and poured into her hands a dozen gold dirhams. And then with an instinctive flair for drama, Hind turned and threw the gold across the room into the crowd of chieftains. She smiled with contempt as the powerful men fell to their knees to pick up the valuable coins. It was a simple moment that revealed everything, as Hind had intended. For, like Muhammad, the nobles of Mecca had only one god, and they bowed even now before it.
“Never fear, my husband,” she said in a soft voice, meant only for him. “Once Muhammad is dead, we shall return to stealing openly under the sun.”
It was the sultry tone Hind used exclusively in bed, and suddenly Abu Sufyan had to fight the urge to throw her on the ground and take her like a dog in heat. The lord of Mecca looked at her with both desire and despair. The chieftains worshiped a god of gold. And he, a goddess of fire.
THE ASSASSINS GATHERED OUTSIDE Muhammad’s home, their black cloaks melding perfectly into the shadows cast by the small sprinkling of stars in the overcast sky. The Meccan general Khalid crouched beside his old friend Amr ibn al-As and Hind’s arrogantly handsome brother Waleed ibn Utbah. They could see the lights flickering on the second level, in the family living quarters, and the distinct sound of women’s lyrical voices could be heard from within. The heavy iron gate, normally left open, had been chained, a precaution that the Muslims were taking in all their homes since the death of Abu Talib.
Waleed argued for scaling the wall and taking Muhammad by surprise. Amr was shocked at the suggestion, reminding Waleed that there were women inside. Waleed sneered at Amr’s sense of propriety, but Khalid silenced him.
“Amr is right,” the warrior said, his shrewd eyes taking in everything at once as he developed a strategy of attack. “Muhammad’s followers will defend him to the death. If we hurt one of the women, the honor of Quraysh will be sullied, and even Abu Lahab will be unable to quell the fire of revenge among his clan.”
Waleed shook his head, unconvinced.
“Muhammad emerges every morning before sunrise to pray,” Khalid continued. “He uses the well in his yard for ablutions.” The Meccan general nodded to an ancient circle of stones at the edge of the property.
“We will kill him the moment he steps outside,” Amr said with a smile, satisfied that decorum would be preserved even in the act of murder.
Khalid lay back against the cold pebbles of the earth and slowed his breathing. He needed to preserve his energy for the moment the door opened. Khalid closed his eyes and time passed in silence. The world seemed to slip away from him. And then he jolted upright. The eastern sky was brightening in herald of the sun god. Khalid looked at the others and saw their eyes were closed, too. He stifled a curse. In all his years as a sentry, he had never once fallen asleep as he spied on an enemy camp. His eyes immediately flew to the gate, which he saw with some relief was still chained. Unless Muhammad had scaled the wall as Waleed had planned to do, he was still inside.
He gruffly shook his comrades awake, covering their mouths so that they did not cry out in surprise. The minutes raced by as tension increased, but there was no sign of movement from the house. As a cock crowed loudly somewhere in the city, Khalid sensed that their plan had somehow gone awry.
“We’ve waited long enough,” Waleed said, moving into a forward crouch, his sword gleaming red in the early light of dawn.
This time, Khalid did not argue.
“All right. Do what you must,” he said, rising from the ground. “Spare the women and children if you can. But don’t let anything get between you and Muhammad.”
They moved out of the shade of the trees like black cats. Khalid clambered up the outer wall and jumped down into Muhammad’s courtyard, the others following. They landed softly in the carefully tended bushes and raced toward the main door.
Unlike the gate, the paneled wooden entrance was open. Khalid pushed it slowly, hoping that its distinctive creak would not alert the women inside. But no one stopped them. The house appeared almost abandoned, and the three men crept through the barely furnished interior, their bare feet wrapped in soft strips of goat wool to muffle footsteps on the icy marble floor. Khalid climbed the winding staircase, looking for any sign of a concealed opponent on the balcony above. He led the three toward the heavy door made of carved palm wood at the eastern end of the corridor. This was Muhammad’s bedroom and the most likely place to find him. As Amr and Waleed stood on opposite sides of the door, Khalid nodded. He raised his sword and kicked it in with such force that it tore off its hinges. The three men rushed inside. The room was bare, containing nothing except a comfortable down bed, the only furnishing of any value Khalid had seen inside the cavernous home. A figure lay in the bed, covered with a green Hadrami cloak that Muhammad was often seen wearing as he preached in the streets of Mecca.
There he was, the man that had caused such fitna, such chaos, in Arabia for the past ten years. In seconds it would all be over, and the Meccan lords could begin the process of restoring order to Arabia.
Khalid stooped, watching the cloak rise and fall steadily as the sleeping figure within breathed his last. Obviously Muhammad was so deep in sleep, perhaps under the spell of his so-called revelations, that even the thunder of the door breaking could not awake him.
This would be easy.
Too easy.
Khalid felt his stomach fall as the truth hit his warrior’s soul. He lowered his sword, prepared to order his men back.
But before Khalid could stop him, Waleed rushed forward, his weapon poised.
“In the name of the gods!” Waleed threw off the cloak, his sword moving to strike…only to reveal young Ali lying in the bed, looking up at Waleed with those strange and frightening green eyes.
Waleed’s face froze in shock. And then it twisted with ugly rage. He raised the weapon to strike Ali dead, when Amr threw himself against the youthful hothead.
“No!” Amr managed to knock Waleed’s blow to the right, and it slashed down into the bed, releasing a cloud of feathers that glittered in the morning air.
They had been tricked. Muhammad was gone and the assassins had failed. Waleed glanced over at Amr with gratitude, and his friend nodded, panting from the sudden exertion. Had Waleed killed an unarmed Ali, Abu Lahab’s promise of accepting blood money in exchange for the death of a clansman could not be honored. Khalid would have spent the rest of his life waiting for the retaliatory strike that would inevitably come from the men of Bani Hashim.
“Let’s go,” Khalid ordered.
“But Muhammad-”
“He’s not here, you fool!” Khalid looked at Ali with grudging respect. The boy had risked his life for his cousin Muhammad. And he was known to wield a sword as if it were his third arm. Such a youth would have been an invaluable asset for Khalid’s army.
Ali nodded to Khalid, as if reading his thoughts. The kahina s, the wandering witches of the desert, sometimes claimed that Ali possessed a second sight that allowed him to see into men’s hearts. They even sold bronze charms to shield one’s thoughts from the strange youth. Khalid had always laughed at their superstition, but as he looked into those mysterious eyes, he felt a strange chill. As Khalid led the men out of the room, he saw Ali gazing at Waleed, who had almost killed him moments before.
“Next time we meet,” Ali said softly, “I will have a sword in my hand. And you will die.”
Waleed began to laugh, but Ali’s piercing gaze slit the sound from his throat. The proud son of Utbah, the brother of the powerful Hind, suddenly looked confused and uncertain. Ali’s tone was not that of a threat or a challenge. His voice was actually filled with an inexplicable kindness. As if Ali had read the book of their lives and seen how it would end for Waleed, and was graciously preparing him for the inevitable.
Khalid suddenly wanted to find one of the wrinkled old kahinas. And he was ready to give away his fortune for a charm to protect against this terrifying youth whose eyes gazed into another world.
My father knelt in prayer inside the dark cave on Mount Thawr. He had been there now for three nights along with the Messenger, who had joined him at the rendezvous point in the hills outside Mecca in the early morning hours after his escape from the assassins. When he prodded the Prophet about how he had managed to escape the gang of murderers who had surrounded his home, Muhammad merely smiled enigmatically and praised God. Together they had ridden out by camel into the wilderness to the south, in the opposite direction of the road to Yathrib, where they assumed that the Quraysh would be looking for them.
For the past two days, my sister Asma had stolen away in the dead of the night and brought water and supplies to the refugees hidden inside the cave. She had brought along a small herd of sheep to cover her tracks, just as my father had done to hide the footprints of the camels that carried them to Mount Thawr. Asma also carried with her the latest news and rumor from Mecca, which was aflame with word of the Messenger’s disappearance.
Abu Bakr had initially been nervous that their simple stratagem would not work, but after three uneventful days, he gave thanks to Allah that the Quraysh had underestimated them. He bowed his head on the cold earth, facing north to Jerusalem, and a part of his soul took delight that he was also facing the Kaaba. He had not questioned the Prophet when the command came to face Al-Quds, as the Muslims called the holy city in the heart of Palestine, but like all Arabs, the Sanctuary remained uppermost in his heart.
He finished his prostration and turned right and left, softly intoning blessings upon the guardian angels that accompanied each man. And then he rose to look for the Prophet, who had disappeared deep inside the blackness of the cave to meditate. Dhikr, the Messenger called it-the Remembrance of God. But before his eyes could adjust further to the gloom, he heard the sound of men’s voices and his heart leaped into his throat.
Moving stealthily, he grasped hold of a thick stalagmite pillar as he slowly approached the entrance to the cave. He did not peer through the shaft of light pouring in from the tiny crawl space, but moved just close enough to put his ear to the gray earth and catch the vibrations.
Footsteps were approaching. The thud of heavy boots against rock. And then he heard the voices rising as their owners approached the crest of stone just below the cave. He prayed desperately that the voices would be those of Umar or Hamza or Ali, but a booming echo tore away at his hopes. It was a regal voice, masculine and tinted with cruelty. A voice that could belong to only one man.
Khalid ibn al-Waleed had found them. And soon they would be dead.
Despite the cool interior of the cave, Abu Bakr felt drops of thick sweat rolling down the side of his face. After everything they had done, after everything they had sacrificed, would this be how it would end?
The Messenger had always said that God did not need man to fulfill his plan. If they failed and were slain today, Islam would continue. The worship of One God was the destiny of mankind, whether they lived to see it spread beyond the wastes of Arabia or not.
Abu Bakr was not afraid to die. But he felt great grief that his friend, who had sacrificed wealth, comfort, and status to take on the thankless burden of prophecy to a barbaric people, would meet such an ignominious end.
As the footfalls sounded perhaps no more than twenty feet away, Abu Bakr hurried back into the depths of the cave. He almost yelped in fright as the Messenger emerged at the same time and the two nearly collided. Muhammad, may God’s blessing and peace be upon him, saw that Abu Bakr was shaking and took my father by the shoulders to calm him.
Even in the darkness that entombed them, Abu Bakr could see the Prophet’s eyes gleaming.
“O Messenger of God,” he whispered urgently. “They have found us! We are lost!”
The Prophet went very still for a moment, his fingers tightening around Abu Bakr’s shoulders. My father thought for a second that he was undergoing the Trance of Revelation, and he silently thanked God. The Messenger would lose all awareness of the world when he fell into that mystical state, and if he was destined to die here, Abu Bakr hoped that Muhammad would be taken while in ecstatic communion with his Lord.
“Grieve not, for truly God is with us,” Muhammad said softly.
Abu Bakr’s heart fell. The Messenger did not understand what was happening.
“But…but we are only two men, without arms. We are trapped!”
The Prophet leaned close and whispered in my father’s ear.
“What think you of two, when God is their third?”
The serenity in his voice, the absolute trust and surrender of his words, was like the breaking light of dawn after a stormy night. Suddenly my father’s fear was gone, like a man awakening from a nightmare and forgetting the dreamworld he had only seconds before taken for reality.
Abu Bakr turned and faced the cave entrance as the voices of Khalid and Amr ibn al-As echoed at the threshold. He was ready for God’s judgment.
The tracker, a grime-covered Bedouin named Fawad, excitedly pointed to the cave entrance.
“They are in there!”
For the past seven hours, Fawad had led these Meccan aristocrats through the southern wilderness in search of their mad poet. Though their prey had made an effort to cover his tracks, it had been an amateurish effort at best. City dwellers might have been fooled by the sheep footprints, but Fawad’s trained eye immediately saw the unique indentations of camel hooves beneath the veneer of a shepherd’s crossing.
He had followed the telltale marks to the foot of Mount Thawr, a blackened volcanic peak that was a jumble of jagged boulders. He had studied the dark ash atop the stones and quickly saw the disruption in the layers that had been caused by hands struggling to find a grip, by leather boots kicking small rocks aside to ease the ascent.
Whether or not this Muhammad was a prophet was outside the scope of Fawad’s expertise, but he was definitely not an expert in evasion. Any child of Fawad’s tribe of Bani Duwasri would have been able to find him before the sun had set.
The Bedouin could see that the trail led to a small cave opening carved into a flat ridge. This was it, the end of their journey. The Meccans had promised him a hundred gold dirhams if he successfully located the renegade. Such wealth was beyond anything Fawad had ever imagined. Hopefully the refugees were still inside the cave (he saw no receding tracks to suggest otherwise) and the Meccans could dispatch them without difficulty. But if Muhammad and his companions were armed and a struggle ensued, Fawad could see four places amid the rocks where he could hide until the matter was resolved with some finality. He glanced at the leather purse on Khalid’s jeweled belt and reminded himself to scavenge what he could in the unlikely event that the scarred warrior did not survive the encounter.
Khalid and Amr approached the cave, their swords glinting in the afternoon sun. But instead of crouching and entering, Khalid whirled, his face twisted in fury, his sword pointing accusingly at Fawad.
“You fool!” he bellowed. “How could they possibly be in there?”
Amr tuned to face him, too, and his genial face was dark with anger.
“No one has been here in months, if ever.”
Fawad did not understand what they were saying. Clearly they had not seen the tracks that showed human presence within the past few days. He stepped forward, one eye on the weapons that were now trained on him.
And then he saw what they had seen and his face paled.
“I don’t understand,” he said, panic rising at the irrefutable evidence of his mistake.
Khalid spit at Fawad’s feet and began to climb back down the ledge. Despite his rage, the cringing Bedouin was too pathetic to kill with any semblance of honor.
“We have wasted enough time,” Khalid hissed. “Let us go back and join the northern search parties.”
ABU BAKR STARED AT the cave entrance as the men’s voices receded and disappeared back down the mountainside.
He turned to the Messenger, perplexed.
“They’re leaving. I don’t understand.”
Abu Bakr sensed more than saw that the Messenger was smiling in the darkness, but he made no reply.
Curiosity finally overcoming his hesitation, my father climbed up to the entrance and peered outside, his eyes blinking rapidly at the sudden intensity of the light. When he could finally see, his mouth fell open and a gasp escaped from between his parched lips.
The Messenger came up beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Abu Bakr turned to look at him, his face broad with wonder. And the Messenger grinned, his teeth sparkling in the sun’s warm rays.
And he quoted a verse from the Qur’an.
“Glory be to God, who when He decrees a thing, simply says, ‘Kun fa yakun.’
“Be…and it is.”
I hugged my shoulders to fight off the bitter cold of Mount Thawr. The woolen shawl I had wrapped around my bosom could not protect me from the icy wind as we climbed two thousand feet above the sand dunes. I had trekked through the hills around Mecca, but never a mountain this steep and definitely not in the dead of night. As I watched Asma trudging beside me without complaint, the sack of provisions hefted onto her thin shoulders, I wondered how she could have made this difficult journey for the past three nights. I had volunteered to come those times, of course, but my mother had forbidden it. But last night, Asma had returned, looking even more exhausted than usual, her hands scraped and bloody from navigating the sharp rocks, and announced that the Messenger had summoned me. I was so excited at the thought that I was to be included in the Great Secret and would be able to join my father in his hiding place that I jumped up and down and clapped.
I was not clapping now and was deeply regretting my earlier enthusiasm. My hands burned from the bite of the rope that secured the bundle hefted over my back. There were dried meats inside the cloth, carefully wrapped in lambskin, as well as several water skins made of sturdy camel hair that would provide just enough hydration for the torturous journey north.
As I climbed up a slippery rock, the moon disappeared behind a cloud and I tripped. Suddenly the rope slid from my hand, shredding the delicate skin of my palm. I cried out as a sensation of fire surged up my hand. And then I saw with horror my bundle of supplies break open against a boulder, the precious provisions scattering over the side into darkness. Without thinking, I jumped down from my perch and tried to grab hold of the package before it vanished over the mountainside.
And then I felt the earth slipping from my grasp and I was falling, tumbling down the side of the mountain to a grave blanketed in darkness…
“Aisha!” I could hear Asma’s horrified scream as I fell and it seemed so distant. I wondered in a strange, detached way if death would be painful or if the girl betrothed to the Messenger of God would be allowed a reprieve, like easing gently into slumber as the earth reached up to reclaim one of its wayward children.
“Hold on!” Asma’s voice sounded clearer and nearby, and for a second I wondered whether she had jumped after me. And then the moon emerged from the clouds and I realized that I was clinging to a thistle bush, its ragged thorns digging into my hands, but I felt no pain. I was still in a dreamlike state of disbelief, which vanished at once as I looked down to the jagged teeth of boulders that circled the mountain’s base, thousands of feet below.
At that moment, I felt the terrible sting of needles in my hand and my heart exploded in a burst of desperate fire. Somehow I managed to cling to the thistles, and then I felt sturdy hands pulling me up and away from the precipice and I collapsed onto hard stone, which had never felt so wonderful under my feet. I looked up in gratitude at Asma’s face, but my sister’s mouth was hard and her eyes cold. I realized later that she was doing her best to hold back terror, but I was hurt in that moment to see the angry jut of her chin.
“Are you mad?” she said, pointing to the wreckage of supplies that I had risked my life to salvage. In the bitter moonlight I could see that most of the provisions were scattered within easy reach. Apparently I was the only thing that had gone over the edge in the ruckus.
“I was just trying to help!” I said, but I felt suddenly very stupid and small.
Asma sniffed haughtily.
“You won’t get into Paradise by killing yourself.”
There are many nights when I wished I had gone over the edge that night and fallen like a rag doll onto the rocks below. There are countless others who no doubt have wished the same. And yet it was not the will of God. I still had a role to play in the history of our faith, and I hope that some of my contributions were of value to our people, despite all the pain and death that I would unleash in the years to come.
Asma got up and brushed the black dust off her hands. She tore a strip of cloth from her tunic and wrapped it around my bleeding hands before turning to gather the dropped supplies. She moved around carefully, testing the ground with each step, as she collected the provisions.
I saw her frown, her forehead crinkling as she looked at the water skins and the various packages of food. Her eyes fell to the torn rope that I had used to bind my bundle and she sighed.
“I can’t carry all of this without a rope.”
My eyes flew instinctively to her long blue pantaloons.
“Use your girdle,” I said after a moment’s hesitation.
Asma threw me a sharp glance and I felt my cheeks flush. But then she proceeded to untie the strip of rope that held her pants up and tore it in half. Taking the loose section of her girdle, she tied the supplies together and then pinned her pantaloons to her blouse with a pretty pink brooch that her sweetheart, Zubayr, had given her.
Throwing me a nod that meant “Let’s move,” my sister took hold of both my bundle and her own and trudged up the mountainside. Her pantaloons sagged and looked in danger of falling down, and she cursed as she was forced to adjust them regularly as we climbed the rocks to the summit.
Despite everything we had just gone through (or perhaps because of it), I could not restrain my sisterly compulsion to tease. When Asma’s pantaloons slipped down past her rear, she tried with some effort to cover herself again. She scowled to see me grinning.
“Don’t just stand there, help me!” she barked.
“If Zubayr was here I’m sure he’d help,” I said with a wink.
Asma gave me a withering look but I could see the flush of color on her face at the thought. She pulled her pants over her exposed buttocks and clambered up the mountain with what little dignity she could preserve.
We finally made it to the ledge near the peak. A conical rock face soared twenty feet above us, and I watched as Asma scoured its base for the cave opening. She stopped, looking confused.
“I thought you knew where it was,” I asked. Suddenly I wondered whether this was even the right mountain, and not one of the sister peaks that surrounded Thawr. The thought of climbing another five thousand feet in the dark was beyond daunting.
“I do,” Asma replied unconvincingly. “It should be right down there.”
Asma climbed down into a rocky crevice and stood before the entrance of what appeared to be a small cave, just large enough for a man to enter if he bent down and ducked.
But it was clearly not the right opening. The entrance was covered with a heavy spider web, and a small nest stood at its base. Two rock doves awakened by the sound of our approach flew off in terror.
There was no way that any man could be inside there. The web would have been torn by anyone climbing in and the nest overturned.
“That can’t be right,” I said.
Asma leaned forward, confused. She peered at the web…when a hand suddenly emerged from inside the cave and pushed it aside!
I don’t know who screamed louder, my sister or I. The cries of shock echoed from the mountaintop and shook the very stones around us. Had the searchers from Quraysh been in the vicinity, we would have easily been discovered.
And then I watched in utter surprise as my father emerged from inside the cave, beaming.
“What took you girls so long?” he asked.
We stared at him as if he were a ghost in the night. And then we raced each other to his arms, still strong despite his age.
The Messenger of God emerged from the cave, his eyes on me, and I felt my face grow warm. I had rarely seen him since we had been betrothed, and I felt a new bashfulness in his presence.
Abu Bakr kissed me on the forehead and hugged Asma. And then he glanced down, his eyebrows rising at the sight of her sagging pantaloons.
“What’s wrong with your clothes?” he asked, a little scandalized.
“Don’t ask,” she said through gritted teeth.
Asma handed my father the bundle of supplies, and his eyes went wide when he saw that part of it was tied together with a piece of her girdle.
There was a moment of silence. And then I was shocked to hear the Messenger laugh. He threw his head back, his mouth wide in amusement. The Prophet often smiled, but I had rarely seen him give in to humor so enthusiastically. His laugh was throaty and infectious and soon we were all giggling with him.
The Messenger finally regained his composure and then looked at both of us with twinkling eyes.
“Welcome, daughters of Abu Bakr,” he said, as if inviting us inside a grand palace rather than a rocky hole in the earth. “On this momentous night, when Islam itself has been given a new life, you have been reborn. And as such, I shall give you all new names.”
The Prophet turned to my father.
“God himself has chosen this name for you, Abu Bakr-As-Siddiq- and it has been revealed in the Qur’an,” he said warmly. “Henceforth, you will also be known as The Second in the Cave.”
I saw tears well into my father’s eyes. In later years, he would tell me that his greatest honor was to have spent those days at the Messenger’s side in the cave, such that even the Lord of the Worlds had recognized him as Muhammad’s only companion when their lives were truly at stake.
The Messenger then turned to Asma and took the bundle that was tied by her girdle. I saw an amused smile playing on his lips.
“And you, Asma, shall be forever called She of Two Girdles,” he said, and I saw my sister blush with shyness at the Prophet’s attention.
I have always been cursed with impatience, and in those days I had the impetuousness of youth as well. I stamped my foot at being left out of the naming ceremony.
“And me?” I asked fearlessly, ignoring the pained look on my father’s face.
The Messenger leaned down next to me and stroked my cheeks, which were red from exertion and cold.
“And you will be my Humayra-the Little Red-Faced One.”
I heard Asma laugh and I gave her a stare that would have melted steel. The Messenger laughed again, and everyone joined in, including eventually myself.
When the laughter died, I finally asked a serious question that had been haunting me since that night at Aqaba.
“Are we really leaving our homes behind?”
The smile faded from the Messenger’s face and I saw ineffable sadness take its place. He turned to look out past the summit into the valley of Mecca, the city’s lights twinkling like stars thousands of feet below. In the moonlight, I thought I saw the sheen of tears on his cheeks.
My father put a gentle hand on my shoulder and turned me away, giving the Messenger a private moment of grief at the loss of the city he loved. A city that had rejected him and forced him into exile.
“We will have new homes soon, little one,” Abu Bakr said to me reassuringly. And then he raised his head and looked northeast, past the fires of Mecca, into a horizon that was covered in clouds, glittering turquoise with the first hint of dawn.
I grimaced as the camel lurched forward. My legs were hurting from days of sitting on the beast’s hard back, and my thighs were rubbed raw by the saddle. The journey that had begun ten days before, when my mother had left to follow Abu Bakr to Yathrib, had proven to be less of an adventure and more of a grueling ordeal, as we followed the ancient caravan path north.
My initial fascination with the sprawling sand dunes had turned to boredom as the monotony of the desert took its toll. The fresh, clean smell of the sand had been long overpowered by the musky odor of the beasts that carried us, and I thought with disgust that I would never be able to wash the pervasive smell of camel dung off my clothes.
Even the excitement and intrigue that had surrounded the Messenger’s departure was denied us, as the Quraysh had made no effort to intimidate us or block our passage to Yathrib. Now that the Muslims had settled into the oasis, it made no sense for them to antagonize Yathrib by threatening the women and children who went to join their loved ones. And so my mother, my sister, and I had left to join my father in exile, my cousin Talha serving as our guide and protector.
I grimaced as we crossed over yet another mountainous sand dune, only to see more of the same stretching out to the horizon. I had never realized how vast the ocean of the desert was, and I wondered if perhaps it never ended. If Yathrib was just a legend told to little children, like the lost cities of djinn that were said to rule the wastes of the Najd in the east.
“I hate this place,” I said with an exaggerated sniffle. “How much further?”
“Patience, little one. Yathrib is just beyond those hills,” Talha said with a smile.
I should have let it go, but my stomach was rumbling from a nasty case of the runs, putting me in a particularly crabby mood.
“You said that three hills back,” I said resentfully. “And then seven hills before that.”
Talha laughed. “I forgot that you have a memory like a hunting falcon,” he said, and bowed his head to show that he accepted my reproach as well earned.
I managed a smile. Talha always knew how to put me in a better mood. He had always been like an elder sibling to me, and when my sister Asma used to tease me that we would marry one day, I was always appropriately mortified. He was like a brother to me. In the days before my betrothal to the Messenger, Asma would laugh and say that I might see Talha as a brother, but he definitely did not see me as a sister. I had never taken her seriously. Looking back at the terrible direction our lives were to take and the loyalty that Talha showed me even as I led him into a valley of darkness, I sometimes wonder whether my sister saw more than I wanted her to.
I gazed out across the horizon and tried to imagine a world beyond this vast nothingness. A world of majestic cities with towers and paved streets, gardens and fountains. A world where women dressed in flowing gowns and men rode magnificent stallions, carrying flowers to woo the beautiful maidens. It was a peaceful world, one where Muslims could walk down the street without fear of being molested, robbed, and beaten. The cold brutality of Mecca could not live up to the world of my imagination, and I did not know if our new home would be anything like that as well.
“Will we be safe there? Yathrib, I mean,” I asked my cousin who rode beside me.
Talha shrugged.
“As safe as any can be in this changing world.”
His words opened a strange thought in my heart. The question that I was too young to understand was the oldest question of the human race, perhaps first asked by our parents Adam and Eve when they were expelled from the Garden.
“Why do things have to change?”
A thoughtful look crossed Talha’s thinly bearded face.
“I don’t know, Aisha. But sometimes change is for the best.”
I did not know if I believed that, and I could not tell if Talha believed it himself.
“I miss our home,” I said simply.
Talha looked away sadly.
“I do, too. But we will build a new home in Yathrib.”
“Will we have to stay there long?”
“Yes, in all likelihood,” Talha said firmly. “But it is a beautiful city with abundant water and tall trees. You will get to play in the shade. And one day, your children will do the same.”
I made a face.
“I’m never going to have children,” I said provocatively, knowing full well that my parents were hoping that I would quickly give the Messenger a son once we were married.
Talha gave me a strange look, more intrigued than reproachful.
“Why would you say that?”
I shuddered, remembering the babies that I had assisted my mother in delivering. The screams of the women were terrifying, and the blood and gore of childbirth disgusted me.
“It’s too painful. And children are a bother. How can you run free if you have little ones clinging to your skirts? I’m never going to have any children if I can help it,” I said, speaking with childish impudence. I have often wondered whether God heard my words that day and decided to grant me my impulsive wish, which I would grow to regret as my years increased and my womb remained barren.
Talha smiled at me gently.
“Your husband might have something to say about that.”
I knew that my engagement to the Messenger was widely suspected, but it was supposed to be secret for the time being, and I chose not to acknowledge what Talha obviously knew.
“Then I’m never going to get married,” I said with a toss of my head, letting my crimson hair fly in the wind.
“I see,” Talha said, playing along with my game. “And what will you do with yourself as a spinster?”
I spread my hands wide as I laid out a dream that even then I knew was impossible.
“I will travel the world. I want to fly like a bird and see every nation under the stars. The gardens of Syria. The rivers of Iraq. The streets of Persia, lined with gold and rubies. And maybe even go to China, where they say the sun is born.”
When I looked at Talha, I saw his eyes glistening with a sadness that I did not understand. I could see Asma riding to my left, unsmiling, her eyes watching us carefully. I suddenly felt the nagging tug of guilt, as if I had done something wrong, but I could not understand why.
Talha saw Asma’s stern glance and he blushed.
“I hope your wish comes true, little one,” he said simply, and then rode ahead over a hill and vanished.
I wanted to ride after him, to ask what I had done wrong, when I heard Asma’s voice cut like a dagger through the dead air.
“Stop it,” she said with a hiss.
“Stop what?” I turned to look defiantly into her eyes.
“Stop torturing him. You are promised to the Messenger. Never forget that.”
I was about to retort in anger, when I heard a shout. It was Talha, racing back toward us, pointing to the horizon excitedly.
We spurred our camels up the flowing expanse until we reached the summit of the dunes and could see what lay beyond.
My heart soared as I saw it for the first time. An emerald valley lovingly planted between a circle of volcanic hills, blackened by sun and lava, the majestic palm trees swaying in the wind as if waving to greet us.
There was the sheen of water that I had seen many times in the past few days, but for once it was not a mirage. The flowing wastes gave way to a paved road that wound past the yellow stone walls of a stern fortress, an imposing edifice I would later learn belonged to the Jews of Bani Qurayza.
A crowd of men and women, dressed in flowing white abaya s, was moving down the road toward us, bearing baskets of dates and pitchers of cold water. Tears welled in my eyes when I saw the Messenger of God leading the welcoming party, my father at his right hand.
After days of wandering through a hellish wasteland that was home only to snakes and scorpions, we had emerged from the fire and found paradise. My heart filled with glee, I spurred my camel down the hill and raced toward Yathrib, my new home.
The day my courses began was also the day that Yathrib received a new name-Madinat-un-Nabi, City of the Prophet, or Medina for short. Over the past several months, the Messenger had proven to be a just arbitrator and had settled the daily disputes between the tribesmen in a manner that left both parties feeling respected. His growing reputation as a man of honor had opened more and more people to his message of the Unity of God and the brotherhood of man, and the majority of the town had embraced Islam before that first winter. The Prophet had further earned the people’s respect by living with modesty, in contrast with their chieftains like Abdallah ibn Ubayy, who always made a deliberate show of his wealth and power to keep the crowds awed and docile.
When the Muslims decided to build a Masjid-a house of worship-the Messenger joined in with the poorest of workers, regardless of their tribes or ancestry, and laid the foundation blocks with the sweat of his own hands. This rejection of class differences and tribal affiliation moved the hearts of the citizens of Yathrib, who saw in Muhammad a chance to end the centuries of division that had led only to bloodshed and grief. And when the Masjid was finished, the Messenger declined the offers of his ardent followers to build a palace for himself, carving out only a one-room stone cottage in the courtyard of the Masjid, where he lived with the elderly Sawda, the only furnishing a straw mat on the ground for sleep.
His personal example of austerity and humility had done more to spread Islam than a hundred preachers, and that day, when the city was renamed in his honor by a council of its citizens, it was clear to all that the Messenger was not just the arbitrator but for all intents and purposes the unquestioned leader of the oasis. I was too young to understand that Ibn Ubayy, lord of the Khazraj, and other rivals were not pleased with this course of events, but it would soon become evident even to those who had no understanding of politics.
In those early days, I lived with my father in a small hut that was nothing like the grand home we had abandoned in Mecca. But that palatial estate had long felt like a prison to me, and I was delighted to be able to run and play openly in our tiny yard without fear of being harassed by an angry Meccan who bore a grudge against my faith.
And so it was that the afternoon my life changed, I was chasing my new friend Leila through the tiny garden my mother had planted in our yard. Leila was the daughter of a widow whose inheritance the Messenger had restored after her father’s relatives sought to deny her a claim to a well on the outskirts of the city. Without access to the well, which they rented out to trading caravans that passed through the city, her mother would have had no source of income and would likely have been forced to turn to prostitution, an exploitative (and prevalent) profession that the Messenger was working diligently to eliminate.
In the distance, I could hear the sweet, melodious voice of Bilal, the African slave my father had freed after he had been tortured by his master, Umayya, for renouncing the pagan gods. He was standing on the roof of the Masjid calling out the beautiful, haunting words of the Azan, the Muslim call to prayer:
God is Most Great. God is Most Great.
I testify that there is no god but God.
I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.
Come to Prayer. Come to Felicity.
God is Most Great.
There is no god but God.
As Leila and I played a game of tag, racing between the two palm trees that marked the boundary of my father’s small property, I laughed with the fearless delight that only a child who knows no concerns can experience. I sometimes think that was the last moment of my life when I was totally innocent and unburdened, and there are days even now when I return to that tiny strip of land, the palm trees long since cut down, and remember.
My stomach had been hurting all day and I guessed that last night’s roasted lamb had not sat well with me. But when I ran through the yard, feeling the tiny blades of grass tickling my bare toes, the kiss of budding hyacinth and chrysanthemums at my ankles, I forgot all my discomfort in the unfettered joy of being alive.
I was faster than Leila, as I was faster than almost anyone I knew, and the poor girl was huffing and puffing with exhaustion as she desperately tried to catch hold of my skirt. I feinted and dodged her giggling attack with the agility that would have made a cheetah proud. But Leila was persistent and came after me with renewed vigor, when her foot was caught in the loop of a weed and she fell, scraping her knee against the warm, rich earth.
“Are you all right?” I called as I ran over to help.
Leila cried as if the foot had been amputated and I looked her over to check the extent of the injury. But as far as I could tell, she had just scraped her knee, not even broken the skin.
“Stop being silly,” I said, annoyed at her need for drama. “You’re not even bleeding.”
Leila sniffed and wiped her eyes, and then I saw her look at me with shock.
“But you are.”
With those three words, my childhood ended.
I glanced down to where she was pointing and froze. My dress had ridden up as I sat on the grass and a dark trickle of blood was running down my thigh.
THE NEXT FEW DAYS were uneventful, and I was in obstinate denial that anything had changed. I could hear my parents whispering urgently late into the night, but for once I was not curious as to what they were talking about. Perhaps it was because I already sensed in my heart that the life I had known was over. I was a woman now, and I was betrothed to a man. It was only a matter of time before those two realities would lead to an inevitable conclusion, but I didn’t want to face it. I kept playing with Leila and my dolls and stubbornly refused to don the scarf that adult Muslim women used to cover their hair in modesty. My mother decided not to press the point, letting me have a few days where I could pretend to be a child still.
Of course, in truth I was still a child. At the age of nine, my menses had come a year or two earlier than most girls’, which perhaps should have been anticipated, as my breasts had begun budding in earnest a few months before. But my heart was that of a little girl. And my father and mother had gone out of their way to let me stay that laughing, dancing child who could put a smile on their faces when the burdens of age pressed down upon them.
But everything comes to an end. We can either fight that truth and be consumed in grief, or we can surrender and flow to the new world that the river of life is taking us. Surrender is what I had been taught since my earliest days, for that was the meaning of Islam itself-surrender to the Will of God.
I was playing on the seesaw with Leila when the time came
“Aisha! Come inside!” my mother called one afternoon.
I could hear a catch in her throat, a suppressed welling of emotion. In that moment, I knew what was happening, and I surrendered. I climbed down from the seesaw and kissed Leila tearfully, as if saying good-bye forever, and then walked with my head bowed back into the house.
My mother and Asma washed my face with clear well water they had gathered in an iron pot. They made me change out of my play clothes and helped me put on a new red-and-white-striped gown that they said had been imported from the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain to the east. This was to be my wedding gown. I would be married tonight to the Messenger of God. And at the tender age of nine, I was about to become a Mother of the Believers, a revered status in this world and the hereafter. Yet I felt small and unworthy, unready for the responsibility.
My mind raced with questions to which I had no answer. How was I going to be a wife in any sense of the word to a man over forty years my senior, whose own daughters were older than me? And how could I, who barely knew a handful of verses of the Qur’an by heart, serve as any kind of spiritual guide or mentor to the Muslims? I remembered my parents’ conversation from years before, when my father had said that Gabriel had announced my wedding to the Prophet in a vision. Surely the angel had a made a mistake! For the past three years, I had let that story of the Messenger’s dream puff me up with vanity and pride, but now I wanted nothing more than to be forgotten and ignored.
As my mother closed the clasp of my dress around my neck, it felt as if she were putting a shroud over me. She kissed me on the forehead and smiled, and I wanted to smile back but I could not remember how.
My father entered, wearing a long yellow robe and turban. His shoulders were stooped lower than usual, and he nervously pulled at his wispy beard, which was dyed red with henna. Abu Bakr looked at me in my striped dress, a saffron veil covering my hair, and I could see tears welling in his eyes.
He held out his hand. I clasped his palm, felt the familiar roughness of the calluses that cracked even as he squeezed my fingers. He said nothing, and neither did I. We walked out, hand in hand, followed by Umm Ruman and Asma, and strolled through the gently paved streets of Medina. I could smell jasmine in the air, sensuous and pleasing. But it did not alleviate my fear, the fear of every virgin on her wedding night. I had learned the facts of life by watching the stray dogs in the alleys of Mecca and had always found the idea that men and women did the same both amusing and repulsive. I had heard that the first night was painful for many women, and I was suddenly terrified of whatever lay ahead. I wanted to run back to the safety of my bed and have my mother sing me to sleep with a lullaby.
As we walked through the streets, I saw eyes on me from every direction. Women wearing aprons emerged from their homes to gawk, and men in colorful tunics stared at me and then whispered to one another, perhaps acknowledging that the Messenger’s new wife was indeed as beautiful as rumor had it. I noticed that their eyes never went to plain Asma, and I felt a pang for her. I prayed in my heart that Zubayr would emigrate to Medina and marry her, so that the old matrons would stop clucking their tongues. The fact that I was ten years her junior and was marrying the most respected man in the city, while Asma lived alone pining for a love that might never be, added fuel to their catty gossip. The injustice of how women are judged, by their features rather than the character of their souls, never outraged me more than at that moment.
And then my thoughts stopped along with my breath as we stood before the Masjid. It was more of an open courtyard than a building proper, with walls made of mud brick and the trunks of palm trees. The sun had set an hour before and the Maghrib worship ceremony was finished, so the prayer ground was largely empty, except for a few devout men and women who were still kneeling in prayer. Their devotion and focus on Allah were so great that they paid no attention as my wedding party entered the courtyard.
I saw Sawda’s tiny brick hut that had been built on the southeast corner of the courtyard and then gasped when I noticed that another brick cell had been hastily built adjoining it, a structure that I had not seen a week ago when I came with my father for Friday communal prayers. I realized that this must be my new house and noticed with a little dismay that, like Sawda’s modest dwelling, the entire building was a single room, not much larger than my bedchamber back in Mecca.
I could see the flickering of candlelight from within and my heart pounded as my father led me to the place that would be my new home. As we approached, I noticed for the first time a group of women gathered outside, wives and daughters of the Prophet’s closest Companions from among the Muhajirun (the immigrants from Mecca) and the Ansar (the helpers who protected them in Medina).
“For good and for happiness-may all be well!” they called out cheerfully. I followed my father inside and saw that the Messenger was sitting on a small spread of soft lambskin that I realized with some trepidation would be our bed. His dark eyes were glowing with that strange fire and I immediately looked down, feeling my face raging with the heat of my emotions.
The women who had come to greet us decked me out in small ornaments-a thin coral bracelet, an ivory brooch for my hair, a ring made of silver with a tiny bluish gem that might have been an amethyst or a sapphire.
When they were done, they took me to the Prophet’s side and placed me on the lambskin, the only furnishing inside that tiny cell. The Messenger smiled at me gently and then opened his hand. In it I saw a necklace made of onyx beads. My frightened eyes must have sparkled with a little life when I saw the pretty black stones flecked with white and gold, because everyone in the room laughed as if the tension had been released.
The Messenger tied the necklace around my throat, which was, even in my tender youth, long and elegant. He fumbled with the clasp for a second before finally managing to seal it. I thought for a second that he might be as nervous as I was, but of course that was ridiculous. He was a grown man who had already been married twice and had four daughters who were old enough to give him grandchildren.
When he let go, my hand was drawn like a magnet to the necklace, which was Muhammad’s first gift to me as my husband and lover. In the years to come, I would treasure that necklace above all my other possessions, and it would repay my devotion by leading me into scandal and grief. How strange it is now to think that such a small thing could change a girl’s life? But that necklace had a terrible destiny, one that would change not only my life but the history of the world.
But none could have foreseen that, except possibly the Prophet, and I often wonder if he ever knew what destruction would come from that little present. The necklace that began as a blessing, a symbol of love, would end as a curse and a harbinger of death.
The Messenger raised a small wooden bowl filled with clear milk, the curds and fat having been carefully strained away. He sipped it and then looked into my eyes as he offered it to me. As I met his gaze, I felt a flash of something I did not understand in my foolish youth but I now know to have been desire. My body grew hot and I could feel my stomach flurrying as if overrun by tiny hummingbirds. I looked down, embarrassed and intrigued by this strange new sensation, and refused the bowl with a terrified shake of my head.
The Messenger nonetheless brought it to my lips and spoke softly.
“Drink, Humayra.”
There was something about the way he spoke his pet name for me that set the hummingbirds fluttering again. I could feel a bead of sweat drifting down the nape of my neck past my shoulder blades.
I looked at him again and he nodded. I bent forward and kissed the edge of the bowl, letting the icy cool milk flow down my throat. My heart began to beat faster as I did so, and it was no longer just with fear.
When I had drunk my fill, I passed the bowl to my sister, who sat beside me. Asma took a sip and then handed it to our mother, and then it was passed along among all who were present. When the bowl returned to the Messenger’s hand, I was surprised, because it did not look as if the liquid were any less than when we had first tasted it, but I dismissed the thought as just a fantasy of my excited mind.
The ceremony was over and I was now Muhammad’s wife. I had become what the angel had promised and what every other girl I knew secretly wished to be.
I was the Mother of the Believers.
My father arose. He kissed the Prophet’s hand and then placed his warm lips on my forehead.
“May Allah bless the two I love most in this world,” he said. And then he turned to leave, as did the women.
The simple door of palm wood closed behind them and we were alone. The Messenger smiled at me and took my hand in his. I noticed that despite the lingering heat of the evening, his hand was unusually cold, as if cooled by some mysterious breeze. I could feel the steady calm beat of his pulse. Its gentle rhythm soothed me, and the pounding in my chest gradually slowed until it was as if we shared one heart, one breath.
I gazed into his ebony eyes, blacker than midnight, and could see my own reflection in those bottomless pools. But it was not the reflection I witnessed every morning in the mirror. I looked older, wiser, my girl’s body blossomed to full womanhood. My hair was no longer crimson like the sunset but a warm auburn like embers of a dying fire. But I was not smiling. There were pride and righteous anger in my golden eyes that I could not understand. And then I watched as I aged, my hair turning to silver, my face lined but still regal in its beauty. My eyes seemed even older, now filled with regret and shame. And then the vision changed and I was something else, both human and angel, my body at once young and ancient, my hair and the bones of my face glittering with moonlight that seemed to emanate from within. As I looked into the eyes of this otherworldly woman, this spirit from beyond time and space, I saw that there was no more anger or sadness.
Only love.
The vision ended and I was alone with the Messenger. He was looking strangely at me, and for a moment I wondered if he saw what I had seen. But he said nothing about it and simply ran his hand across my face, savoring the delicate softness of my flesh that no man had ever touched before.
He leaned close to me and whispered softly.
“Don’t be afraid.”
I looked into those unearthly black eyes and answered truthfully.
“I’m not.”
He smiled warmly and took me in his arms.
I let myself go and fell into his embrace, losing myself in the wondrous sensuality of his body pressed against mine.
There was no fear. There was no pain.
There was only light.