The Muslims had escaped Mecca, but our enemies gave us no respite.
The establishment of an independent Muslim community outside the control of the Arab oligarchs was an even greater threat than the presence of believers inside the holy city. From our new vantage point in Medina, we were strategically placed to block caravan routes to the north. The Muslims had gone from being a persecuted rabble to an organized force with the ability to cut off the lifeblood of Meccan trade. Realizing that confrontation between our communities was inevitable, Abu Sufyan decided to take preemptive action.
And so it was that one day Umm al-Fadl, the comely wife of Muhammad’s uncle Abbas, stood outside her home, gazing in shock at the scene playing out before her. A group of men, their faces covered in dirty cloths and scarves, had broken open the sealed doors of the Muslim refugees. The houses of her kinsmen and friends had been locked since they had fled to Medina, and the property was under the protection of her husband’s clan, until they returned one day to reclaim it.
She watched in growing outrage as these thieves brazenly violated the honor of the Bani Hashim in broad daylight. The bandits kicked down doors, smashed windows that had been boarded with planks of acacia bark, and threw their ill-gotten booty into the street. Everything that her kinsmen owned-carpets, mirrors, tables, chairs, even cooking utensils-was removed and cast onto waiting donkey carts.
Umm al-Fadl saw the men of the clan standing by, their heads hanging with shame, as these sword-wielding burglars plundered freely. She could not let this go on. Her throat constricting with rage as well as terror, she stepped forward, blocking the path of a particularly loathsome-looking bandit, his cheeks scarred with a thief ’s brand he had probably received as punishment in Taif or one of the southern towns.
“Stop! What are you doing?” She cast a sideways glance, hoping that the frightened men of her clan retained a few shards of masculine honor to protect her if the burglar turned violent.
The branded thief, his mouth reeking of onions and cheap wine, just looked at her for a moment, then snickered and went about his business. He tossed a silk-cushioned chair onto his cart and turned to go back inside one of the houses his men were ravaging, when Umm al-Fadl ran over and stood in the door frame. Her brown eyes challenged him to touch her, the wife of one of the most respected members of Quraysh. The bandit rubbed his scar in irritation and then decided not to risk inciting an honor feud.
“The goods of the heretics are to be sold in the market,” he said through a nest of broken and blackened teeth.
“Under whose authority?” she said, like a teacher scolding a naughty child.
The thief looked over his shoulder at the crowd of nervous onlookers and then spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Abu Sufyan.”
Umm al-Fadl felt the color drain from her face. If Abu Sufyan could act with such impunity, then her clan was in severe danger. With the most influential Muslims gone, her husband would not have the backing to protect the community if Abu Sufyan decided to unleash vengeance on those who remained. It would start with stealing the property of the refugees. And it would end with the expulsion of her people. Or worse.
“These are the homes of the Bani Hashim,” she said, her outrage heightened by fear. “Abu Sufyan has no authority over our clan.”
And then a familiar leering voice she hated came from behind her.
“But I do.”
Umm al-Fadl turned to face the wormlike face of Abu Lahab.
Her brother-in-law, the chief of Bani Hashim, had always repelled her with his crude comments and suggestive glances at her breasts, which were still shapely and firm despite the onset of her middle years. His betrayal of his own nephew Muhammad, whom Abbas loved and who was always kind to her, had sealed her loathing for Abu Lahab.
“Go on with your work,” he said, in his high-pitched, almost effeminate voice.
“How can you let this happen?” she asked indignantly, even though her heart knew the answer. “These goods belong to men of your own clan!”
Abu Lahab shrugged. The sickly odor of his sweat was overpowering and she wanted to retch.
“Men who have renounced the gods and have fled our noble city like petty criminals have no clan,” Abu Lahab said loudly, ensuring that the crowds could hear his rationale. “Their goods belong to Mecca and will be sold to promote its commerce.”
Umm al-Fadl bit her lip hard, trying to restrain the compulsion to strangle him in the open street. She tasted blood in her mouth, like hot iron scathing her tongue. And then she turned to face the crowd, beating her chest in an ancient gesture of mourning.
“Is this what you have fallen to, Abu Lahab? Sanctioning theft and robbery as commerce?”
There were murmurs of shame among the men, and she saw several of the younger clansmen looking at their leader with open reproach.
Abu Lahab’s face turned dangerous. He suddenly grabbed her by the arm and pushed her against the stone wall of the house.
“You should learn to respect your elders, wife of my brother,” he said, a red glint in his tiny eyes.
Umm al-Fadl felt her skin crawl at his touch and she shook off his clammy hand with revulsion.
“A man has to earn respect, brother of my husband,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “It is gained through honor-which you have long since traded for power.”
There was a strange flicker his eyes and his tongue flitted in and out of his mouth like a hungry snake.
“Since you are so concerned with matters of trade and commerce, may I propose a business transaction to satisfy the debts of our wayward clansmen?”
She didn’t like where this was going. No one ever did business with Abu Lahab and profited. Umm al-Fadl knew that she had to take control of the conversation and the terms of any negotiation if she wanted to help her kinsmen.
“Abbas will ransom their goods,” she said with more confidence than she felt. Her husband was wealthy, but even he did not have the resources to buy back all of the stolen property in the marketplace.
Abu Lahab smiled. “It is not from my brother that I seek to collect payment.”
He ran his pudgy fingers, slick with the oil and sweat, through her hair. He leaned close to her, and she could feel the nub of his aroused member pressing against the thin cotton of his robe.
She slapped him, letting years of disgust pour through her hand.
Abu Lahab stepped back, stunned. His pale cheeks burned with surprise and embarrassment as the crowd of onlookers murmured at her audacity. The chieftain of a clan was a tent pole of Mecca’s social structure, and striking one in public would have many consequences. None of them good.
Abu Lahab’s eyes narrowed so much that she could no longer see his pupils. And then he struck back, slapping her with such force that she spun and struck her head hard against the stone windowsill behind her right shoulder.
The world scattered for a moment and she felt fiery needles pushing into her skull. Umm al-Fadl reached for her forehead, which was throbbing from the blow. When she looked down at her hand, she could see it was covered in blood.
Abu Lahab smiled viciously at the sight of his sister-in-law’s wound.
“Alas, it appears that we cannot agree to the terms of a deal. Pity.”
With that, the giant snail of a man turned and walked away, waving absentmindedly to his hired thieves to continue their work.
Umm al-Fadl looked at him through eyes that blurred with pain.
“Abu Lahab!”
The chieftain turned to face her, his eyebrow raised contemptuously.
“Every debt is repaid, brother of my husband,” she said coldly. “Remember that. Every debt.”
Abu Lahab snickered. But when he saw the darkness in her eyes, his smile faded and he hurried away.
I crawled across the floor of my small apartment, the wooden horse gripped in my hand. It was a toy that belonged to my sister, Asma, from her own youth, part of a collection of farm animal figurines that my father had purchased as a present on a trading mission to Sanaa two years before the Revelation. When my father had embraced Islam and destroyed the idols in his house, he had prepared to throw the tiny figures made of sandalwood into our fireplace. Asma had sat outside and wept at the loss of her toys to the new faith, and the Messenger had seen her crying and told Abu Bakr to give her back her playthings. Dolls and toys were not idols meant to represent false gods but simply amusements that gave children comfort.
In later years, when zealous believers began to prohibit all forms of images as idolatry, I shook my head in frustration as I remembered the gentle wisdom of my husband, who had always preached a religion of moderation. The stubborn resistance of some Muslims to common sense and their obsession with the letter of the law while ignoring its spirit has always been the bane of our community. With the Messenger no longer alive to restrain such foolishness, I fear that dogmatism and extremism may only worsen with time.
But in those days, with the Messenger’s tolerant and patient approval, I could still play with my toys and did so with abandon. My friends Leila, Munira, and Reem visited me that day, and we had spent the morning giggling and teasing one another as we had done before I married the Prophet. The three of us were on the cold stone ground, chasing one another’s toy animals in a mock race, when a shadow fell over the threshold.
I looked up to see the Messenger watching us, an amused smile on his face. The other girls shrieked with embarrassment and tried to run past him out of the house, but he blocked the doorway with his powerful legs.
“What are you doing?”
The girls blushed and mumbled terrified apologies, but I could see that he was not angry.
“We’re playing,” I said breathlessly. My friends had given me a brief and desperately needed respite from the serious responsibilities of my new role in the community. They had made me feel like the child I still was, and I did not want to go back to being a married woman and Mother of the Believers just yet.
The Messenger leaned down to see what I was holding. His eyes fell on the horse and he smiled, perhaps remembering how he had made Asma clap with joy when he had saved this little toy from the fire.
He took the horse in his hand and examined it, as if admiring the delicate Yemeni craftsmanship that made the little figure so lifelike.
“What game?” he asked simply.
I picked up the other farm figures that had been scattered on the floor-cows, camels, a lamb that had been covered in a thin layer of real wool-and showed them proudly to my husband.
“It’s called Solomon’s horses,” I said.
The Messenger’s smile made my heart quicken and a familiar quiver in my stomach reminded me that I was a woman and not just a girl, no matter how much I pretended otherwise.
The Prophet could see the look in my eye that always came with the surge of desire, and he winked playfully. And then he waved to the other girls, who were quivering in a corner, to come over.
“Solomon is my brother,” he said, getting on his hands and knees and grabbing one of the toy horses, which had been painted white. “Come, I will join you.”
My friends looked at him, startled. The Messenger of God wanted to play with them?
And then the Prophet lined up his white horse with my tiny black stallion. And he raced across the floor on his knees, daring me to catch up. I laughed and crawled after him, my horse moving swiftly to overtake his in the race.
The girls stared at us in disbelief. And then they laughed and joined in the play. Soon the Messenger’s steeds were being chased by a handful of small animals as Solomon’s horses galloped toward victory.
I beat the Prophet to the far wall of our tiny apartment, which was still furnished with the lambskin bedspread, along with the addition of a small wooden tray that served as our dining table. I leaped my toy stallion over the table as if it were flying like the winged horses of Paradise and raced toward the door.
And then I froze when I saw it was blocked by a towering figure, whose thick body eclipsed all the sunlight. Even before my eyes adjusted to make out his face, I knew that it could only be Umar ibn al-Khattab. He stood with his arms crossed across his powerful chest and looked down at us playing with the Messenger, his face twisted into a disapproving scowl.
My little friends shrieked and raced for the door again. Umar stepped aside and let them run past in terror. I scrambled up from the ground and ran to the corner where my head scarf lay discarded. I quickly covered my crimson hair under the midnight blue cloth as Umar bent down to speak to the Prophet, who was still on his knees, the toy in his hand.
“O Messenger of God, we need your counsel,” he said, and the gravity of his voice caused a change in my husband’s demeanor. He was again the leader of a desperate community that had been facing disease and starvation ever since seeking refuge in the oasis. I saw in an instant the weight of the world fall on his shoulders, and I suddenly understood why the Messenger took such delight in playing with innocent children. In a world where the shroud of death hung over his people daily, where any mistake he made could tear apart the fragile peace we had secured at such a terrible cost, the children made him forget the burdens of leadership for just a few wonderful moments.
The Messenger walked out grimly into the courtyard. I sat by the open door, looking out at the walled, dusty field that served as both house of worship and hall of assembly for the nascent community of believers. A crowd of prominent Muslims was gathered, and I could feel the cloud of tension that hung over the jamaat.
As the Messenger sat in a circle with his followers, Umar spoke of the current crisis.
“We have received troubling word from Mecca,” he said. “The Meccans have stolen the property of the Muhajirun and have sold it in the marketplace.”
There was angry murmuring at this news, until the mighty Hamza raised his hand for silence.
“They have used the profits to buy goods in Damascus,” Hamza said, his booming voice vibrating into the palm trunks that supported the walls. “The caravan returns from Syria in a fortnight.”
Umar pulled at his thick beard with rage.
“The Meccans grow fat off our belongings, while the believers struggle to find enough food to end the ache in their stomachs!”
The Messenger looked at the men, staring at each of them for a long moment as if reading the secret book of their hearts.
“And what counsel do you seek?” he asked quietly.
Umar stood up and began to pace around the circle, the nervous anger in his joints needing to be released.
“We seek to retake what belongs to our people!” he said. “The caravan is rightfully ours. We must seize it!”
I watched from the doorway of my apartment as the men nodded their heads, their voices rising in firm agreement.
But then I saw Uthman, the handsome son-in-law of the Prophet, rise, his face troubled and sad.
“The Meccans will not surrender their goods without a fight,” he said with a gentle voice. “Are we ready to wage war upon them?”
Ali, who sat at the Messenger’s feet, rose and faced Uthman.
“It is not a question of readiness,” he said, his mysterious green eyes unreadable as always. “Every man here is willing to fight and die for God and His Messenger. But we cannot do so without the permission of our Lord.”
With that, Ali looked at the Messenger. My husband met his glance and then glanced down at his hands without answering.
Abu Bakr touched the Prophet’s shoulder. When he spoke, his voice was calm and firm.
“For the past fourteen years, we have stood back and responded to every provocation with patience and forbearance,” my father said. “But our restraint has only emboldened the idol worshipers further. They have driven us from our homes. And now they seek to deprive us of our means to live. We do not seek war. But it is upon us.”
The Messenger looked into his friend’s eyes for a long moment. And then he turned to Hamza.
“What say you, Uncle?”
Hamza lifted his heavy bow from across his shoulders and laid it in the Messenger’s lap.
“There is a time for peace. And a time for war.”
When the Prophet said nothing in response, Hamza knelt before him and took his hands in his. “I know that you hate bloodshed. But if we do not stand firm now, the Meccans will see it as weakness. And their armies will be soon be on the doorsteps of Medina. It is time to fight.”
My husband finally rose to his feet.
“I will pray to my Lord for guidance.”
And without another word, the Prophet left the gathering of men and walked back to my apartment, closing the door behind me as I followed him in.
I saw the conflict on his face and it tore my heart in two. Muhammad, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, was not a violent man. I had never seen him strike anyone, and his anger was rarely voiced and could be read only by the frown on his beautiful face. He told me once that when he was a child, he had been mocked by other boys for refusing to brawl with them in the streets. His gentleness had no place in the harsh desert, where men were taught that cruelty and masculinity were one and the same. Muhammad had lived for over fifty years according to a code of pacifism that was becoming more and more difficult to uphold.
The influx of the refugees had taxed Medina’s resources to the breaking point, and a poor date harvest had only worsened the lot of the newcomers. Food was as valuable as gold, and without more resources, famine would decimate Muhammad’s followers. Men, women, and children who had lost everything because they believed in him. People who had followed him across the desert wastes and were now facing the certitude of a slow and painful death as hunger set in.
Attacking the Meccan caravan and taking its goods would alleviate our immediate desperation, with the added wealth purchasing food and medicines from visiting traders. But it would open us up to retaliation from Mecca. And the Messenger knew that once the drums of war began to pound, their thunder would echo for eternity.
My beloved husband lay down on our lambskin bed, his eyes closed as he pondered what path to take. Do nothing and watch his people die in quiet dignity, the faith of One God stillborn and buried in the sands of hunger and disease. Or unleash the sword and let forth a spring of blood that might one day become a raging flood. There was no easy answer, and I did not envy the choice that was before him.
Not knowing what else to do, I crawled up beside him and put my arms around his chest. I pressed my small breasts against his chest, hoping the nurturing comfort of my budding womanhood would bring him some peace.
I felt him grow still as slumber came upon him. My own eyes were heavy and I began to drift away. As I fell into the strange shadow land of dreams, I could hear the thunder of hooves as Solomon’s horses raged across the earth, and I sensed that they were charging toward war.
I awoke in the middle of the night as the Messenger shook violently in his sleep. His face was bathed in sweat, despite the coolness of the hour, and I felt a flash of fear that he had been struck ill by the oasis fever. I shook him with increasing agitation, but he did not respond.
And then, without any warning, his eyes flew open and I could see them shine with the terrifying fire of Revelation. His mouth moved and I could hear that strange Voice that was his and not his emerge from Muhammad’s lips. And he spoke the Words of God that would forever change the course of history.
Fight those who fight you, but do not commit aggression.
Truly God does not love aggressors.
Tears welled in my eyes. The choice had been made, and the simple purity of Islam would now be tinted forever with the crimson hue of blood.
The next morning I stood behind the Messenger with my elderly sister-wife, Sawda, as he announced God’s will to a packed crowd inside the courtyard of the Masjid.
“And behold!” the Messenger said, a sword raised high in his hand for the first time in my memory. “God has revealed these words in his Book:
“And slay them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out, for persecution is worse than killing.
But do not fight them at the Sanctuary
Unless they first attack you there
But if they attack you there, then kill them.
Such is the reward of disbelievers.
But if they cease, God is Forgiving, Merciful.
And fight them until there is no more persecution and worship is only for God.
But if they cease, let there be no hostility except for those who practice oppression.”
I saw the excited looks on the faces of the worshipers, who murmured in delight that Allah had given them permission to fight back against their persecutors. The verses were repeated and passed among them, although I noticed that the words counseling restraint were not mentioned as readily by some believers as those counseling military action.
It was a fact that was noted by Uthman, who shook his head at the fury he saw in the eyes of some of the younger men. Ali, who stood beside him, saw Uthman’s gesture of disgust and looked at him sharply.
“Why do you not rejoice at the commandment of God?”
His voice rang out in the Masjid and suddenly everyone’s attention was on Uthman.
“I rejoice at the words of God, but I sorrow for this Ummah,” the kindhearted man said. “I fear that once blood has been spilled by the believers, it will flow with no end.”
The Messenger met his eyes and I could see the sadness in his glance, as if in his heart my husband feared the same outcome.
But Uthman’s words of gentle reproach were seen by some of the hotheaded youths as treason.
“You are a coward, old man,” said a brown-haired boy who could not have been older than thirteen. “The only blood you are afraid of spilling is your own. May Medina be washed in it one day!”
The youth’s words were met by a stream of laughter from some of the people in the crowd, and a few of the urchin’s friends spit at the helm of Uthman’s rich blue robe. The Prophet’s lovely daughter Ruqayya put her hand protectively on her husband’s arm as the jeering worsened into threatening catcalls. She had been ill for several days with the oasis fever. Her normally rosy cheeks were pale, and dark circles marred the beauty of her eyes. But I saw in the firmness of her jaw her defiance of those who would insult her husband or malign his loyalty.
In the sudden rage of that mob, for the first time in my young life I saw the possibility that Muslims might turn against Muslims. And my stomach was sick with the thought that the bloodlust that had been kindled to defend our community might one day tear it apart. Standing there, my heart pounding in self-righteousness disgust at this rabble, I could never have imagined that I would be the one who was destined to release that dam of death upon on us.
I saw Muhammad’s face grow dark, and he suddenly moved with his lightning speed to stand at Uthman’s side. He took Uthman’s right hand in his and sheathed the sword that he had been bearing moments before. The Messenger raised the red leather scabbard for all to see.
“Know that God has a sword which remains sheathed in its scabbard as long as Uthman lives,” the Messenger said sternly. “If he is slain, then the sword will be drawn and it will not be sheathed until Judgment Day.”
His powerful words immediately silenced the crowd, and I saw Uthman’s eyes well with tears. This gentle man who alone among the Quraysh shared my husband’s revulsion at bloodshed was horrified to be the cause of turmoil in the community. Seeing the anger in the Messenger’s eyes and the sorrow in Uthman’s, the believers were ashamed and began to disperse.
As the crowd parted, my eyes fell on the urchin boys. These young troublemakers, whom the Prophet had reprimanded in the past for their antics, stared at Uthman with undisguised hatred. And a chill closed in on my heart. A premonition of something terrible to come.
I fervently prayed to Allah that the preparations we were making for war would prove unnecessary. The Messenger was dispatching a raiding party to the outskirts of Medina. Once the Syrian caravan passed by, the men would surround it with their horses and disarm the guards, taking the goods back to Medina. If this could be accomplished without the loss of life, perhaps wiser heads in Mecca would prevail.
The Meccans knew they had stolen from us and we were retaking what was ours, so perhaps they would consider the matter closed with honor. As long as no blood was shed in the raid, there was hope that war would be avoided and the sword would forever remain in its sheath.
I raised my eyes to heaven and saw storm clouds gathering on the horizon, and I knew in the cold pit of my stomach that my prayer would not be answered.
In the end, war came to us with the dread certainty of death itself. It could no more be resisted than the angels who arrive at the appointed hour to claim the soul. And like the inexorable force of death, the war brought both an end and a beginning for our people.
The caravan, with its riches of gold and spices from Jerusalem and Damascus, had been a ruse to bring us out of our homes onto the battlefield. Abu Sufyan had followed Hind’s carefully crafted strategy to the letter. Instead of passing by the black hills of Medina along the normal trading route, he had ordered the caravan to follow the coastal road along the great sea that separated Arabia from Egypt and Abyssinia.
And even as the Messenger ordered a small party of three hundred men to lie in wait for the caravan at the outskirts of Medina, an army of a thousand heavily armed Meccans was marching north to trap us.
We would meet our destiny on a rocky strip of land to the southwest called Badr. It was a regular stopping point for traders headed toward Yemen, as it contained reliable wells of clean water that could replenish a caravan’s most precious resource. The Messenger set out with his raiding party, which was equipped for only a minor skirmish and was woefully unprepared for what was awaiting us. We were accompanied by a train of seventy camels and three horses, and I rode behind my husband on his favorite red she-camel named Qaswa. Though it may have surprised the sheltered ladies of Byzantium and Persia, used to hiding behind perfumed walls while their men risked their lives, Arab women regularly accompanied our warriors to inspire them and remind them what they were fighting for. It was a tradition that the Messenger respected, and as a result, I would be witness to many battles over the years to come. It was perhaps this comfortable familiarity with the heart of warfare that would cause me to overreach on that day of infamy that was still decades away.
We rode through the northeast mountain pass until we entered the valley of Badr. It was almost completely surrounded by hills and there were only three gateways into or out of the watering hole-the route we had come upon, a pass leading northwest toward the Syrian road where we expected the caravan, and a southern track that faced Mecca. The valley itself was surprisingly cheerful, with verdant foliage watered by the rich collection of wells. The Messenger pitched camp near the Medina road and the men set up a cistern with which they could more easily access the well waters. A small command station was established by placing several poles made of palm trunks in a circle and then covering the top with a black canvas to shield it from the cruel sun. Here the Prophet held strategic meetings with his generals, while I looked to the north, my heart racing with the nervous anticipation that is the breath of a battlefield.
We were elated. The wells had fallen to us with ease and the caravan would follow suit soon. And then word came from a pair of sentries we had sent to check on the caravan’s progress that Abu Sufyan had diverted his train, and excitement turned to frustration. The Messenger had been prepared to pack up the camp and return home, when the steady roll of drums echoed from the south.
The trap had been sprung and Mecca’s armies were at our doorstep.
Soon the southern pass was swarming with warriors in glittering mail, waving defiant flags of red and blue. Their cries of challenge and their mockery of our puny force echoed across the valley and a terrible dread fell upon our camp.
I sat beside the Prophet, who had retired to the command station at first sight of the Meccan expedition. He knelt on the ground in quiet prayer, his eyes closed and his brow furrowed as he attempted to contact the angels and find some guidance. My father stood behind, a heavy broadsword in his hand, ready to defend the Messenger should the Meccans break through the line of defense that was even now forming around the command post.
As I shaded my eyes from the blazing sunlight, I looked down at the advancing Meccan army and my heart fell. We were heavily outnumbered, although the haze that covered the southern passage made it difficult to determine the true numbers of our adversaries. I guessed that Mecca had a two-to-one advantage (I would later learn that it was three to one) and the odds of victory against this numerically superior and better-armed foe were not worth calculating.
A sad thought crossed my mind. After everything I had been through in my young life, at only eleven years of age it might all come to an end right here, before the sun went down. Though even the pagans did not condone killing women and children (I was both), I could smell the bloodlust from across the valley-feral, animal, unthinking. When the fire of war was ignited in men’s hearts, women and children could and would die, as they always had throughout history, and I had no guarantee of clemency. Then again, perhaps death beside my husband and my father would be preferable to what would be done to me if I were captured and taken back to Mecca as a slave.
And then I heard a shout from the enemy lines. I looked across the valley and saw three men step away from the Meccan forces and walk fearlessly into the rocky plain between camps. I recognized them immediately as three of the most prominent leaders of Mecca. Utbah, the father of Hind, led his brother Shaybah and his son Waleed, their swords sparkling under the glare of the cloudless sky. This was an ancient ritual of warfare that I had heard about but never witnessed with my own eyes. Before the Arab tribes fought, they always sent their most feared warriors to face each other in a duel of honor. And the Meccans had sent Utbah, whose yellow-green eyes were so much like his daughter’s that I wondered if Hind herself had come disguised as a man.
As Utbah approached the middle ground between armies, he looked over the rows of Muslim men, wearing old leather armor and carrying rusty blades and spears, and laughed. He spit at the ground before him, as if challenging men of this lowly caliber were an insult to his honor. And then I saw his eyes fall on a young man who stood by Hamza at the front line and Utbah’s sneer twisted into a gape of shock.
And then I realized that the thin and tall youth he gazed at was Abu Huzayfa-his son. Like Abu Sufyan’s daughter Ramla, Utbah’s son Abu Huzayfa had defected to the Muslims, adding to the enmity between Muhammad and the tribal chiefs, who accused him of seducing their children with sorcery. I saw the troubled look on my husband’s face as he saw father and son stare at each from across the battle lines, and I realized that the Messenger would never have allowed Abu Huzayfa to come with the raiding party had he known this would be the outcome.
But then Utbah regained his composure, a mask of iron covering his raging emotions. He waved his sword defiantly and issued the ancient words of challenge.
“Muhammad! Here stand the lions of Quraysh,” Utbah said. “Send forth worthy men to face us-or surrender in shame.”
To my horror, I saw Abu Huzayfa unsheathe his sword and move forward, ready to duel his own father to the death. And then Hamza caught the stern look on my husband’s face and he put a restraining arm on the boy’s shoulder.
“No. Not you.”
Abu Huzayfa stepped back and his own mask of defiance fell, and I saw in his eyes terrible grief.
And then I felt a rustle of movement beside me as the Prophet rose and chose the champions who would defend the Muslims. He gazed at the eager faces of his warriors, and then made a decision that I knew was tearing his heart in two. The best men to face Utbah’s challenge were those who shared his own blood. He pointed to three of his most beloved family members-his cousin Ubayda ibn Harith, his uncle Hamza, and Ali, the boy he treated like a son. I felt tears burning my eyes. I could not imagine how hard it was to send the people he loved the most to face the possibility of death before his very eyes.
The three chosen ones of the Ahl-al-Bayt, the House of the Prophet, stepped forward proudly onto the field, facing their opponents. Hamza had tossed aside his bow for a broadsword, and Ubayda held aloft a saber with a jewel-encrusted hilt that shimmered in his hands.
And then Ali unsheathed his sword and I heard a gasp and realized with some surprise that it was my own. He held in his hand a blade unlike any I had ever seen. Two blades actually, for the sword split in half as it tapered to the point, making it look like a forked serpent’s tongue. The hilt was made of polished silver, and gold filigree was etched onto the dual blades, which had a black sheen that suggested they were forged not from steel but from some other metal I had never encountered. I would later learn that this sword was called Dhul Fiqar and belonged to the Messenger himself. Whenever I asked him in later years where he had acquired such an unusual and magnificent blade, he merely smiled and changed the subject.
Ali flicked his wrist and Dhul Fiqar cut through the air, making a strange singing sound that added to its mystery. He moved forward to face his opponents, and I saw his eye fall on Waleed-one of the men who had tried to assassinate the Prophet the night he escaped Mecca. There was a strange look between them, and I remembered what Ali had said of that night and the promise he had made to Waleed that the next time they would meet, the brother of Hind would die.
A shadow fell over the battlefield and I looked up to see that a heavy cloud blanketed the sun. Which was peculiar, as the sky had been absolutely clear only moments before.
There was a moment of terrible silence, as if history itself were holding its breath. And then, with a cry of fury, Utbah rushed at the men who had answered his challenge. Ubayda moved to intercept him and their swords met with a terrifying crash. And then Hamza was upon Shaybah and Ali faced young Waleed.
Sparks flew as the three men struck at one another, and there was a terrifying beauty to their dance. Despite his age and bulk, Hamza spun and parried like a youth, and Ubayda struck at Utbah’s sword with such fury that I was surprised it did not shatter under the blows.
My eyes flew to Ali, who seemed to be moving at a different speed from the others. It was as if time around him slowed; his sword movements were elegant and beautiful, like those of a fish swimming in a gentle stream. Waleed looked confused as he met Ali’s attack, as if he also sensed something was different about his opponent. I saw the looks of consternation from men on both sides of the divide as Ali fought from inside the strange dreamworld that he alone seemed to inhabit.
And then I thought the sun must have emerged from behind the cloud, as Dhul Fiqar began to sparkle and glow, the blade shining brightly as if it were a torch in Ali’s hand. But I soon realized with some shock that the field was still covered in shadow and I could not account for the strange light that was emanating from the sword.
Waleed saw it, too, and his mouth fell open in shock. And at that moment, Ali raised the sword and, with the grace of an eagle racing toward its prey, he ran the blade through Waleed’s neck. The young man’s head fell cleanly off its shoulders with one stroke and blood erupted like a volcano from the severed neck. Waleed’s headless body stood frozen as if in disbelief and then fell to the side.
Ali’s prophecy had at last come true.
I heard a soft moan and saw that Abu Huzayfa was struggling to keep his composure at the sight of his brother’s decapitation. And then the cloud that had unexpectedly covered the sun evaporated just as mysteriously, and the field was burning with light again. I saw Utbah’s face go white as he saw his son’s head lying only a few feet away from him, and then, with the terrible cry of a man who no longer wished to live, he threw himself at Ubayda.
An instant later I saw Hamza slash down onto Shaybah’s shoulder. Hamza’s broadsword tore through muscle and bone until Shaybah’s sword arm was ripped away, and the champion of Quraysh died in a flood of blood and convulsions.
Utbah now stood alone against three men, and yet he continued to fight as if he were supported by an army. There was a madness in his eyes that gave him a ferocity I have never seen before on any battlefield. The Prophet’s cousin Ubayda fell back under Utbah’s furious blows and then suddenly made a swift kick with his leg, catching the Meccan chieftain behind the ankle. Utbah stumbled and fell.
But as he did so, he swung his ugly sword and cut off Ubayda’s leg above his knee. Ubayda screamed in agony as a river of gore erupted from his stump, and I heard a terrible sound of grief erupt from Muhammad’s throat.
Utbah managed to get to his feet and moved toward Ubayda, ready to deliver the deathblow. He raised his sword high…and Ali threw Dhul Fiqar across the battlefield. It spun in the air like a disk, flying with perfect precision, until the double blades connected with Utbah’s sword arm and severed his wrist.
Utbah did not cry out, did not appear to feel any pain. He stood weaponless and alone, his eyes glistening as he stared at the headless body of his beloved son. And then Hamza was upon him and the mighty broadsword tore through Utbah’s rib cage and emerged from his back, like a knife cutting through a milk curd.
Utbah stood there, impaled through the heart. I saw him gaze across the field to his surviving son, his traitorous boy who had chosen Muhammad over him. Abu Huzayfa’s face was frozen in horror as he met his dying father’s gaze.
And then Utbah did something that I will never forget or perhaps understand. He smiled at Abu Huzayfa and nodded, as if he were proud of him. With a final shudder, the father of Hind fell to his knees and returned to the God he had denied.
Silence reigned over the battlefield as the horrified Meccans dispatched sentries to recover the bodies of their slain champions. Hamza and Ali lifted Ubayda, who was swimming in a pool of his own blood but somehow managed to live. They carried their kinsman to the Messenger’s command post, resting his head in my husband’s lap. My father immediately knelt down and tried to bandage the stump and cut off the bleeding, but we all knew that Ubayda had lost too much blood for Abu Bakr’s efforts to matter.
A shadow fell over us and I saw Abu Huzayfa standing there, looking down at the men who had killed his father, uncle, and brother. He reached for his belt, his hand floating toward the hilt of his own blade. I felt a scream of warning rising in my throat…and then Abu Huzayfa removed a wolfskin flask that was buckled near his scabbard. And he knelt down and poured water into Ubayda’s lips, giving him one final drink before the angel took him.
Ubayda sucked on the flask, and then coughed up blood. He looked gratefully at Abu Huzayfa, and I thought I saw in his eyes a plea for forgiveness. Abu Huzayfa did not smile in return, but he nodded slowly and walked off to grieve alone.
Ubayda turned to his cousin Muhammad, whom he had followed to his death.
“Am…am I not a martyr…?”
I saw tears glistening in my husband’s black eyes.
“Indeed you are.”
Ubayda smiled at that and went still.
The Prophet closed Ubayda’s eyes with his hand and then rose to face the Meccan army. The ritual of challenge had been completed.
The Battle of Badr was about to begin.
I gazed across the field to the massive army that was ready to move and avenge the deaths of its heroes. The acrid smell of blood was in the air, and I could taste the sweat and fear that covered the valley like the cloud that had appeared during the challenge.
And then I saw a tall and handsome figure emerge from the Meccan lines and my blood ran cold. Abu Jahl moved forward with dignity to stand near the pool of blood that marked Utbah’s fall. He stared across the field to the command post and then clapped his hands contemptuously.
The Prophet met his gaze without a word. And then I saw Abu Jahl’s eyes fall on me and a smile played across his sensuous lips. I wrapped my scarf closer across my breasts, and he smiled wider at my discomfiture, like a wolf that had found the weakest lamb in the flock. I suddenly had a terrible image of what would happen if our men were defeated and I was taken back to Abu Jahl’s tent as a slave. The memory of how his well-manicured hands had torn apart Sumaya’s womb without any hesitation haunted me.
“It appears that consorting with pretty girls has not drained you Muslims of your valor,” Abu Jahl said with an exaggerated bow. “But three against three is an even match. Is your puny band ready to face the might of a thousand? You will all die before the sun sets.”
The Messenger bent down to the ground. I watched in confusion as his sturdy fingers reached for the earth underneath my sandals. He picked up a handful of orange pebbles and then closed his fist around them.
And then my husband rose and stepped forward until he, too, stood alone on the battlefield, his eyes locked on Abu Jahl only twenty feet away from him.
“By Him in whose hand is the soul of Muhammad,” he began, “no man will be slain this day, fighting against them in steadfast hope of his reward, advancing, not retreating, but God shall straightaway enter him into Paradise.”
His words reverberated throughout the plain as if the rocks themselves were speaking. And then I saw the front lines of our raiding party move into perfectly straight formation behind the Prophet, heads held up, weapons at the ready. The contrast between them and the disorganized and slouching Meccan soldiers was striking. At that instant, I understood why the Prophet had insisted that men and women line themselves in perfectly straight rows every Friday for communal prayers. The discipline and the unity they had practiced for the past few years was now second nature. The Muslims were not three hundred individual men facing a thousand. They were one giant body that moved and acted in unison. As I witnessed the martial discipline on display, I felt a stirring of hope in my heart that we might just survive this encounter.
The Messenger stepped forward and raised his clenched fist as if he held an invisible javelin. Abu Jahl moved back warily, sensing something was about to happen. His eyes darted to the Muslim archers, whose deadly arrows were all trained on him.
At that instant, the wind rose and began to howl like a jackal. The sudden gusts stirred the sands, causing clouds of dust to rise from the rocky earth.
And then I saw Muhammad, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, shake his fist and then throw the pebbles he had gathered from beneath my feet toward the army of Quraysh. The tiny rocks flew across the plain like a thousand spears hurtling forward to rain death.
“Defaced be these faces!” The Messenger’s words rang with authority, and I felt a flash of awe when I recognized the Voice that came during Revelation thundering from his lungs.
And then all hell broke loose. The Muslims charged straight at the Meccan army even as the wind raged and sent a cloud of sand toward the Quraysh. I heard screams of rage and triumph as our soldiers tore across the field and engaged the surprised enemy. The Meccans fought back desperately, but their efforts were impeded by the sudden raging sandstorm that had descended on them from all sides.
I strained to see what was happening, but the whirling clouds of dust made it almost impossible. I could hear the clang of metal and the painful screams of the injured. The dry air was suddenly filled with the terrible scent of blood, gore, and feces, the three odors that dying men exude as their final curse on a cruel world that brought them this fate. My mouth was painfully dry and I could taste fiery salt from the wind as it tried to find its way into my lungs. I fell back, coughing and struggling to breathe. The earth beneath me felt cold and clammy, as if I were already locked inside a grave.
The madness of battle always plays tricks on the mind, and as I staggered to find refuge from the biting wind, I thought I heard the sound of horses thundering all around me. Since we had brought only three and the Quraysh had dozens in their camp, I felt a flash of panic as I looked around for any sign of enemy horsemen racing up to deliver death.
But the whinnying and hooves that I heard seemed to be moving toward the Quraysh, not away from them. I looked up in confusion and for a moment the cloud of dust parted and I thought I saw men dressed in white riding mighty stallions racing through the sand, trampling the Meccans under their relentless assault.
Whatever it was that I saw, whether an illusion of the wind or a ghostly army riding down from heaven, Abu Jahl seemed to see it as well. I could see him standing alone amid the chaos, looking around in disbelief as his men fell to the slaughter. And then he dropped to his knees amid the whirling sand and raised his hands to the sky, calling out to his gods.
“Allat! Al-Uzza! Manat! Daughters of God, help us!” he cried out in despair. “Hubal, lord of Mecca, vanquish your enemies!”
And then I thought the wind changed and I could hear cold, terrifying laughter in its midst. The sand flew around us and it appeared that we were alone in the center of a dust devil that swirled up into heaven. I struggled to stay standing as earth and air became one flowing dune.
As I fell to my knees and tried to cover my face from the burning sand, I saw something that I will never forget. Abu Jahl was kneeling, his hands in front of his face, his mouth contorted in horror. And then out of the wall of flying sand, I saw what looked like a figure emerge, dressed in a gown of flowing white and gold.
It was Sumaya.
The phantom raised a hand and reached out to the man who had ended her life. But I saw no anger or bitterness in her gaze. Just an infinite compassion that overwhelmed my heart.
Whether it was the product of my fevered imagination or a vision from the afterlife, perhaps I will never know. But Abu Jahl recoiled as if he, too, saw something in the veil of dust. I heard him scream and strike out at the ghostly figure with a sword.
Sumaya, if that is truly who it was, lowered her hand sadly and vanished into the ethereal swirl from which she had emerged. And then the sands parted as Muslim soldiers of flesh and blood, not these strange hauntings of the wind, descended on Abu Jahl from all sides and cut off his head.
I saw the disembodied head fly across the sky, carried by the unearthly wind, until it landed at my feet. I stared down at Abu Jahl’s face, his thick lips curled in fear, and then saw a hand reach down and grab the grisly remains by a tuft of gray hair.
It was the Messenger of God, who held up the decapitated head of his worst enemy, blood still pouring from the severed neck tendons.
I recoiled in horror at the sight of the man I loved holding this macabre trophy. And then the Messenger turned to me and I saw that he was not exulting in the downfall of his foe. Instead he looked sad.
“He was my friend once” is all he said. And at that moment, I realized the true burden that he carried.
The wind died down and I could see that Muslims had broken through the Meccan defenses. The enemy camp was uprooted and the pagans were in disarray.
The Messenger turned to the southern face of the valley and held up the head of Abu Jahl for all to see.
“Behold the enemy of God!”
The sight of Abu Jahl’s severed skull cheered the Muslims and sent the Meccans into a panicky retreat. I watched as our enemies, armed with the finest weapons and sparkling ringed armor, fled over the southern pass, leaving the field of Badr covered in a sea of corpses.
EVERY VICTORY HAS A price.
That night we returned to Medina, the younger men joyfully boasting of their prowess, while the more mature thanked God for His miraculous aid on the battlefield. We had killed over seventy of the most prominent leaders of Quraysh, the “best morsels of Mecca’s liver,” as the Messenger called them. Aside from Abu Jahl and Utbah, the day had seen the death of Umayya-at the hands of his former slave Bilal, whom he had once tortured in the public square of Mecca. The gentle African whose beautiful voice summoned us to prayers had avenged himself on the battlefield, impaling his former master on the end of a spear.
Along with the mighty lords who had been slain, we had captured over fifty of the highest-ranking noblemen of the city, who were now tied together like common slaves and dragged back to the oasis. Some would be ransomed in the weeks to come. And others would be executed for their past crimes. In one day, nearly the entire leadership of Mecca had been killed or captured.
We were giddy with joy, overwhelmed with our feeling that God was truly with us. As the men sang songs of victory, I ignored the demands of modesty and loudly joined in. Only the Messenger remained silent, pensive, although he finally smiled when we entered the streets of Medina and were met with the jubilation of the crowds.
The captives were taken away to be temporarily housed in barns and storage rooms, since the city as yet had no prisons. Those who were to be spared execution would eventually be allowed to live with some dignity in the houses of Muslim families until their people ransomed them. The Messenger had made it clear that prisoners of war were guests and had to be treated with the Arab tradition of hospitality until their fate was determined.
The Prophet led the joyful warriors to the Masjid, where he was planning to deliver a sermon to mark this momentous occasion. But as he approached the courtyard, I saw him stop in his tracks and grasp at his heart.
For a moment, terror gripped me that he was ill or had been injured unknowingly during the battle. But then he stood up tall and turned, his face full of grief more than physical pain. And then I saw a man standing alone by the doorway of a grand house that stood near the Masjid. It was the kindly Uthman, who had been excused from battle to take care of Ruqayya, whose fever had returned.
I saw tears glistening on Uthman’s cheeks and felt a terrible sense of foreboding.
“What has happened?” the Messenger asked, his voice cracking.
Uthman bowed his head, breathing in rapid gulps of grief.
“Your daughter Ruqayya…she fell ill…and…and…I’m sorry…”
I suddenly felt my husband teeter, as if his legs were giving way. I grabbed him from behind, but I was too small to keep him standing. Umar saw what was happening and grasped the Messenger by the shoulders to keep him from collapsing.
And then a sudden scream erupted from inside Uthman’s house. The doors flew open and I saw Fatima emerge. Faster than my eye could capture, she was in the Messenger’s arms, crying out in such horrifying wails of grief that my blood filled with ice.
There was something so visceral about Fatima’s screams that I felt myself being swept up into another world. A primordial realm where the idea of sorrow itself is born in the mind of God. Her wails spread like a brushfire and suddenly all the women in the city were caught in her grief, beating their breasts and weeping for the Prophet’s daughter.
Ruqayya, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, was gone.
As the Prophet held Fatima close, I looked at her in awe and fear. The unearthly sounds that were coming from her throat had a power unlike any I had ever heard before.
It was as if when Fatima wept, the world itself wept.
Muawiya, the son of Abu Sufyan, watched as the defeated Meccan army sulked back into the city. The men looked more confused than humiliated, unable to understand what had happened on the battlefield of Badr. The exhausted soldiers, dehydrated from the long trek through the desert, slumped toward the well of Zamzam, ignoring the accusing looks of the women who had heard of their devastating defeat at the hands of a pathetic little raiding party.
His father gazed at his vanquished comrades in shock. Abu Sufyan looked through the crowd, stinking of blood and urine, for the other leaders of the Assembly. But he saw no sign of the great lords who had controlled the city for decades.
“Where is Abu al-Hakam?” he called out loudly for the man whom the Muslims referred to as Abu Jahl.
A young man whom Muawiya recognized as a silversmith named Nawaf bin Talal stumbled by with the help of makeshift crutches of palm wood. His right foot had been shattered by a spear and had turned an ugly green, almost definitely requiring amputation.
“Slain” was all Nawaf said as he stopped to rest against a wooden post used to tie camels.
Muawiya’s eyebrows rose. This was an important development. Abu Jahl had been his father’s long-standing rival for control of the council. With him out of the way, there were few impediments to Abu Sufyan seizing total control over Mecca. Perhaps, he thought with a secret smile, his childhood dream of becoming the king of the Arabs might still be realizable.
And then Muawiya felt the air grow colder around him as it always did when his mother appeared. Hind had heard the news of the Meccan defeat and had come to personally release her rage on the incompetents who had ruined her well-crafted plan.
She spit at the train of wounded and tired soldiers and let her voice rise until it resounded off the stone walls of the ancient city.
“Maybe next time we should send the women of Mecca to fight, since there are clearly no men among you!”
Nawaf ’s weary face contorted and he stepped forward, despite the obvious agony of his crushed heel. And then he did something that no one had ever dared.
He spit in Hind’s face.
“Hold your tongue, woman, for you speak ill of your own father.”
Hind stood there, her mouth open. The glob of mucus hung from her cheek like a yellow tear. Muawiya had never seen her so taken aback. All the blood drained from Hind’s face, leaving her olive skin a sickly green not dissimilar to Nawaf ’s dying foot.
“Father…no…” She gripped her chest as if she had to pressure her heart to keep beating.
“Not just your father, Utbah.” Nawaf sneered. “But your brother Waleed and your uncle Shaybah as well.”
Hind’s eyes flew to the back of her head, and she fell to the ground, wailing like a madwoman. She tore her clothes with her talonlike fingernails and poured sand over her hair in grief.
“Who did it?! Who killed my father?!”
Nawaf gathered his crutches and began to hobble away, undoubtedly toward a surgeon who could do the ugly work that was needed to save his life. He turned back and threw out a name, like a man tossing scraps to a dog.
“Hamza.”
Hind’s face went from green to bright red as her fury built inside her. She began to dig her nails into her own cheeks, drawing blood.
Muawiya saw the crowd’s fascination with his mother’s performance, both riveted and repulsed, and decided that it would be a good time to announce what needed to be said at long last in public.
“We must end this before more good men of Quraysh die. It is time for a truce with Muhammad,” Muawiya said, his young voice echoing through the streets. He saw the warning look on his father’s face but ignored it. If he were ever going to fulfill his destiny as the leader of the Arab nation, he had to reach an accommodation with the man who was doing the hard work of uniting the desert tribes for him.
There were loud murmurs of assent from the people, but his words were like a hot needle tearing into Hind’s wound.
“No!” she screamed, more demon than woman. “There will be no truce!”
And then she was on her feet and racing toward the Sanctuary. She tore open her robes, exposing her perfectly rounded breasts to the idols. She ran her bloodstained hands across her flesh sensuously.
“Hear me, O sons of Mecca!” Hind cried out in a voice that was not quite human. “The martyrs of Badr will be avenged! The enemy will be crushed beneath our feet! If you do not have the courage, then your women will march without you! We will tear their eyes from their skulls! Rip off their ears and wear them on our necklaces! We shall eat of their flesh! Their hearts! Their livers! Who among you is man enough to join us?!”
Her throaty screams, her sheer insane passion, boiled the blood of the Meccans. Muawiya watched in despair as the crowd fled from his side and surrounded her, spinning and dancing with the frenzy she inspired. Soon, both men and women were chanting along with Hind, mesmerized by her spell.
Muawiya shook his head, awed and frightened by his mother’s ability to capture the minds of the masses. They were like flies caught in a glittering web as she steadily crept up to feed upon their souls. He turned to Abu Sufyan, who had just been handed the keys of Mecca with Abu Jahl’s death and yet looked increasingly old and irrelevant.
“Behold, Father, how a woman steals your throne,” Muawiya said contemptuously. “But fear not, one day I shall regain the honor of the House of Umayya.”
And with that, the brooding young man walked away, his mind racing with thoughts of how to turn the troubling course of events to his advantage.
Even as our enemies plotted against us in Mecca, a new threat was rising on our very doorsteps. The Muslim victory at Badr had changed the political map of the peninsula. The Ummah had been transformed from a small and insignificant community into a force to be reckoned with, not just for Arabs but for Jews.
Yathrib was the ancient home of three Jewish tribes-the Bani Qaynuqa, the Bani Nadir, and the Bani Qurayza. In the beginning, the Jews had cautiously welcomed the Messenger’s arrival as the new arbiter. Muhammad was clearly a man committed to establishing justice and order in the oasis and ending the tribal wars that pitted not only Arabs against Arabs but sometimes Jews against Jews. The Messenger had drafted a treaty of mutual defense whereby the Jewish and Arab tribes would unite against any attacker but both would be free to follow their own religion.
But it was that very matter of religion that had quickly led to strife. My husband claimed to be a prophet in the line of Moses and the Jewish messengers. He had ordered us to pray toward Jerusalem and even fasted on the Jewish Day of Atonement, which they called Yom Kippur and we knew as Ashura. And yet the Jews had made it clear that he could not possibly be a prophet of their God, since they alone were the Chosen People. The Arabs, even though they were descended from Abraham through his first son, Ishmael, were not included in God’s covenant. The Messenger had been shocked and saddened by their rejection. To him, God’s message was for all mankind. How could it be that only one tribe would be privy to His Word? And yet the Jews held steadfast to their ancient beliefs and did not shy away from branding Muhammad as an impostor. And the relations between our communities had quickly chilled.
But not all of the Jews of Medina were hostile to us. A rabbi named Husayn ibn Sallam had come to respect the Messenger as a sincere man seeking to bring the Arabs a better religion than the barbaric idolatry in which they were immersed. Ibn Sallam worked tirelessly to build bridges between the two faiths, to the derision of many among his own clan. His public show of friendship with Muhammad had cost him dearly, and the rabbi had become increasingly isolated from his fellow believers.
And there was another, more private, supporter among the Jewish tribes. A beautiful girl named Safiya, daughter of the Jewish chieftain Huyayy ibn Akhtab of the Bani Nadir. When she had first heard that a prophet had arrived from the south, claiming to bring the Word of God to a wayward people, Safiya had been swept away by the romance of the idea. She had always loved her father’s tales of Moses confronting the Pharaoh and leading God’s people to freedom. Of Elijah standing up to the hubris of Jezebel and her Israelite puppet Ahab. Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezra-all messengers of the God of Israel who had stood in defiance of power with the humble strength of truth.
Ever since she was a girl, Safiya had fantasized about living in those days, when God spoke to men and the world was renewed by heroes of faith. Growing up as the daughter of a tribal leader and politician, she had watched the difficulties of ordering life in the desert and the troubling choices her beloved father, Huyayy, had to make to keep his people safe in the wilderness. Safiya had longed for God to send another prophet and take away her father’s burdens. To clarify right from wrong with the sword of justice so that the shadows of ambiguity that weighed on men’s souls would vanish under the rays of divine law.
So when word spread through the oasis of a prophet who spoke words of power that changed men’s souls, she had been filled with wonder. Could it be that her prayer had been answered, that she had indeed lived to see the coming of God’s Chosen One, the man whom her people had hoped for since the days the Temple walls fell into oblivion? But she had quickly learned that her people did not share her enthusiasm and that her father in particular viewed the rise of this Arab prophet as a threat to Jewish survival.
Safiya had buried her fascination with Muhammad in her heart. She kept wisely silent when she heard her father mock the man, denigrating the claim of this illiterate Arab to divine inspiration. And yet, over the past two years, this illiterate Arab’s power had only grown, and her father no longer dismissed him as a madman. Muhammad’s movement could not be ignored as a foolish cult anymore. The world was changing around them, and Muhammad’s increasing power had become a source of alarm for the Jewish tribes.
And so it was that Safiya watched one night as three men sat glumly in her house, trying to make sense of a world they no longer recognized. Her father had invited Kab, the chieftain of the Jewish tribe Bani Qurayza, as well as their Arab ally Ibn Ubayy for what had become a weekly meeting to discuss the changing political face of Medina. But the three chieftains had sat around Huyayy’s elegant cedar table for almost an hour without a word, each lost in his own thoughts about the remarkable Muslim victory at Badr and what it meant for the oasis. Safiya served them honey cakes, which remained untouched. Unable to bear the silence any longer, she finally decided to speak up.
“Why do you not rejoice, Father?” she asked casually, but with full knowledge that the subject was no casual matter. “Your allies have won a victory against the idolaters.”
Huyayy gave her a sharp look. “These men of Quraysh I have known for many years,” he responded. “Idolaters they may have been, but they were honest in their trade. I take no pleasure in their deaths.”
The Arab chieftain Ibn Ubayy grasped his wine goblet and took a long sip. He appeared calm, but anger burned inside him.
“Muhammad’s victory has convinced these Muslims that God is truly on their side,” he said with an incredulous tone.
Safiya hesitated. She knew that she was pushing her luck, but she needed to say what was in her heart.
“Perhaps he is,” she said courageously. “Rabbi Ibn Sallam says-”
Huyayy knocked over his wineglass, the purple stain rapidly spreading over the beige table coverlet.
“Don’t quote that old fool to me!” Like many, Huyayy was discomfited by the broad-minded rabbi’s willingness to test the boundaries of Jewish tradition and scripture.
Safiya recoiled as if she had been slapped. She could feel her cheeks grow warm with hurt. Her father had changed so much since Muhammad had arrived in Medina. Normally boisterous and kind, he had become increasingly brooding and prickly. And she blamed the treacherous Ibn Ubayy for poisoning his mind with plots and fears.
As Safiya turned to leave, her head held proudly, she was surprised to feel her father’s strong hand take hold of her wrist.
“Forgive me, my daughter,” he said softly. “The world is changing so rapidly. I feel lost.”
It was the first truly honest thing he had said to her in months.
“You should indeed feel lost,” Ibn Ubayy said with a sympathetic look. “The balance of power has shifted dangerously. The Muslims have been emboldened by their victory at Badr. They consider it a clear miracle for such a small band to rout a powerful army.”
Kab, the chieftain of Bani Qurayza, laughed coldly.
“Miracle? Bah. The Meccans were overconfident and underprepared. There is no miracle in hubris and poor planning.”
“Be that as it may, Muhammad’s victory will raise his standing among the tribes of Arabia,” Ibn Ubayy said pointedly. “He has proven that Yathrib is a formidable threat to the northern caravan routes. Soon the tribes will send him heralds seeking alliance in order to protect their trade. And where will that leave your people, my friend?”
“Where it always does,” Huyayy answered bitterly. “As outsiders.”
Safiya knew that this Arab was seeking to use her people to advance his own ambitions, regardless of what the consequences might be for the Jews. And she would be damned if she would let him play her father like a Bedouin flute.
“Do not rush to such judgments, Father,” she said quickly, ignoring Ibn Ubayy’s piercing gaze. “Muhammad has kept his end of the treaty. As long as we remain steadfast to the truce, we will prosper from the trade that these new alliances will secure for Yathrib.”
Ibn Ubayy rose and approached her. She instinctively moved back. The chieftain of Khazraj maneuvered himself between Huyayy and his daughter, his eyes never leaving hers.
“You have a good heart, my dear, but alas, you are a rare and precious flower,” he said with an air of affected sorrow. “The truth is, most men’s hearts are not like yours. They are filled with greed and jealousy. Even if your people prosper under Muhammad’s reign, what do you think will happen? The Muslims will resent you for your skill in bargaining. They will claim that you are stealing from them, hoarding the wealth that belongs to their community.”
He was, of course, striking the very nerves that had been rubbed raw in the memories of her people. Their history was filled with such betrayals and Ibn Ubayy knew exactly the impact his calculated words would have. And to make matters worse, his old ally Kab, the head of Bani Qurayza, nodded in quick agreement.
“It is what always happens to our people, Safiya,” he said, sounding like a wise uncle reasoning with a stubborn child. “Since the days of Jacob and his sons, the world has resented our tribe for its prowess in commerce. Whenever we flourish, the nations conspire to take it away from us.”
“You are wise to look at history, my friend,” Ibn Ubayy continued. “This is not the first time that an impostor has risen, claiming to speak for your God. And what do your rabbis say must be done when a false prophet is in your midst?”
Kab began to glean where his Arab friend’s argument was leading. He leaned close to Huyayy, who looked weary from the weight of the conversation.
“He must be opposed. His lies must be unmasked before the people.”
Ibn Ubayy grabbed a velvet-backed chair, plumping himself down next to Huyayy. With Kab to his right and the Arab to his left, Safiya thought her father looked liked a tiny mouse trapped between the talons of a mighty bird.
“Follow the wisdom of your fathers, Huyayy,” Ibn Ubayy said, his eyes burning with the fire of intrigue. “Muhammad claims to be a prophet like Moses, your lawgiver. Yet he cannot even read or write. He only knows of your Torah what he has heard from the mouths of others. Fragments of tales, misunderstood and misconstrued. His entire claim to power lies in his alleged revelations from God. Challenge Muhammad on his knowledge of scripture, show that his Qur’an differs from your Torah. Undermine the credibility of his prophecy, and you will defeat him in a way that no army ever could. That is the only way that you will protect your people from this new religion that seeks to dispossess you from your rightful status as the Chosen People.”
Safiya knew that what Ibn Ubayy was proposing was far more dangerous than any contest of swords. Men could make war over land, water, or women, and still peace could be achieved, for the underlying matter under dispute was tangible, rational. But if Ibn Ubayy convinced her father to launch an ideological war against the Muslims, if they tried to insult or denigrate their neighbors’ faith, then there could be no reconciliation.
If there was one thing Safiya had learned from arguing about the Torah with her own people, it was that fighting over intangible ideas was a losing proposition for all sides. Opinions hardened and conflict became a matter of hazy beliefs, phantoms that could never be satisfied, no matter how much blood was spilled. If the Jews allowed themselves to fall into this trap, they would become like a gazelle prodding a sleeping lion.
“Father, don’t listen to him!” she cried, falling at Huyayy’s feet and clinging to his knees. “It is not the way of our people! Jews do not ridicule the beliefs of others! Let them have their religion and we ours. Or we risk bringing war upon us.”
Huyayy gazed at her and she could see how tired he was. The lines around his eyes had become so thick that he looked like an owl. He ran a hand through her sandy hair as he had when she was a little girl.
“War is already upon us, my child,” he said softly. “The Quraysh were the first to fall. We will be next. Unless the fire of Muhammad’s religion is quenched, it will consume the world-and our people with it.”
Safiya looked at her father with pleading eyes, but he rose and gently nudged her away. The Jewish chieftain turned to his guests with a look of grim determination.
“The time has come to show the world that this Arab who claims to speak for the God of Moses is a liar,” he said.
Ibn Ubayy and Kab smiled in satisfaction. They had finally come up with a plan they believed could tear Muhammad off the throne that he had steadily been building himself for the past two years.
The three men turned to walk into the courtyard and continue their conversation. Safiya stayed back, her heart heavy. There was no point in pursuing them, for she had lost the argument. She watched her father step through the carved oak doors into their manicured garden. And she had a vivid image in her heart of Huyayy walking into a lion’s den from which he would never return.
I sat near the Messenger in the courtyard of the Masjid as he shared with the worshipers the wondrous tale of Moses and Pharaoh. He was a remarkable storyteller, his hand gesticulating as he drew for his followers a vivid picture of the ancient prophet and his confrontation with the king of Egypt. All eyes were on him as Muhammad recited the newly revealed words of the Book.
Moses said, “Pharaoh, I am a messenger from the Lord of the Worlds
Duty bound to say nothing about God but the truth
And I have brought you a clear sign from your Lord.”
Pharaoh said, “Produce this sign you have brought, if you are telling the Truth.”
Then Moses threw down his staff, and behold, it was a serpent!
And he drew out his hand, and behold, it appeared white to the onlookers!
Gasps of awe spread through the crowd of worshipers at the startling images. As the words of the Qur’an flowed from the Messenger’s lips in magnificent Arabic verse, the serpent and the white hand were so clear that we could almost see them with our eyes.
And then I heard a loud cough coming from the back of the crowd. I looked up to see Huyayy, the Jewish chieftain of Bani Nadir, standing near the entrance to the courtyard. In his hand he held what appeared to be a scroll wrapped in blue velvet, although I did not recognize the writing that had been embossed in gold over the coverlet.
There were murmurs of surprise at Huyayy’s unexpected appearance. The Messenger had long invited the Jews to come hear him preach, but they had politely refused, saying they did not need him to teach them what they already knew. And now the leader of one of the most powerful tribes had come on Friday, when the Masjid was overflowing with believers who had flocked to hear the Messenger’s weekly sermon.
“Excuse me, but may I ask a question?” Huyayy’s voice was polite, but I sensed an edge there that I did not like.
I turned to my husband, who looked at the visitor warily before nodding.
“Who did you say it was that threw down the staff before Pharaoh?”
The Prophet met the other man’s challenging gaze calmly.
“It was not I that said it, for I only recite the words of God,” the Messenger responded. “God says in the holy Qur’an that it was Moses who threw the staff.”
Huyayy’s face contorted as if he were confused.
“How interesting. And yet the Torah says that it was Aaron that threw down the staff while Moses looked on.”
There was a murmur of surprise in the crowd. It was such a minor difference that I did not care-the point of the story obviously wasn’t whether Moses or Aaron had thrown the staff but Pharaoh’s defiance of God’s clear signs. And yet some of the less sophisticated believers, unable to grasp the subtleties of poetry, found this seeming discrepancy troubling.
Sensing that his challenge had the desired effect on at least some of the worshipers, Huyayy stepped closer to the Messenger and held aloft the velvet-covered scroll. He kissed it reverently before removing its wrap and unfurling the parchment to a page of what I assumed was Hebrew writing.
“Perhaps you can show us where in the Holy Torah it says that Moses threw down the staff?”
I felt the Messenger stiffen beside me.
“I cannot read,” he said, a matter that had once been a source of shame for him but had since the days of Islam been the one clear sign of God’s favor. That a man who was illiterate could suddenly recite such great words of poetry had been the proof for many Muslims of Muhammad’s divinely inspired mission. And now Huyayy was using his unlettered past as a sword to mock the Revelation.
“Oh yes, I forgot. I apologize,” he said, with no hint of apology in his tone. “But if you would indulge me, I have another question.”
I saw the Messenger’s dark eyes beginning to narrow in irritation.
“Ask, and if God has revealed it to me, I will answer.”
Huyayy looked at the men and women seated on the floor of the Masjid as he spoke.
“How many signs did God send to Pharaoh to let the Children of Israel go?”
That was easy. Even a young girl like me who was not well versed in theology had heard the story of Moses enough times to know the answer.
“The holy Qur’an says nine,” the Prophet responded with dignity.
Huyayy made an exaggerated look of surprise, his dark lips curling back to reveal yellowing teeth.
“Really? But the Torah claims that there were ten plagues. Perhaps God forgot one when He spoke to you.”
Now I could sense real unrest among the crowd. There was a rumble of conversation as people asked one another how the Messenger of God could have made a mistake like that. Even an illiterate man could still count, they whispered.
“Another question, if I may-”
I had had enough of this uninvited guest insulting my husband. I leaped to my feet and shouted at the top of my lungs.
“No, you may not! You only seek to mock him!”
Huyayy looked at me with amusement, and his contemptuous gaze made my heart pound in anger.
“I did not know that the child bride speaks for the Prophet. It was not so in the days of Moses.”
I felt a cooling hand against my forearm. The Messenger shook his head slightly and I felt a flush of embarrassment. I sat back down, suddenly wanting to be unseen and forgotten.
The Messenger turned is attention to Huyayy. He spoke calmly, but I could see the vein at his temple beginning to throb.
“Ask, and I will answer if God has revealed it to me.”
Huyayy stepped forward, his eyes glistening like a falcon on its prey.
“Who was Haman?”
The Messenger glanced at his followers, who were looking at him eagerly, pleading with their eyes from him to best this arrogant interloper.
“He was the Pharaoh’s adviser,” the Messenger said, repeating the verses of a Revelation that had come a few months before. “Haman built a tower of baked bricks so that his king could see if the God of Moses lived in heaven.”
Huyayy smiled triumphantly.
“Alas, I am confused. The only Haman I know of in the books of my people is in the legend of Esther. He was the adviser to the Persian king Ahasuerus, many centuries after Pharaoh. And the only tower I know of that is as you described is the Tower of Babel, built in the days when all mankind spoke one tongue. But that was centuries before Moses.”
Huyayy turned his attention the crowd with a look of pity.
“Surely if you were the Messenger of God, you would know that which was revealed to the prophets before you.”
I could feel a terrible wave of anger and confusion building among the worshipers. It was like the rumble preceding an earthquake. Some of the people looked at the Prophet with newfound distrust, as Huyayy had intended. But most were glaring at the Jew who had come to make a mockery of their most treasured beliefs.
In the dark silence that followed, I heard the rustle of robes as the Prophet rose to his feet. His eyes were shining with a fiery light that suddenly made me feel afraid. I had never seen him so angry.
“I am indeed the Messenger of God, as were my brothers the prophets Moses, David, and Solomon before me.” His voice was soft, but there was more danger in his tone than any angry shout.
Huyayy smiled in his sickly sweet falseness.
“You see, that really confuses me. For the books of my people say that David was a king, not a prophet. And Solomon-well, the books say that he was a reprobate who worshiped idols and cavorted with evil spirits.”
I had never heard this. The Solomon in the Messenger’s stories was always a man of great wisdom and piety.
“If your books say that, then they lie,” Muhammad said sharply, as if someone had impugned the reputation of his daughters. “Solomon was a sincere servant of God.”
“But how could that be?” Huyayy responded with the rhetorical flourish that now filled me with rage. “You claim that your Qur’an and our Torah come from the same God. Surely they could not contradict each other if that were so.”
I looked at the Messenger and saw him struggling for an answer. He was accustomed to defending his claim to prophecy from the pagan Arabs who rejected his words as mere poetic fables. But no one had ever dissected the stories of the Qur’an to show that they differed from the Book of the Jews-whose God the Messenger claimed had sent him. I suddenly realized that Huyayy’s gambit was a grave threat not only to the Prophet’s credibility but to the entire basis of our faith.
The Prophet’s teachings had taken the ancient gods away from us, and we could not go back to them any more than an adult can revert to being an infant. But now, in one fell swoop, Huyayy had threatened to take away also the One God for whom we had suffered for so many years. He was like a thief who steals everything a man owns and then returns one night to take his life as well. If the Messenger was not who he claimed to be, we were worse off than the pagan Arabs who still believed in something, even if it was nothing more than a dream wrapped around rocks and carved pieces of wood.
Without Allah, we had nothing but despair and emptiness. Huyayy wanted to take away the very meaning of our lives.
And then I saw the Prophet go terribly still. His body began to shake violently as the familiar tremors set in. I jumped to my feet as he fell to the ground, convulsing wildly. Sweat poured down his face and neck. I pushed the men around him aside and threw my cloak over him as he shivered violently.
“Stay back!” I shouted with all my authority as Mother of the Believers, and the crowd that threatened to surround him and cut off the precious flow of air obeyed. Through the corner of my eye, I could see Huyayy shaking his head in amusement, as if he had just seen a monkey perform a clever trick.
The Messenger’s tremors calmed and then stopped altogether. His eyes opened and I saw peace and tranquillity on his face. Muhammad rose to his feet slowly, and there were murmurs of relief from his followers. He turned to face Huyayy, the confusion gone and confidence shining from his handsome features.
“Behold what God has revealed to me,” he said, and then recited new verses of the Qur’an with flowing harmony.
There is among them a section who distort the Book with their tongues
You would think it is a part of the Book, but it is not part of the Book
And they say, “That is from God,” but it is not from God.
It is they who tell a lie against God, and well they know it.
Huyayy looked at him with raised eyebrows, as if demanding an explanation of these strange words.
“What nonsense is this?” he said, but I heard the first hint of uncertainty in his voice.
“God has revealed to me a great secret that your forefathers have hidden from mankind for centuries,” the Prophet said, his voice raised for all to hear. “The words you claim to be revealed to Moses in the Torah have been changed. Your priests and rabbis have corrupted the Book, distorting the true teachings of the prophets. That is why He has sent the holy Qur’an now, to bring mankind out of darkness and into the light.”
There was a moment of utter silence, like the stillness of night before the break of dawn. And then the Masjid erupted in pandemonium as Muslims excitedly repeated his words and debated their meaning.
I saw the looks of distrust vanish, and the confusion was replaced by cries of subhan-Allah-Glory be to God.
Huyayy was flummoxed. In this one stroke, the Messenger had taken away his entire argument, and indeed had flipped it on its head. Suddenly the subtle differences between the Book of the Jews and the Qur’an were no longer evidence of forgery on Muhammad’s part. Instead they were evidence that the Jews had continued their tradition of rebelling against their prophets and had even altered their own scriptures to suit themselves. Their failures to uphold their own religion had stripped them of their pretentious claim to be God’s Chosen, and Allah had sent his Message to a new people who were not trapped in a web of falsehood. The Messenger’s claim to prophecy was actually strengthened by the distinctions between his faith and that of his predecessors who had corrupted God’s Word.
Huyayy had tried to destroy our religion, but he had given it new life. Islam was no longer an upstart faith forever destined to suck on the teat of another people’s past. It now held itself as a restoration of ancient truth, the original religion of Abraham and Moses that had been corrupted over the centuries. Huyayy had tried to show that Islam was a deviation from Judaism, and the Prophet instead had shown that Judaism was a deviation from Islam. Huyayy’s people would no longer be looked upon by their Arab neighbors as wise sages whom Muslims should defer to but as heretics who had broken their own covenant with God.
I saw his face betray anger as his stratagem fell apart. As the crowd turned to jeer at him, he squared his shoulders and left the Masjid before the rules of hospitality were forgotten.
I looked at the Prophet, who was beaming like a child. The Revelation had freed him from having to show any deference to the Jews and Islam could now spread on the strength of its own authenticity. The shackles of the past were lifted. Instead of being the moon, shining with the reflected light of the People of the Book, Islam was now the sun. It could burn with its own fire and blot out the other stars, the earlier religions that had sought to illuminate men’s hearts.
A FEW WEEKS LATER, the final break from our Jewish brothers came. The Messenger received a Revelation that the believers were no longer to face Jerusalem in their daily prayers. Instead we would kneel toward the Kaaba at Mecca, the House that had been built by Abraham hundreds of years before the Temple of Solomon rose. It was a welcome change, for our hearts had always belonged to the Sanctuary.
The mihrab, the small prayer niche of palm wood that indicated the direction of Jerusalem, was boarded up. A new mihrab facing south was carved. As the Muslims bowed to Mecca for the first time in years, I could feel the collective longing in their souls for the city we had lost.
As I bowed my forehead to the cold earth, a thought flashed through my mind that I knew must be in the breasts of my neighbors. Now that the center of Islam was Mecca, we could not let the pagans hold on to the Sanctuary.
Mecca had so kindly brought war to our doorstep, and perhaps the time had come to return the favor.
Umm al-Fadl, the wife of Abbas, bent down to lift a bucket of water from the sacred well of Zamzam. She passed along the wooden casket to Abu Rafi, a freed slave who had been quietly teaching her about Islam. After the defeat of Badr, more and more people in Mecca were interested in learning about this strange faith that could give three hundred men victory over a thousand. Like her husband, who was an uncle to Muhammad, she had been slow to give up on the traditions of her ancestors, but the deaths of Mecca’s ruling elite at Badr had shaken her stubborn respect for the old ways.
As Umm al-Fadl dropped another bucket into the dark waters below, she heard familiar voices approaching. Abu Sufyan, who was now the unchallenged ruler of Mecca, was conversing in an urgent tone with her hated brother-in-law Abu Lahab.
“Our caravans are no longer safe to travel north, even along the coast,” Abu Lahab said grimly. “Muhammad’s forces control the passes and they have vowed to seize any Meccan goods heading for Syria.”
“Then we must take the eastern path through the Najd,” Abu Sufyan responded, reaching for a copper jug to lower into the well.
“The Najd is a barren waste with few wells!” Abu Lahab hissed. “Even our sturdiest camels risk death in that terrain.”
Abu Sufyan filled his jug and then took a long drink.
“It seems your nephew has us trapped,” he said after a pause. “As long as Medina blocks the northern passes, our trade with the Byzantines and the Persians is at a standstill.”
Abu Lahab leaned close to him, lowering his voice conspiratorially.
“Your wife is right. We must avenge Badr. We must destroy Muhammad once and for all.”
Abu Sufyan’s jaw flinched at the mention of Hind, but he nodded.
“I agree. Once the winter has passed, we will launch an attack on Medina,” he said, knowing that he really did not have any other choice. “We will gather our finest men and marshal all of our allies. I hope it will be enough.”
Abu Lahab snorted contemptuously.
“What do you mean, ‘you hope’?”
Abu Sufyan shrugged.
“Muhammad is a survivor. For almost fifteen years we have sought to defeat him. Yet he only grows stronger with time.”
Abu Lahab’s tiny eyes narrowed further.
“Well, his reign is at an end. Our men will destroy him!”
Abu Sufyan looked at the fat slug of a man who had never held a weapon his life and shook his head. Abu Lahab was exactly the kind of chieftain he despised. Unwilling to risk his own life but perfectly content to send young men to their deaths.
“Our people fear him,” he said. “Whatever happened at Badr, it has left a dark impression on their minds. The men believe Muhammad is a sorcerer who can control the wind. That he has armies of djinn at his command.”
Abu Lahab laughed, an ugly sound that lacked any humor.
“Don’t tell me you believe that nonsense?”
Abu Sufyan turned his head to face the Kaaba. For so many years, he had felt as if he were trapped in a bad dream, and some voice inside him was saying that it was time to wake up and face the world.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he said with a sigh. “Men whom I have always considered to be sober-minded came back from Badr weeping in terror over the djinn who they say fought alongside the Muslims. Warriors on white horses who emerged from the wind.”
Umm al-Fadl had been listening unobtrusively to their conversation, pretending to be absorbed in the work of filling her water cans. But her ears pricked up at this. She looked at Abu Rafi, who had silently stood at her side, ignored by these noblemen like all low-class workers. But his eyes went wide at the strange story and he spoke before Umm al-Fadl could stop him.
“Those were not djinn! They were angels!”
The chieftains turned and saw the tiny man with the pockmarked face for the first time. Abu Sufyan smirked and turned his back. It was beneath him to address this freed slave who was worth less than the mule droppings that littered the streets of Mecca.
But Abu Lahab was outraged at the stranger’s audacity.
“You! You’re one of them!”
Umm al-Fadl put a restraining arm on Abu Rafi, trying to lead him away from the confrontation. But he shook her off.
“Yes! I am a Muslim, and I no longer fear to reveal it. Not when the angels themselves descend to the Prophet’s aid.”
Abu Lahab’s face turned purple and he looked like an overstuffed grape, ready to burst.
“Let’s see if the angels will descend to your aid!”
And then he grabbed a sharp stone and slammed it into Abu Rafi’s face, knocking out his front teeth. Abu Rafi fell to the ground in pain, but Abu Lahab was not finished. He continued to pummel him until his features had devolved into a mass of blood.
Umm al-Fadl watched the unbridled cruelty with mounting rage.
“Stop it! You’ll kill him!”
Abu Lahab cast an amused look at his sister-in-law. His eyes locked on the curve of her breasts as they always did.
“So what? I am the chief of the clan! I determine who lives and who dies among the Bani Hashim.”
Umm al-Fadl turned to Abu Sufyan, the plea written on her face. But the lord of Quraysh merely turned away with distaste. Abu Lahab kicked Abu Rafi in the crotch, and she could see the poor man crying like a baby.
And then something broke inside of her, like a rusty latch that has kept an old door closed. And like the waters of Zamzam, something bubbled up inside of her that was very cold, very ancient.
She grabbed a tent pole that lay fallen on the ground.
“Abu Lahab!” she cried out in a voice she did not recognize. “Remind me. When you die, who will be the head of the clan?”
Her brother-in-law looked up at her, startled.
“What?”
And then the force that was raging within her took hold of her arm. Umm al-Fadl raised the tent pole and brought it crashing down with terrifying fury on Abu Lahab’s head.
There was a sound like a melon falling off a merchant’s cart and splattering on the cobbled street. Abu Lahab’s skull cracked and a burst of gore erupted from an exposed sliver of brain.
Abu Lahab fell back against the well, his tiny eyes now wide open in shock, as blood and gray tissue streamed out of the wound and down the side of his fat face.
He managed to turn his head and look at Umm al-Fadl, who still held the tent pole in her grasp. Her hand was shaking, but when she spoke, her voice was as clear as the spring waters of Yemen.
“Our debt has been repaid.”
Umm al-Fadl dropped the pole and turned away from the dying man. She wanted to run away, but a crowd was forming around her, staring at her in shock. And then a horrible scream pierced the open plaza around the Sanctuary.
A woman with dirty white hair and a face lined like a shriveled pear burst through the crowd and ran to Abu Lahab’s side.
This was Umm Jamil, his wife, who had a reputation for petty cruelty that made Abu Lahab seem like a diplomat in comparison. She wailed over her bleeding husband, beating her sagging breasts in fury.
“Who did this?” she screeched.
Umm al-Fadl saw her husband, Abbas, push his way toward them. He looked at his injured brother, the head of their clan, and then at his wife. There was no escaping responsibility for what she had done.
“I did,” she said with quiet dignity.
And then Umm Jamil was upon her like a bat, the old woman’s clawlike nails trying to tear her eyes from her skull.
Umm Jamil’s brother, Abu Sufyan, pulled her off Umm al-Fadl and held her forcefully as she screamed vile curses that even drunken men would hesitate to utter.
“If my husband dies, I will have your head!”
Umm al-Fadl turned to Abbas.
“If your husband dies, I believe the question of my fate will reside with the new chieftain of Bani Hashim.”
Abbas was shaken by her words. But she persisted, taking his hand in hers and squeezing it softly.
“What say you, husband? Will you kill me? Or will a blood payment suffice the clan’s honor?”
Abbas dropped her hand as if it were made of live coals.
“You women are all mad.”
He shook his head and walked away, looking very much as if he wanted to wash his hands of the entire affair.
Umm al-Fadl smiled at the elderly witch triumphantly.
“I believe a hundred camels will settle our debt. Don’t you agree?”
Umm Jamil spit in her face.
“I curse you and all the children of your loins!”
Umm al-Fadl wiped off the mucus with her sleeve. She looked one last time at the dying Abu Lahab and his wife, her eyes cold with contempt.
And then she remembered something Muhammad had said years before. At that moment, her resistance was gone and she accepted the truth of the new religion that her nephew had brought.
“There is none more accursed than those who are cursed by God Himself,” Umm al-Fadl said.
And then she recited a verse from the Qur’an that had been revealed years before when Abu Lahab had led the persecution of Muhammad. A verse that she had first heard her nephew recite when Umm Jamil had carried a bundle of thorns and had flung them upon him during prayers. A verse that somehow came back to her memory as if it had been branded into her heart.
The power of Abu Lahab will perish, and he will perish.
His wealth and gains will not exempt him.
He will be plunged in flaming Fire
And his wife, the wood carrier,
Will have upon her neck a halter of palm fiber.
She saw the color drain from Umm Jamil’s face as the shriveled crone, too, remembered the verses that she had dismissed so many years before.
Umm al-Fadl walked out of the Sanctuary quietly, leaving Umm Jamil to ponder the terrible prophecy that had come back to haunt her.
The old woman suddenly seemed like a lost child, looking around in confusion. She saw people staring at her and backing away. Umm Jamil could feel something happening to her as chills ran up her arms and legs. And then she looked down at her hands and saw ugly red pustules spreading across her flesh like a wild rash.
She turned to her brother, who was looking at her face in shock. Umm Jamil touched her cheeks and could feel the hard bumps that were breaking through the maze of wrinkles that had long since taken away her beauty.
Umm Jamil knew what these pustules were. She had seen them once before when she was a child. They were the markings of the same disease that had destroyed the invading army of Abraha, the Yemeni king who had brought an elephant to lay siege to the Kaaba. That same year that her nephew Muhammad had been born.
It was the plague.
And then she saw with horror that Abu Lahab’s blood-soaked face was erupting in the same warts. He, too, was being eaten alive by the monstrous disease that always came without warning and could kill an entire city in a day.
“Help me…help us…” Her voice sounded distant and small.
But the crowd saw the telltale signs of plague and the plaza was quickly empty.
Only Abu Sufyan stood alone by the well of Zamzam, staring in horror at his sister.
She reached for him, seeking his comforting embrace. Just as when they were children and he would hug her when she skinned her knee and the pain would vanish.
But Abu Sufyan backed away, tears flowing down his face.
“I’m sorry.”
She felt as if a hot sword had been thrust through her neck.
“No…my brother…please don’t leave me… I need you…”
And then he was gone.
Umm Jamil stood alone by her dying husband, the ugly pustules racing like ants across her body. And then she fell to her knees and screamed. The terrible wail resounded through the city, carrying her horror across the valley of Mecca.
But her cries soon stopped and the echo vanished in the wind, to be forgotten forever.
One night, when the Messenger was out late for a meeting of tribal leaders at Uthman’s home, I decided to step outside my tiny apartment, which was beginning to feel like a prison cell.
Covering my hair with a dark woolen scarf and throwing on a cloak of golden camel skin, I slipped out of my house and left the Masjid courtyard by the northern gate. I had lived in Medina for over two years, but I rarely went out alone and there were many small avenues and streets I had not explored. I was not especially nervous, as the avenues of the oasis were patrolled by large numbers of Bedouin guards. The newcomers had sensed that the sands were shifting in Muhammad’s favor and they had sworn fealty to the man who was bringing order at least to the northern valleys of the peninsula. Even as Mecca and the cities to the south were suffering from a disruption of trade, the lands around Medina were booming.
As I strolled through the streets, I marveled at how wonderful it was to feel safe. I had been born into persecution and my earliest memories were of death and suffering. But since our victory at Badr, the storm had subsided and I suddenly felt free, like an eagle soaring through the skies unchallenged.
I was admiring the delicate arches of a house that stood on the outskirts of the oasis, where the paved roads melded with the sand, when a group of young men saw me standing alone. They whistled appreciatively and called out a variety of indecent proposals. Shocked at this crass impropriety, I turned to scold them and my face was suddenly lit by the full moon. Instantly their amorous attentions turned to embarrassment and fear as they recognized me. They had just propositioned the Mother of the Believers and risked bringing the wrath of God upon them!
The youths quickly bowed and scraped at my feet, asking forgiveness. I smiled, exulting in my young power, and warned them that if they ever spoke to a girl like that again, they would face grave punishment, which I left sufficiently vague to allow their own imaginations to take hold.
The boys scampered away, terror in their eyes, and I laughed. I was alone again and closed my eyes and let the warm wind caress my skin. I opened them again after a moment and looked north, through a gap in the hills that cleared a view all the way to the horizon. There was a whole world there that I hoped to see someday. Magical cities like Jerusalem and Damascus where the ancient prophets had lived. Or even further, to the famed seat of the fabled Byzantine empire. Constantinople, the largest city on earth, whose streets were rumored to be paved in silver and where the churches were as large as mountains. Or perhaps even beyond, to the ruins of a city called Rome that had once been the capital of the world but was now ransacked and forgotten. And if I made it that far, then I would of course go farther, to the lands where the sun is said to never shine and the world is lit only by stars.
It was a beautiful dream, and in my girlish heart perhaps I believed it would come true. I, who had been born with a wanderlust and a need for adventure, had known only two cities my whole life, both surrounded by sand dunes and policed by vultures and wolves. I longed to see flowing rivers and trees that carpeted the earth with life. To gaze upon mountains crowned in ice, where the clouds themselves fell like the rain. And it all seemed possible. I would never have believed that I would spend most of my life trapped inside the confines not only of this small town but ultimately inside the tiny walls of my home. Had I known what was to come, perhaps I would have kept walking that night into the desert, following the shooting stars to the wondrous world over the horizon. A world that would forever be outside the limits of my destiny.
A sudden cry awoke me out of my reverie. I pushed aside a strand of hair that blocked my ear and then listened carefully. There it was again. It was the distinct sound of weeping. Of a man crying in terrible grief.
I looked around to find its source. The only building nearby was a small barn that stood near the edge of the oasis. As I moved closer to the mud brick stable, the sound became clearer. I felt my heart pounding. Someone was hurt, perhaps had fallen and injured himself. God must have sent me here tonight to help this poor soul.
I approached the barn and pushed open the heavy wooden doors that had been bolted from outside. I was too naive to stop and ask myself why someone would be in a barn that had been locked from without, but I must have reasoned that the poor fellow had gotten stuck inside and had hurt himself trying to get out.
The door opened with a steady creak and the weeping stopped instantly. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness within and then cautiously stepped inside. It was an old structure, supported by beams of palm wood. There were open stalls for horses, the ground littered with fresh grass, but I could see no animals within. I began to wonder if I had imagined the sound when I saw a flash movement against one of the walls. My heart leaped and I cried out.
And then I saw him. A wretched-looking man was curled into a ball inside the stall, his face bruised and caked in dried blood. As the moonlight strengthened my vision, I noticed that his hands were tied with a thick rope and were bound to a post.
He looked at me with wild eyes full of fear.
“Help me…”
I had never seen anything like this. Someone had beaten this poor man and left him here to die. I stepped inside cautiously, my eyes looking out for any sign of rats or other unpleasant creatures in the corners.
“Who are you?”
The man spoke with a raspy voice.
“My name is Salim ibn Qusay…I am being held against my will…please help me…”
I saw his face better now. He as young, perhaps only twenty years old, and he had bright eyes that seemed to glitter like a cat’s in the dark.
“How did this happen to you?”
Salim bowed his head.
“I was a traveler in the desert…” he said slowly. “A merchant from Taif…There was a young girl in the caravan…Yasmeen…I fell in love with her…I came to Medina to propose marriage…but her father has promised her to someone else…When he found us together, he tied me up and left me here to die…Please…help me…”
I felt a flash of righteous anger at his story. Despite the Messenger’s best efforts to eradicate the practice, such “honor killings” were still commonplace. The thought that someone could murder another human being for the crime of being in love repulsed me.
With a sudden yearning for justice and the sweet foolishness of a teenage girl who wanted to play a heroic role in this tragic tale of love, I tore my long nails into the heavy knot that bound him. After struggling with the rope valiantly for several minutes, my fingertips were rubbed raw, but I finally managed to loosen the bindings. At last, the rope came undone and Salim’s hands were free…to wrap themselves around my throat!
I tried to scream but his hands quickly moved to cover my mouth.
“You little girls always fall for the love story.” His whimper was gone and his voice was laced with menace.
I struggled as he pushed me against the wall. A flash of moonlight from a crack in the roof above illuminated my face for the second time that night.
Salim’s eyes flickered with recognition.
“You…you’re the child bride of the sorcerer…”
But instead of falling to his knees and pleading for forgiveness as the youths had done, he smiled wickedly.
“Well, then I’m truly going to enjoy this.”
As he leaned closer to me, I could smell the wine on his breath and the sick aroma of arousal that covered him like a cloud of flies.
He threw me down to the floor and then reached for my pantaloons. My heart pounded with the terrible anticipation of violation.
And then it was as if something took possession of my body. I was barely twelve years old and only half his size, when a fire ignited in my veins, giving me strength I had not imagined hid inside my tiny body.
I bit down against his hand, my teeth tearing a chunk of flesh from his fingers. He screamed and fell off me, and my feet swung hard into his crotch. Salim doubled over in agony. My pulse thundering in my ears, I ran past him. But he threw out his leg and tripped me. I fell face-first into the mud of the stables. Tears welled in my eyes. I could feel his cold hands lock around my ankles as he dragged me back into the cell.
I screamed with such force that I felt like my lungs were flying out of my chest to escape the terrible fate awaiting the rest of my body.
And then I heard the sound of voices. Men shouting from outside! As the steady drumbeat of footsteps raced toward the barn, I felt Salim let go of my ankles. There was a rush of air as he fled past me and escaped into the night.
My vision blurred and I saw no more.
I blinked heavily as sunlight poured over my eyelids. When I opened them, I saw a bright haze that slowly came into focus. A figure moved in front of me and I instinctively backed away in terror. But then his strong, manly features came into view and I gasped.
It was the gentle face of the Messenger smiling at me. He bent down over me and stroked my hair.
“Are you all right, Humayra?”
I managed a nod, and then looked around the barn, which had appeared cavernous the night before but was much more modest in the daylight.
“The man…Salim…where is he?”
A shadow fell over us and I saw my father, his face full of relief.
“He was a thief,” Abu Bakr said. “We caught him stealing in the marketplace. This criminal was to be punished tomorrow under God’s law, but now someone has helped him escape.”
I suddenly felt like the greatest fool on earth.
“Not someone, Father. It was I.”
The Messenger stared at me in shock.
“What?” both men asked in unison.
The back of my neck began to burn with shame.
“He told me a story…about how he loved this girl…and her father was keeping them apart…I felt sorry for him…So I loosened his bonds…”
I suddenly saw a dark cloud cover my husband’s face. His smile vanished and there was cold anger in his eyes.
“May Allah cut off your hand!”
I sat stunned for a moment, unable to process his fury. And then tears erupted from my eyes. The Prophet had never been angry with me before and I felt as if someone had just thrust a flaming arrow into my stomach.
The Messenger saw my grief but his anger did not abate. He turned away from me and I saw that there was a group of men standing by the door of the barn, keeping a respectful distance from this unfolding family drama.
“Organize a search party,” he said forcefully. “We must find him before he hurts anyone else!”
The men nodded and disappeared. My husband turned to look at me one last time, but I did not see any forgiveness in his glance. And then he stepped through the door and was gone.
I shook violently with grief and I turned to my father for his support. But Abu Bakr looked as stunned as I felt at Muhammad’s uncharacteristic rage, and he backed away from me as if I were a demon and not his daughter.
He left me alone on the cold floor of the barn. I stared around me at the gray walls that seemed to be closing in, burying me alive with my shame.
And then I remembered my husband’s curse and I lifted my hands and stared at them, waiting for the judgment of God that I knew would come upon me any moment.
I WAS STILL SITTING there like that hours later when I heard the sound of men approaching. And then the criminal Salim was dragged unceremoniously past me and thrown back into the cell from which I had freed him.
My father stood over the guards as they held the struggling captive down.
“Tie him doubly and post an armed guard at the door,” Abu Bakr said wearily. “He will be tried in the public square after midday prayers, and I would prefer that he actually show up for his judgment.”
The men tied Salim’s arms and legs, and gagged him for good measure.
I saw all of this from the corner of my eyes, but my focus remained on the palms of my hands.
I felt rather than saw the Messenger enter, for the hot morning air suddenly became cooler, as it always did in his presence. He watched me as I sat unmoving, staring at my hands with horrible anticipation.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you possessed by a djinn?”
I did not look at him. I found that I could look at nothing but my hands, which were pale and bloodless.
“I’m waiting to see which hand Allah cuts off.”
I heard the Messenger gasp as he realized I had taken his angry words at face value. And then he reached down and took my hands in his. He squeezed them tightly and I saw tears in his eyes.
We sat there, husband and wife, looking at each other. No words were said. None were needed.
And then the Messenger let go of my hands and raised his own upward in supplication.
“O Allah, Merciful and Compassionate Lord, forgive me for cursing this child. Bless her and anyone whom I have ever cursed.”
And then he lifted me to my feet and led me out of the barn, his fingers wrapped tightly around mine. As I walked past Salim, bound and guarded by men with swords, I saw the hint of a desperate plea for clemency in his eyes.
But my heart was not as big as my husband’s, and I had no forgiveness to offer.
SALIM WAS PUNISHED THAT afternoon for his crimes. He was dragged out in front of a crowd of witnesses by Umar, who tied him spread-eagled to iron stakes that had been hammered into the dark oasis earth. I watched without any emotion as Umar raised his sword and cut off Salim’s hands for theft. He screamed in agony, a sound that would have made me cover my ears and hide my face in horror and empathy the day before. But the girl who came out of the barn that morning was not the same girl who had entered. I watched him writhe like a fish pulled from a stream, blood erupting in thick spurts from his severed wrists. And then Umar raised his sword again and chopped off Salim’s head as punishment for assaulting the Mother of the Believers.
The screams stopped instantly and there was only silence in the public square. I looked around to see the men’s heads bowed in silent prayer, the women’s faces covered in tears. They were all shaken by the severity of the punishment. But now there was no doubt in anyone’s mind what the price would be for breaching the hard-won peace of Medina. There would be no backsliding to the days of anarchy. Law had come to Arabia, and crimes carried consequences.
I took one last look at the grisly remains of the man who had taken advantage of my innocence, who had sought to mount me like a pig in the mud. And then I turned and walked away in silence.
A few weeks later, I strolled through the central marketplace of Medina with my friend Huda. She was sixteen and almost as tall as a man, with legs that seemed to stretch toward the sky. Huda was everything I longed to be, worldly and sophisticated. She regularly went with her father on trading missions to Persepolis and knew the latest fashions of all the beautiful women to the east.
The bazaar was one of my favorite places in the city. It was full of life and there was always some new merchant there, selling some rare item that I had heard about only in stories from cosmopolitan travelers like Huda. The stands carried everything from oranges and pomegranates that had been shipped from Egypt by sea to colorful spices from the east that smelled sweet and sour at the same time. Sometimes there were pets for sale, and I remember how delighted I was the time I saw a cage full of striped cats that I learned were baby tigers. But my favorite section of the bazaar was the long line of tables displaying jewelry-silver rings, sapphire earrings, and jade necklaces that the merchants claimed came from the mythical land of China, where the sun is born each day.
We passed by the rainbow maze of jewelry stands, cooing at the wonderful items and giggling like little girls, until we reached a table manned by a Jew from the Bani Qaynuqa. They were goldsmiths and master craftsmen, and it was rumored that their unique designs were sought by customers as far north as Babylon.
My eyes fell on a remarkable bracelet made of pressed gold and engraved with lifelike images of doves in flight, emeralds studding their outstretched wings.
I tried it on under the watchful gaze of the old vendor, admiring how beautiful it looked against my skin. It fit my tiny wrist perfectly, as if it had been made for me.
“It looks wonderful on you,” Huda said excitedly. “You should buy it.”
I felt a pang of longing, but I knew it was impossible. I took off the bracelet and returned it to the shop owner.
“I don’t have enough money.”
Huda looked at me as if I were insane.
“But your husband is the Messenger of God! Surely he must be the richest man in all Medina. Doesn’t he take one fifth of all the booty from the raids on the Meccans?”
This was the normal Arab custom. The tribal chief was allotted one-fifth of any booty secured by a raid or a military operation. With the Muslims adopting a policy of economic siege against Mecca, my husband was in a position to secure tremendous wealth from the successful capture of caravans. Huda was right. I should have been the wealthiest woman in the oasis.
“He gives it all away to the poor,” I said in explanation. “The People of the Bench.”
The People of the Bench were a group of Medinese beggars who regularly sat near a stone bench that stood in a corner of the Masjid courtyard. Anyone who came there was entitled to a share of food and whatever booty was to be redistributed by the Messenger. His daughter Fatima sometimes spent hours standing in the sun and attending to the long lines that gathered there every morning after Fajr prayers. I usually saw the same people, some of them able-bodied men who should have been working instead of begging, and had grumbled to the Messenger that they were lazy scamps who took advantage of his generosity. But he had simply smiled and said that even such men serve a purpose. When I looked at him doubtfully, he explained. “They teach us to give without any expectations. That is true compassion.”
I had shaken my head in disbelief, even as Huda shook her head now to learn that the Messenger was as poor as he’d been the day he arrived from Mecca, despite the massive wealth that passed through his hands every day.
“The prophets of the Jews were rich,” she said. “Why does the Prophet of the Arabs have to be poor?”
I laughed.
“Maybe the Jews get a better deal because they are Chosen.” It was a stupid comment by a girl too young to know that words have power. We laughed at my minor witticism and continued looking around the jewelry stands.
But as we moved away from the table of the Jewish goldsmith, our words lingered. A young man named Yacub, the hotheaded nephew of the old merchant, heard us and was angered. He must have recognized me as the Mother of the Believers and added my comment to the litany of offenses that the Jews of Medina attributed to my husband. The Messenger’s unification of the oasis and his successful military expeditions had raised their fears that he would soon turn against them.
If I have learned anything in my life, dear Abdallah, it is that fear is the worst enemy of a man’s soul. For whatever it is that we fear comes rushing to us like an arrow across the fields of time.
As we stepped away from the table and turned our attention elsewhere, Yacub took a gold brooch from the stand and in one swift movement pinned Huda’s flowing skirt to a wooden post as she passed by. When Huda crossed over to a nearby stall, the thin fabric tore open and her skirt fell to her ankles, exposing her womanhood to the gathered crowd of shoppers.
I heard the sharp rip and then Huda’s horrified scream. I whirled to see the poor girl desperately trying to cover her privates, tears falling from her face as men in the marketplace whooped and jeered.
Acting faster than I could think, I ripped the scarf off my head and tied it around my weeping friend’s waist. I suddenly saw that everyone’s attention had left Huda and all eyes were on me. My scarlet hair glistened in the sun and I felt a flush of horror that strangers were now gazing lustfully at my exposed locks. It was a shameful violation of a woman’s honor, but not as shameful as what Huda was enduring. I lifted my head with dignity and met the men’s probing gazes with my own defiant eyes.
“Stare at us all you wish, you fools! The sin is on you!”
My words shamed them, and the men quickly looked away. I reached down to pick up the pieces of Huda’s skirts and saw the gold pin that was responsible for her embarrassment.
I looked up to see Yacub staring at me with anger.
“I guess it’s our turn to laugh, you little wench.”
A shadow fell over us and I saw a young Muslim man named Muzaffar standing there. He did not look at me, but I saw that he held out a cloak in his right hand. I quickly took it from him and covered my hair again.
Muzaffar challenged the Jewish prankster, his face red with rage.
“How dare you speak to her that way! She is the Mother of the Believers!”
Yacub laughed with exaggerated bravado. He could see other young men of his tribe watching his confrontation with the Muslim and he was now trapped in a deadly contest of virility.
“You Arabs call your children your mothers.” He sneered. “No wonder you can’t tell your head from your asses! Although as mothers’ asses go, she certainly has a nice one. Maybe next time we’ll see hers, not just her friend’s.”
Faster than my eye could follow, Muzaffar pulled out a small knife and slit Yacub’s throat with the practiced skill of a butcher. The boy fell forward, his face frozen in a deadly grin. The blood from his gaping neck wound poured out over the beautiful golden jewelry that his uncle had spent many months crafting with such great love.
I screamed in horror, but my voice was drowned out by the shout of Jewish men rushing to avenge their fallen comrade. They threw Muzaffar to the ground and beat and kicked him until I heard the sickening crunch of his skull shattering.
The marketplace devolved into chaos as Muslims and Jews attacked one another with righteous indignation. As I fled with Huda to safety, my heart tightened at the knowledge that a terrible new day was upon us.
The first blood between the sons of Isaac and Ishmael had been spilled. And I had a dark vision in my mind’s eye that the trickle of death would soon become a flood.
The peace of Medina had been shattered from within, and retribution was swift. An army of a thousand men surrounded the walled district to the southwest that housed the Jewish tribe.
In the days following the marketplace brawl, the Messenger had sent Ali to negotiate blood payment to resolve the tensions between the Muslims and Jews. Each side had lost a man in the scuffle, and according to the terms of the treaty, the matter had to be submitted to Muhammad for arbitration. But the Jews of Bani Qaynuqa turned back Ali, saying they considered the alliance void after the murder of one of their men by a Muslim.
Tensions had risen as the Jews barricaded themselves inside their walls, and there were rumors that that the chiefs of Qaynuqa were sending urgent messages to Abdallah ibn Ubayy, the treacherous leader of the Khazraj. The Jews allegedly promised that they could marshal seven hundred men to their defense. If the Khazraj matched them, then perhaps together they could wrest the oasis from the sorcerer.
But if such an offer was indeed made, Ibn Ubayy declined it. Though we had heard talk that he had been happy to incite the Jews to do his dirty work in antagonizing Muhammad, Ibn Ubayy was not the kind of man who would be willing to risk his own life to settle their scores.
And so the day had come when the Bani Qaynuqa were friendless and alone. The Messenger considered their renunciation of his treaty an act of war and had besieged the settlement. The Muslims had cut off the roads leading to their sister Jewish tribes, the Bani Nadir and the Bani Qurayza, and the fortress had no independent wells. Soon the Bani Qaynuqa would run out of water, and they would have to fight or surrender.
I watched as the Prophet strode among the Muslim soldiers who surrounded the gates of the Jewish fortress. He was dressed in glittering mail made of concentric steel rings, and his helmet covered most of his face. His black eyes glistened from behind his steel visor.
A battering ram had been devised to tear down the heavy wooden doors that protected the Qaynuqa. It was a long pole made of a series of thick palm trunks tied together and reinforced with steel plates. Thirty of the strongest Muslims would join forces to pummel the gates until they fell and the fortress was overrun. The soldiers had been ordered to kill any man who was armed but to spare the women and the children.
As war drums resounded, announcing to the Bani Qaynuqa their approaching end, I saw a man who was dressed in flowing scarlet robes approach the Messenger. It was Ibn Ubayy come to bargain on behalf of the Jews, whom he would not defend with arms.
He pushed past Umar and Hamza, who scowled at his presence, and walked up to the Prophet, addressing him from behind as he surveyed his men.
“O Muhammad, treat my allies well.”
The Messenger glanced at Ibn Ubayy briefly and then continued on his tour of the company, his presence inspiring courage among the warriors.
But Ibn Ubayy was persistent. He followed the Prophet and shouted for all to hear.
“Muhammad! Have mercy on my allies!”
The Messenger pretended not to hear him, even though his cries could have woken the dead in Jannat al-Baqi, the graveyard outside Medina.
Frustrated, Ibn Ubayy came up behind the Messenger and grabbed him by the collar of his mail shirt.
“Listen to me!”
Instantly a dozen swords were drawn and held to Ibn Ubayy’s neck. And yet he held on firmly. The Prophet turned to face him and a silence so great fell over the field that all I could hear was my pounding heart.
“Let go.” There was more danger in those two words than any lengthy tirade could have held.
And yet Ibn Ubayy, for all his flaws, could not be called a coward. Feeling the prick of blades against the skin of his neck and back, he nonetheless refused to release the Prophet’s armor.
“By God I will not, until you promise to treat them well,” he said, and I saw in his face what appeared to be real pain. “The Bani Qaynuqa have four hundred men without mail and three hundred armored. Not much of an army, but in all the years before you came to Medina, those men were my sole protection from my enemies. This Arab lives because those Jews saved him.”
He paused and his eyes glistened with grief. If he was performing, he was an astounding actor.
“Seven hundred men who kept me alive before you brought peace to this oasis,” he said, his voice choking. “Will you cut them down in one morning?”
The Messenger looked at him. I could not see his face through the visor of the helmet, but I saw the tension in his shoulders fall as ibn Ubayy’s plea touched his heart.
When he spoke, his voice was firm but compassionate.
“I give you their lives,” was all he said.
Ibn Ubayy’s hand fell and the Messenger walked away. He stood for a while staring after the man who had stolen his crown, who ruled Medina while he watched from the sidelines. I do not know what he was thinking, but he looked shaken and confused. Finally, he turned toward the gates of the fortress and went to deliver the good news to his erstwhile allies.
Safiya stood by the desert road, watching her kinsmen from the tribe of Bani Qaynuqa abandon their homes and leave the city forever. They loaded their carpets and small furnishings on the back of hundreds of camels and donkeys, along with whatever household items they could carry-utensils, scrolls, small pots and pans. Heavy bundles contained food for the trek through the wilderness, including stores of dates, olives, and dried meats. Her eyes caught the eye of a young boy sitting on a mule, crying that he wanted to stay, but his mother shushed him and told him to always look forward, never back.
It was happening again, Safiya thought bitterly, just as her father had feared. The world was always changing, but one thing remained the same-Jews were being expelled from their homes. She felt a flash of anger at Muhammad, and she wanted to embrace it and fan its fire until it consumed her heart. But she couldn’t silence the small voice within her that said her people were not blameless in this matter. Had they listened to wiser voices like her own, they would have welcomed the Muslims and become their allies in bringing peace and prosperity to Arabia. But their own fears, the centuries of loss and betrayal, had conditioned them to resist change. They had sought to undermine the new order and inevitably brought upon themselves its wrath.
Tears in her eyes, she turned to the elderly rabbi Husayn ibn Sallam, himself a member of the Qaynuqa, but one who had been granted express permission to remain because of his cordial relationship with Muhammad.
“What will happen to them?” she asked softly.
Ibn Sallam wiped his nose on his sleeve. His eyes were red but dry, and she guessed that he had no more tears left to shed.
“They will go north to Syria,” he said quietly. “Our people still have a few settlements that survive under Byzantine rule. They will find refuge there.”
“But you will stay.” It was not a question, and there was no hint of reproach in her voice, but the rabbi flinched as if he had been struck.
“I have to.”
She had not expected this as a response.
“I don’t understand.”
Ibn Sallam sighed heavily.
“The sands of time are shifting, but I fear that our people do not see it,” he said as if he had read her thoughts. “The Bani Qaynuqa let their pride blind them to the new reality. I will stay and counsel the Bani Nadir and the Bani Qurayza to flow with the stream of history, not against it.”
Safiya watched the lengthy train of her brethren pass outside the hills of Mecca toward an unknown destiny in the north.
“Do you really think our people would risk further confrontation with Muhammad?” she asked wearily. She could not bear to witness this exodus again. “Why would they be so foolish?”
The rabbi smiled sadly.
“Our people take great pride in the fall of Masada,” he said, referring to the fortress where Jewish zealots had killed themselves and their families rather than surrender to Roman hordes. “I fear that our hearts secretly long to relive it. To die in glorious sacrifice against an invincible foe.”
Ibn Sallam turned his eyes away from the heart wrenching sight of his tribe vanishing forever into the sands of time.
“May God protect us from the folly of our own dreams.”
And with that, he walked away, head bowed. Safiya could hear the mournful tune of an old Hebrew prayer on his lips, one commemorating the tragic destruction of the Temple on Tisha b’Au.
Safiya watched as the last of the camels left the precincts of the city, taking a proud people away from everything they knew. She gazed at the yellow walls of the fortress that had housed the Bani Qaynuqa for hundreds of years. Safiya knew that by nightfall the abandoned quarter would be looted, and the empty houses would soon be occupied by Muslim families. Within a few months every trace of the ancient Jewish tribe would be lost and forgotten.
She walked back home slowly, wondering how long it would be before she, too, would be forced to look forward, even when her heart cried like a child to go back, to cling to a past that was no more tangible than a mirage.
Her mother had said before she died that home is where the heart is. Safiya’s heart had been made from the dust of Medina, and it deserved to return to the dust from which it had been born.
Safiya made a silent prayer to God, Elohim, Allah, Deus, or whatever it was He preferred to be called:
Even if you wish to take me away from this city, let it be that one day I will return. However the winds of history may blow, let them guide the ship of my destiny home. Lord of the Worlds, King of the Heavens, let me die where I have lived. Amen.
While the Muslims and Jews came close to war in Medina, the Meccan army was regrouping under the watchful eyes of Hind. History follows the deeds of men, but often ignores the women who influenced momentous events, for good or for ill. It is time for me, Abdallah, to reveal more about the queen of Mecca. Many know her terrible crimes, but few understand the woman who perpetrated them. It is not easy to descend into such dark depths. But I have seen a shameful hint of that darkness within myself, so perhaps it is only fitting that I do so for Hind.
Ever since their defeat at Badr, Hind had encouraged the Meccan soldiers to conduct regular drills to sharpen their skills. A second defeat was unthinkable, and Hind had promised that any man who sulked back home bearing the flag of loss would be torn to shreds by the women of city before he entered its holy precincts.
Not that she considered Mecca holy. Hind had long ago given up believing in any divine force, plural or singular. The last time she had prayed was when she was six years old. Her mother was dying of a terrible wasting disease, and Hind had watched in grief as her beautiful face had collapsed in on itself until all that was left was a skull barely covered by flesh. The night her father, Utbah, had told her that her mother was leaving them, she had run to the Kaaba. Having stolen the sacred key from her father’s den, she had broken the ancient taboo and had climbed inside, falling prostrate before the crimson idol of Hubal. The little girl had stayed in that position until sunrise, her forehead pressed against the cold marble floor of the House. During that time, Hind had prayed to every god whose icon stood in the sanctuary, begging the deity to spare her mother. She had cried out to the daughters of God-Allat, Uzza, and Manat. The Phoenician goddess Astarte. Nergal, the angry god of war. The sun god Shams. Abgal, the lord of camel drivers. Munaf, the goddess of fertility. Aglibol, the Palmyran god of the crescent moon. The snake god Wadd. Qawm, the Nabatean protector of caravans. Even Isaf and Naila, the lovers who had defiled the Kaaba with their unbridled lust.
And finally, when she had named every god she knew and had heard no response, she had cried out to Allah, the High God who created the heavens and the earth before retiring to his Throne beyond the stars. Surely the One who had made the gods themselves, who had created life and death, surely He could save her mother.
But when the sun rose, Hind felt the gentle hand of her father, lifting her from her prostration. Her mother had passed away in her sleep, he said.
Hind had not wept. She had gone home and played with her dolls, apparently accepting the tragic news with the stoic dignity that was required of a great house of Quraysh.
But the tears that she did not release remained locked inside her, eating away at her heart like a worm at a corpse. The pain inside her breast became like a poison that ate away at her soul, building over the years until there was nothing left inside her but anger.
The gods had abandoned her. And so she abandoned them. A fair trade, all in all.
Over the years, Hind had never paid much attention to the stupid cult of her people, who continued to delude themselves that there was some higher order behind life. Hind had learned that night her mother died that there was no meaning, no purpose to existence. Love was an illusion, a painful trick of an uncaring cosmos. Joy a fleeting moment, lost in the wind. The only thing that was real was the body, for it alone felt pleasure and pain. So she concluded that the purpose of life, if there was any, was to heighten pleasure and deaden pain.
And thus her life had become an endless quest for ecstasy, for stretching the body’s ability to experience pleasure to its limit. She surrounded herself with amusements to enhance her senses. The most harmonious music to delight her ears. The softest clothes to caress her skin. She had tasted every wine and every rare meat. And she had spent a lifetime exploring the forbidden pleasures of the flesh, with both men and women and with many partners, often at the same time. She had sworn an oath that if there were any pleasure to be plucked out of life, she would experience it all before the darkness took her and she remembered no more.
The gods of Mecca played no role in her life except as a source of income to support her sensual lifestyle. If there were any part of her that still believed in them after her mother died, it vanished two years later when her father invited a wandering kahin, a soothsayer who claimed to commune with the gods, to stay in their home and bless their family with his powers. The man had slipped into her bedroom one night, naked except for an armlet of gold shaped like intertwining snakes, the symbol of his sacred familiar. In his hand, the kahin held an ivory idol of some Yemeni fertility god whose name she never learned. He had told her to say nothing about what had happened, for it had been a sacred rite and a curse would fall upon her if she told anyone the mysteries of the god.
Spent from his “sacred rites,” the man had slept beside her. The eight-year-old Hind had risen from her bed and crawled into the kitchen, ignoring the stream of blood that ran down her leg. She wordlessly pulled out the sharpest meat cleaver she could find and went back and slit the kahin’s throat without any hesitation. She then placed the Yemeni idol under her bare feet and crushed it, ignoring the shards of ivory that tore into her flesh. And then Hind had taken the kahin’s armlet, the symbol of his power, placed it on her own wrist, and climbed back into bed, falling into dreamless sleep beside the corpse.
Her father had found the “holy man’s” naked body in her room the next day and had quietly buried him in their backyard. Utbah had never spoken about it with Hind, but no more kahins were invited to stay with them.
After that incident, she had never paid the gods or their self-appointed mouthpieces any attention.
Until Muhammad, the low-class merchant who had climbed into wealth by marrying a rich old woman, decided to enter the prophecy business. He spoke pretty words of poetry and the fools of Mecca were suddenly willing to give not only their wealth to him but also their very lives. Instead of embracing the only truth of life, the pursuit of pleasure, they adopted his austere teachings, denying themselves the good things and wandering around with empty stomachs and praises to an imaginary God on their lips.
This new religion was more sophisticated in its teaching than the nonsense her people believed, and that was exactly why it offended Hind even more. It was such a well-crafted tale that even intelligent men like Umar, men she had admired and exchanged pleasures with, had given up life in order to embrace its walking death. Islam was exactly the kind of delusion that men craved, with its promises of eternal life and cosmic justice, when neither state of affairs was true.
Hind hated Muhammad for giving false hope to people-a hope that made the strong weak and ensured that men would trade the pleasures of the moment for an illusory promise of reward beyond the grave. Hind had made it her mission in life to shatter this illusion, to take away the lie so that men and women could be free to embrace the world as it was, not as they wished it to be.
Since her father’s death at Badr, Hind had been consumed with vengeance. She often accompanied her husband to military training exercises in the desert outside Mecca. Her eyes swept across the field in search of a champion, someone who could strike a blow for truth and reveal Muhammad for the sham he was.
She watched her husband calling out to the men, encouraging them as they practiced sparring with swords and thrusting with their spears.
“Train hard, O sons of Mecca! The day of retribution is coming.”
The men responded to Abu Sufyan’s cries by accelerating their moves, hoping to please the man who was for all intents and purposes their king. Hind had considered discarding her husband after the disaster of Badr, make his death appear to be an accident. But she realized now that she had been wise to restrain herself. She could see that Abu Sufyan held the soldiers’ respect and was still useful to her. Still, she knew that he was old and she would need a more youthful body to advance her cause and please her body.
And then, quite unexpectedly, she saw him.
Hind’s eyes fell upon a tall Abyssinian slave. He was as black as night and moved like a panther. In his hand, the slave held a powerful javelin, carved in accordance with the traditions of his people, who were masters of the art of spear throwing. He darted through a crowd of defenders, slipping between men like a snake winding through the rushes.
His eyes fell upon a target, a wooden pole that had been erected in the midst of the rocky field. The slave held the javelin to his shoulder and gracefully threw the weapon a hundred feet across the field. It landed straight in the heart of the pole and tore through to the other side.
Hind felt a swelling in her heart as well as in her loins. She walked over to the slave, and felt her desire growing as his skin shone with sweat and his musky odor flooded her senses.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Wahsi,” he said, panting for breath. “I belong to Jubayr ibn Mutim.”
Hind smiled. Jubayr was her cousin and she knew him well. There had been a time when Hind had worried that he would defect to the Muslims after she learned that Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s chief sycophant, had proposed engaging his daughter Aisha to Jubayr. But the lustful Muhammad had decided to take the child for his own bed, and Jubayr had remained loyal to Mecca.
She stepped closer to Wahsi, put a hand on his powerful arm that was almost as thick as a tree.
“Do you know Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib?”
She spoke the name of her father’s murderer with difficulty.
Wahsi looked uncomfortable, but he nodded.
“I know him,” he said, then hesitated. “He was always kind to Bilal and myself.”
Hind frowned. Bilal, the slave who had become Muhammad’s chief singer, had killed his former owner, Umayya, at Badr. The bond between slaves in the city was as tight as brothers, and it was certainly possible that Wahsi’s loyalty had been corrupted by the connection. She would have to gauge where his affinities truly lay.
“Would you consider Hamza a friend?”
Wahsi paused, measuring his words.
“To the extent that a slave and a free man can be friends, yes, I would.”
That was disappointing, but not an insurmountable obstacle.
“Tell me, Wahsi, what is your freedom worth to you?”
Wahsi stepped back, his eyes looking over Hind carefully.
“I don’t understand.”
Hind moved again to his side. This time she let her hand touch his bare chest. She closed her eyes and felt the steady, powerful rhythm of his heart beating against her fingers.
“Is earning your freedom something you would risk your life for?”
“Yes,” he said, without any hesitation.
She opened her eyes and looked deeply into his black pupils.
“Is it something you would kill for?”
His eyes narrowed but he did not look away.
“Yes.”
Hind smiled and caressed his flesh. The muscles of his abdomen were hard and well defined. She could feel her thighs growing wet, and the salty aroma of her arousal filled the air between them.
“No doubt. But is your freedom so precious that you would kill a friend to secure it?”
Wahsi hesitated for a moment. And then he lifted his shoulders proudly.
“If that is the price for the key to my chains, then yes.”
Hind squeezed his forearm, let the tip of her fingernail nick his skin, drawing blood. Wahsi stood impassive as she brought her finger to her lips and sucked the tiny drop of his life fluid into her mouth.
“I will speak to my cousin Jubayr,” she said in a husky voice. “He will give you a furlough for the evening. Come to my house tonight. There is much to discuss.”
AND SO HIND FOUND at last a champion for her revenge. A vengeance that would prove far uglier than any of us could ever have imagined.
You may wonder, dear Abdallah, why I take the time to detail her role in these events. She was a monster, you say, unworthy of being recorded in the annals of our faith. And perhaps you are right. Her crimes have justly earned her the condemnation of history. Hind was indeed cruel, vindictive, and manipulative. And yet she was also more than that. Strong. Proud. Passionate. A woman who refused to let the world conquer her. A woman who could have done so much good had the wound in her heart been healed with the balm of love. And despite my hatred for her memory, I sorrow for the child that still lived within her. A little girl on her knees, crying out to the heavens for her mother. A cry that was met with silence.
I rested my thighs on our lambskin mattress as the Messenger placed his head in my lap, as he often did when he was having difficulty relaxing after a long day. I ran my fingers through his mass of black curls that had begun to gray in a few patches. He looked up at me with a familiar twinkle in his eye and I sensed that he wanted me. The Messenger had been so exhausted in recent weeks that we rarely made love. The crushing burden of his daily life as prophet and statesman had made him too tired to meet even his personal needs as a man. Every minute of his waking hours was spent either teaching, judging disputes, enforcing new laws that God revealed in the Qur’an, or leading raids against Meccan caravans. The Messenger would come home tired and fall asleep in my arms almost instantly.
I missed our nights of intimacy, the powerful warmth of his body entwined with mine. And I longed to give him a son. We had been married now for almost three years and my courses had continued unabated. I prayed every night for the Lord to quicken my womb, but my supplications had remained unanswered.
I moved to blow out the single candle that adorned the room, as my husband was exceedingly modest and shared intimacies only under the cover of darkness. And then I heard a furious hammering at the door and Umar’s booming voice calling out for the Messenger. My husband sighed, and I could sense his desire cooling. At that moment, I wanted to grab Umar by the beard and slap him, but instead I went to a corner, sullenly covering my hair as the Prophet opened the door and let the raving giant in.
“O Messenger of God, the honor of my house has been sullied!” he said dramatically.
“What is wrong?” The Messenger’s tone was polite but tired.
Umar noticed me sitting in a corner, glaring at him. He suddenly appeared uncomfortable and looked down at his huge feet without speaking further.
My husband turned to me with a sympathetic grin.
“Aisha, please leave us.”
I nodded glumly and stepped outside into the courtyard. The Messenger closed the door behind me. Unable to suppress the curiosity that is both my gift and my curse, I pressed my ear to the door, made of thin palm wood, and listened in to his conversation with one of his most trusted advisers.
“As you know, my daughter Hafsa is a widow,” Umar said, speaking rapidly. “I approached Uthman ibn Affan with an honorable offer to marry her. And he refused!”
I smiled. Of course Uthman had refused. Hafsa was a beautiful girl, but her temper was as volatile as her father’s and no man who valued peace of mind would take her.
“Uthman is still grieving for Ruqayya,” the Messenger said diplomatically. “Do not take it to heart.”
He did not mention what he had said to me in private, of his intention of marrying one of his younger daughters, Umm Kulthum, to Uthman. That bit of news might not go over well with Umar.
“Be that as it may, and yet I suffered a second indignity,” Umar rambled on. “I went to Abu Bakr and offered him Hafsa’s hand and he, too, refused! I thought he was my best friend, but he has left me in shame.”
I tried hard not to giggle. The idea of my elderly father marrying this twenty-year-old firebrand was beyond comical. His heart would give out on the wedding night, not from Hafsa’s passion but from her ceaseless nagging.
“Abu Bakr loves Umm Ruman very deeply. He could not share his heart with another.” My husband, as always, knew exactly the right words to say.
“Be that as it may, and yet I am ruined!” Umar said, panic filling his voice. “Even now the gossips are spreading vile stories in Medina. The rumor that Hafsa has been refused by the greatest men of Islam because she is ill-tempered and mean! How could they say such a preposterous thing?”
I trembled with laughter and had to bite my hand to keep from revealing my eavesdropping presence.
“It is best to ignore the slanders of misguided folk,” the Messenger said mildly. “Allah will bring them to account. Gossips and backbiters will eat the flesh of their dead brothers on Judgment Day.”
It was a vivid image, but one that did not appease Umar.
“I cannot wait until Judgment Day, O Messenger of God! My daughter’s honor has been soiled today! No man will marry her once they learn that Uthman and Abu Bakr have rejected her!”
“Have faith, Umar.” I could hear the exhaustion entering the Messenger’s voice as his efforts to mollify Umar only made him more agitated.
“I have faith in God, but not in the fickle cruelty of men,” Umar said, his voice trembling. “In the days before Islam, I would have challenged Uthman and Abu Bakr to a duel. But now they are my brothers and I will not shed their blood. So I have no choice.”
“No choice?” Now I could hear alarm in Muhammad’s tone.
“I must leave Medina and take Hafsa with me,” Umar explained. “I must go where she can escape the shame and rebuild her life.”
Umar paused a moment and then I could hear new excitement entering his voice.
“O Messenger of God, deputize me so that I may serve as your envoy to the disbelievers! To Syria or Persia. Send me to share the Word of God in these foreign lands!”
I could hear my husband clap Umar on the shoulder in support.
“A day shall come when you will go to these lands, Umar, but not as an envoy. Insha-Allah, you will enter them as a conqueror.”
If the Messenger had meant these grand tidings to lift Umar’s soul, his efforts were unsuccessful.
“Then what am I to do? I cannot stay in Medina as long as my family’s honor is stained.”
There was a long silence and I finally felt the humor of the situation vanishing, replaced with a troubling problem for the community. Umar was a powerful leader who was feared and respected by both friend and enemy alike. If he left the oasis, it would create a power vacuum that would encourage our enemies to make aggressive moves against Medina. I knew that my husband was thinking of a solution to put Umar’s mind off his daughter’s marital difficulty and keep him focused on protecting the nascent city-state.
“Now I must reveal to you the truth,” the Messenger said at long last. “Do not judge Uthman or Abu Bakr harshly. They were acting on my orders.”
This was unexpected. I leaned closer to hear better and almost pushed the door open.
“I don’t understand.” Umar’s voice was both confused and hurt.
“When you approached Uthman with the proposal, he came to me and I told him to say no. As did Abu Bakr.”
Umar was clearly shocked at this revelation.
“O Messenger of God, why?”
I was eager to hear the answer myself. My husband’s natural statesmanship was at work here, and I was always fascinated by his ability to make wise decisions that benefited everyone.
“It is because Hafsa is special. She has been chosen for a higher purpose.”
Suddenly I didn’t like where this was going.
I heard Umar rise to his feet, his powerful legs creaking like the hinges of a giant fortress gate.
“Are you saying…?”
All at once my heart was racing and I wanted to run back inside and prevent my husband from finishing this conversation. But my legs were frozen to the spot.
“Yes. It is my desire to marry Hafsa and make her a Mother of the Believers. If her father will permit it.”
The blood drained from my face. I was suddenly dizzy and I could taste bile in my throat.
“Allah be praised!” Umar shouted wildly. “I would give you my daughter and anything else that you asked!
I could hear the rustle of robes as Umar gave the Messenger an embrace that would have crushed a lesser man. The two spoke more words, but I did care to listen further.
My heart pounded with jealousy. The Messenger loved me! How could he marry another woman, even as a political maneuver? Suddenly I had a vision of my beloved Muhammad entwined in passion with the beautiful Hafsa, and I felt rage burning inside my soul.
I turned and ran out of the courtyard to my mother’s house, where I spent the rest of the night crying in her arms.
I watched tight-lipped as a group of workers built another small stone apartment just north of my cell in the Masjid courtyard. They were working quickly, as the Prophet’s marriage to Hafsa was set for a week from that day, and they wanted to be finished in time for the mud cement to dry. No one wanted to be responsible for the Messenger of God spending his wedding night in a room that smelled like a tar pit after a flash flood.
I looked at that room and saw again an image of my husband in the arms of another woman and I could feel icy claws closing in on my throat. And then, as if she had read my thoughts, the proud Hafsa stepped inside the courtyard, taking off her dainty thong slippers and storming over to inspect her new home.
I stepped into the shadows of my doorway and hoped she didn’t see me. The last thing I wanted to do was exchange pleasantries with this pretty girl with the curly black hair who would soon be sharing the Messenger’s bed.
As it turned out, she was so focused on her own concerns that she was unlikely to have noticed me had I stood in front of her naked. Her eyes went wide when she saw the state of disarray around her future home, and she immediately began to berate the poor builders.
“What shoddy workmanship is this!” Hafsa shouted in a husky voice that sounded remarkably like her father’s. “No, I don’t want a window looking to the back wall! I am to be a Mother of the Believers! My window must face the courtyard!”
The harried workers endured her foot-stomping harangue with weary obsequiousness. Hafsa was not as tall as Umar, but she had broad, mannish shoulders that made her unmistakably his child. Her eyes were light brown, as was her unblemished skin. She had ample curves and wide hips and I felt a flash of terror as I realized that her body was better suited than my own thin frame for carrying a child. If she bore the Prophet a son before I did, then she would likely become his primary consort and my hold over his heart might become as brittle as a rusted lock that shatters under the heavy wind.
“Do not fear, Aisha,” a soft voice beside me intoned. “You will always be his favorite.”
It was my elderly sister-wife, Sawda, who had read my eyes with the wisdom of a woman who remembers the follies of youth. I smiled at her gratefully, but an ungenerous thought flashed across my mind. Her face was wrinkled and her breasts sagging, and her courses had long since dried up. It was easy for her to speak so confidently, since she shared the Messenger’s bed without passion and could never provide him a child. If Muhammad’s heart turned to Hafsa, it would make no difference to Sawda’s status in the household.
It was a nasty thought, cruel and mean-spirited, and I tried (without complete success) to banish it from my mind.
“What kind of wood is this?” Hafsa shouted, and my thoughts fled under the force of her cry. I looked up to see that she was yelling at the foreman of the workers, a burly man who was almost as tall as her father. “Do you want the roof to fall down on the Messenger when he is in bed?”
The heavily muscled foreman looked as if he wanted to say something unkind to this twenty-year-old girl who was acting like the queen of Arabia. But he bit his lip and restrained himself. At that moment, the Messenger entered the courtyard and the foreman gave him a pleading glance for intervention.
My husband walked up beside Hafsa. I saw him take a deep breath as if he were girding himself for battle. But before he could calm his bride-to-be, his eyes fell on me, standing in the threshold of my tiny room, and he smiled warmly. My heart felt as if it would burst, and I had to stop myself from running into his arms, telling him that I was the only one who could ever truly give him happiness. But something in the way his eyes lit up told me that I didn’t need to. That he already knew.
THE MESSENGER WAS MARRIED to Hafsa in a grand ceremony to which all the leaders of Medina were invited, including the Jewish chieftains, who sent presents of gold and spices but did not attend in person.
Watching the Messenger unite with Hafsa in front of a gathering of honored nobles, the bride dressed in a silk gown of scarlet, I felt a new pang of sadness. A sense of my own smallness came to me. My own wedding had been an exceedingly modest affair and I felt as if I had been cheated out of the pomp and circumstance that was being showered upon the daughter of Umar.
I murmured a complaint to my mother, who gave me a sharp look of reproach.
“This is a political marriage meant to keep Umar happy and the Muslims united,” Umm Ruman said in a hurried whisper. “But your wedding was ordained by God and reflected the Messenger’s heart, not his needs as a leader. Be grateful.”
Of course she was right. But at that moment I didn’t care. I got up and stormed off in indignation. I exited the colorful pavilion that had been erected in the marketplace, past a line of beggars who had come seeking alms from the Messenger on this momentous occasion. I hugged my scarf closer to my chest, hoping that it would warm the chill I felt despite the dry heat of the night.
I strode out of the bazaar, walking without purpose or direction. And then I stopped in my tracks as my eyes fell on a young woman leaning against a crumbling wall, staring quietly at the stars.
It was the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen her inside the pavilion with her sisters, Zaynab and Umm Kulthum, and wondered why she was not with her father celebrating his marriage. And then I thought that the fact that she was two years older than her father’s new bride, Hafsa, and yet had no suitors, must have weighed heavily on her.
Fatima seemed lost in a dream and did not react to the approach of my footsteps. I should have turned away and left her to her thoughts, but I felt drawn to her that night for reasons I could not voice. Fatima had always been so ethereal that she seemed like a spirit more than a creature of flesh and blood, and there was something about her that unnerved me. And yet she was my husband’s favorite child, and perhaps I felt a connection to her because I was his favorite wife-a status that I fervently hoped to retain after the Messenger spent the night with his new bride. Along with being older and possessing a more mature body, Hafsa had already been married once and was presumably experienced in the arts of love. My stomach curled at that thought and I forced it out of my heart as I slid in beside Fatima.
The girl looked at me with a ghostly smile, and then turned her attention back to the stars. The Milky Way ran like a vast caravan route through the heavens, and I saw that her attention was focused on the constellation of the al-Jabbar, the Giant, that hung low in the night sky. I stared up at the three stars that formed his belt and caught from the corner of my eye a glimmer of the tiny lights that formed his scabbard. But whenever I looked directly at them, they vanished, like djinn in the desert.
The silence between us grew uncomfortable and I groped for something that might spark a conversation.
“So…do you still think you’ll never marry?” I winced even as I said these words, but it was too late to take them back.
Fatima looked at me and I saw her black eyes suddenly focus as if she recognized me for the first time.
“No. I will actually be married soon, insha-Allah.”
This was news to me.
“You have chosen someone, then?” I tried unsuccessfully to keep the disbelief out of my voice.
Fatima shrugged and looked back up at the stars.
“No. He was chosen for me.”
Now, this was definitely surprising. My heart sank at the thought that the Messenger had not shared his plans for his beloved daughter with me. I wondered if he had told Sawda. Or worse, Hafsa.
“By your father?” I asked, my voice sounding squeaky like a mouse.
“No. By God.”
And with those strange words, the mysterious girl smiled sadly and gazed back up to the heavens. I looked down at my hands and pondered her words for a moment. When I turned to ask her what she meant, the hair on my neck stood up. The street was empty. Fatima had vanished.
The Messenger consummated his marriage that night with Hafsa, to her quite vocal satisfaction. I covered my ears with a rough leather pillow, but her throaty cries wafted through the thin mud walls between our apartments, adding to my misery.
A few days later, while I was still raw from the addition of this spirited girl to the harem, a second wedding was held. Fatima, I learned, was to marry Ali, and somehow that felt right. They were both strange, otherworldly creatures and their union felt almost destined.
The ceremony was not as grandiose as Hafsa’s nuptials, but there was a great dignity to the event. I felt an inexplicable solemnity to the wedding, as if this were something momentous in the history of the world rather than the union of two poor misfits who were lucky to find each other.
The Messenger was solemn and quiet as Ali and Fatima sat before him. The groom was dressed in a simple robe of black, his green eyes sparkling in vivid contrast. Fatima wore a russet gown, her face completely covered by a thin veil. Only a few intimates were invited, the heart of Muhammad’s family-his wives and daughters, Uthman the widowed son-in-law, and the Messenger’s two fathers-in-law, Abu Bakr and Umar. I was delighted to see Talha there, and my sister, Asma’s, eyes never left Zubayr, who had finally emigrated to Medina with a promise to marry her and end her spinsterhood.
Ali and Fatima signed the wedding contract and we all raised our hands to pray the Fatiha, as was customary. Normally the ceremony was completed with the supplication, but the Prophet did something unusual that night that I never saw before or again.
The Messenger of God raised a small bowl of carved acacia wood and poured it full of clear water from an earthen jug. He then rinsed his mouth with the liquid and spit the water back into the bowl and it seemed to sparkle as if he had cast diamonds into the bowl. And then Muhammad took the water and sprinkled it on Ali and Fatima, and the strange shimmer seemed now to emanate from then. Finally, my husband reached for a small glass vial of olive oil and touched it to his fingers before anointing Ali’s forehead. He then reached inside his daughter’s veil and did the same to her. It felt as if he was anointing them king and queen, as the prophets of Israel were said to do with their regal charges in days long past.
“May God bless you and your descendants,” he said with a look that somehow managed to combine joy and sorrow at once.
The whole ceremony seemed appropriately ethereal for this enigmatic couple and I was glad when the Prophet rose and kissed them, signaling that we had returned to the world I knew and understood.
The women took hold of Fatima’s hand and with the usual giggles and knowing glances led her to the adjoining bedchamber, where a sheepskin mattress similar to my own was laid out on the stone floor.
As I adjusted Fatima’s veil, which had shifted awkwardly as we moved her, I saw that her eyes were filled with tears and her mouth was a solid line.
“Smile!” I said with a wide grin of my own, hoping to lift her inexplicable gloom. “This is the most important night of a woman’s life.”
Fatima looked at me as if seeing me, truly seeing me, for the first time. And then she said words that I would never have expected.
“I wish I could be like you, Aisha.”
“Why?” I asked, sincerely surprised.
“You live your life freely, embracing every moment,” she said softly. “You are not troubled by the past. Or the future.”
It was a strange comment from a strange girl, and I responded as best as I knew how.
“My father says that the past is like a dream from which one has awakened. Why look back on it? And the future is like a mirage in the desert. We keep racing after it, and it keeps running away from us.”
I was startled at my own words, which had a flourish of poetry that I had not realized was in me.
Fatima smiled sadly, and there was something so tragic in her look that I felt my heart break.
“And yet sometimes the mirage runs toward us,” she said. “And then we see it is made not of water but of fiery sand, sweeping away everything we love into the wind.”
I looked at her, confused, even frightened. And then the women ushered me out as Ali entered the room, his green eyes as distant and unreadable as ever.
The day of reckoning came at last, and war was upon us. The Meccans had come to avenge the dead of Badr and destroy Medina. It was the first day of spring and the sparrows sang from the palm trees as our soldiers marched out to defend the oasis from the invaders. Abu Sufyan led a force of three thousand men and three hundred horses, while we were able to put together only seven hundred Muslims, along with three hundred tribesmen allied to the shadowy Ibn Ubayy. Despite the overwhelming superiority of our adversary’s numbers, the Muslims remained confident. After all, we had seen the miracle of Badr, where we had defeated an army three times our size.
And there had been a special sign of favor in the days just before the battle. The Messenger’s daughter Fatima had given birth to a son, a chubby and smiling little boy named Hasan. The Prophet’s own infant sons from his marriage with Khadija had died many years before and Hasan was now the only living male heir to the Messenger of God. His birth had come after a difficult pregnancy during which Fatima had spent weeks confined to her bed. The old women of Medina had begun to whisper sadly that the Prophet’s daughter was not strong enough to carry the child to term, and my husband’s face had become increasingly bleak and despairing in the days before her labor had set in.
But then, as if God had decided that the poor girl had suffered enough, Fatima’s pains vanished and she easily gave birth to the plump, curly-haired boy. The successful delivery of the Prophet’s heir represented a clear sign of hope for our Ummah. None of the Mothers had borne the Messenger any children, a fact that was the source of my greatest personal sorrow. But I took some comfort in the knowledge that if Hasan lived past the difficult weaning years, when most children succumbed to the cruelties of the desert, he would carry in him the sacred blood of the Messenger and ensure the survival of Muhammad’s family. The fact that Hasan was Ali’s son had instantly pushed the strange young man to even greater prominence in the community, a reality that was greeted with some bemusement by the elders among the Muslims.
But now all rivalries were set aside, for the enemy was at the gates of the oasis. The two hosts met on a valley just beyond a craggy volcanic mountain called Uhud, where the Messenger made camp and awaited Ibn Ubayy’s reinforcements. I sat beside my husband as he looked down from the heights to the plain below. The Meccan forces were like shiny beetles, their mail coats glinting up at us in defiance. With my falcon’s gaze, I could see the cavalry being led by a powerful, chiseled face man I recognized as the great Khalid ibn al-Waleed. He raised the visor of his helmet and scanned the battlefield, his eyes expertly following the curvature of the mountain, searching for any weak points in our defenses.
As I looked down at the Meccan camp, with its red, purple, and blue flags bringing color to the dead valley, I remembered how similar the scene was to the one I had witnessed a year before. Except that the enemy had tripled its forces and was motivated by vengeance rather than hubris.
If they succeeded, we all would be dead. And if they failed, they would be back again next year, with a larger force and a greater hunger for vengeance. It was as if every victory the Muslims secured only placed them on a new and more dangerous battlefield.
I sighed wearily and put a hand on my husband’s arm, more for my own comfort than his.
“Will there ever be peace, my love?”
“Yes. In Paradise,” he responded wistfully. “This world was born in war, and will one day perish in it.”
His fingers tightened around mine and I could feel the calluses on his hand from the many months of manual labor that had been required to build walls and strengthen Medina’s defenses. Muhammad could have absented himself from bricklaying as the chieftain of the oasis, but my husband understood the power of a leader who joined his men in doing the most mundane tasks. It created a bond of trust and loyalty whose true value could be proven only on a day like this.
I heard the steady crunch of rocks as heavy boots struck on the mountainside. I glanced over to see Umar, his massive body covered in rings of armor, race up toward our position. His face was contorted in rage.
“We have been betrayed! Ibn Ubayy has taken his men and turned back!”
My husband nodded grimly. Perhaps he had expected this possibility. Ibn Ubayy had thought the idea of confronting the Meccan force to be suicide and had argued that we should hide in our homes. Medina, with its winding streets layered with palm trees, would not be easily taken unless the Meccans wished to fight alley by alley, house by house.
But the Messenger had decided that allowing Mecca to cross the borders of the city, where they could wreak long-term havoc by burning our crops and poisoning our wells, was too dangerous. The Muslims had to cut the Meccan advance here. Apparently Ibn Ubayy did not agree and had chosen to abandon us even as the wolf pounced on our doorstep.
“Allah will protect us as long as we remain united,” he said calmly, but I could hear the edge in his voice. Even if angels came to help us as they had done at Badr, seven hundred versus three thousand presented unfavorable odds. If we were to hold back the Meccan line, there was no room for the slightest deviation in our strategy.
The sudden thunder of hooves echoed from the valley below, and I saw Khalid lead his horsemen toward a tiny pass at the base of the mountain. The Prophet raised his right fist and Talha grabbed a black flag and twirled it. The sign was seen by a group of archers hidden in a ridge to the east of our position and a volley of arrows suddenly rained down on the Meccan cavalry. The horses reared in surprise and Khalid pulled his men back, his eyes scanning the mountain until he located the source of the projectiles. The cavalry did not retreat to the Meccan camp but held position just outside the range of our arrows.
The Messenger rose and shouted across the hill, his voice echoing to the archers.
“Hold your positions,” he cried. “You are the vanguard of the Muslims. Do not lower your bows until I command you!”
The archers nodded and I felt a stirring of hope. As long as they remained in place, Khalid would be unable to ride through the pass and attack our forces from the rear. The Muslims held the benefit of high ground, which somewhat mitigated the Meccan advantage in numbers.
The rumble of drums caused my eyes to flash back to the Meccan camp. As one figure moved forward and I recognized the scarlet-and-gold turban.
“O men of Aws and Khazraj!” Abu Sufyan called out. “Quit the field now and leave my cousin to me. Once we have killed this troublemaker, Mecca will leave your lands. We have no fight with you!”
Perhaps his offer would have carried weight three years before, when the people of Medina had still seen one another as members of one tribe or the other. But since we had arrived, I heard less and less the mention of these ancient clans as the citizens began to think of themselves first and foremost as Muslims. As if reading my thoughts, the leaders of the Aws and Khazraj responded to Abu Sufyan’s challenge with a unified thunder of war drums.
“So be it.” Abu Sufyan nodded, as if he had expected this response. As the leader of Mecca turned back to his people, I heard the rattle of timbrels and a familiar sensual voice rose up from the camp, sending shivers down my spine.
It was Hind, leading a group of women in a dance around the soldiers. They were dressed in tight-fitting tunics and skirts cut high to reveal flashes of their thighs as they whirled and chanted, arousing the lust of their men, a fire that would soon be stoked to white-hot rage.
“Advance and we embrace you, and soft carpets spread,” they sang in throaty voices, like lovers crying out at the height of passion. “But turn your backs and we leave you. Leave you and never love you.”
It was an ancient verse, sung by women of every generation to goad their men to battle. And I could see its power. The Meccan soldiers clashed their swords to shields and bared their teeth like wolves as Hind ignited their loins and their hearts to a frenzy.
Watching Hind, I was both fascinated and repelled by her power. There was something both beautifully feminine and ruthlessly feral about her. I wanted to run from Hind, and at the same time I wanted to learn from her all the terrible secrets she held, the secrets of women’s power over men.
As Hind crouched and spun to the thrumming beat of the women’s timbrels, I saw Hamza step forward, watching her. And then Hind saw him, recognized the ostrich feather he always proudly wore on his helmet, and bared her teeth in what could have been a smile or a snarl. Or both at once, if that were possible.
“That woman is the devil,” Hamza said, his eyes focused on her sensuous, swaying form. Bilal stood beside him, his eyes poring over the front lines of the enemy forces.
“They have even brought their slaves today,” he said with clear regret. “I see Wahsi, my friend.”
Hamza placed a comforting hand on the shorter man’s shoulder.
“There are no friends on the battlefield, Bilal,” he said without hesitation, but I could hear the compassion in his voice. “If you face him in the heat of war, do what you must.”
Bilal nodded sadly. And then the thunder of drums stopped. The women fled from the front lines and disappeared into the Meccan camp as the true dance of death began. As at Badr, the Meccans sent forth a champion, a young man I did not recognize but who strode onto the field proudly, jeering confidently at his opponents. He swung his mighty sword and twirled it like the African fire-eaters I had seen perform when a caravan from Abyssinia stopped at Mecca years before. It was a powerful show, meant to mock and terrify the Muslims at the same time.
The Prophet dispatched Ali, who strode out onto the battlefield, his dual-bladed sword, Dhul Fiqar, glowing in the sunlight. And then, without any words or performance, Ali struck out and in one blow tore through the Meccan champion’s breastplate. The man fell over dead, the mocking smile still frozen on his lips. I heard a horrified cry, and another man, who distinctly resembled the thin-faced champion, rushed out onto the battlefield. This second warrior, almost definitely the brother of the first, ran after Ali, who was facing away from the attacker. And then Hamza charged out onto the plain and hacked the brother to death with his terrifying broadsword before he could stab Ali in the back.
Silence fell over the battlefield as both sides stared in shock at this duel that had lasted no more than a half a minute. It was such a similar moment to what I’d seen at Badr that I had that strange feeling that sometimes comes when the veil of time is tangled and past and present become one. The Meccans must have felt the same, because the sight of their most feared champions struck down again like unarmed children sent a wave of rage and fear through the enemy camp.
And then, without further ceremony, the warriors of Mecca charged.
This time no cloud of dust arose to block my view of the battle, nor did I witness any ghostly riders come to our aid. What I saw beneath me was raw and brutal and would forever haunt my memory.
The Meccans flew at our men with unbridled savagery. Their swords flashed red as the sun reflected off the volcanic rock and soon the ancient stones were splattered with a darker shade of crimson. The clash of blades against shields was deafening, as if a thousand bolts of lightning had struck at the base of Uhud, the thunder reverberating with such painful force that I covered my ears with tightly clenched fists.
Wave upon wave, they came upon us like an ocean of metal racing to flood the valley with death. And yet the Muslims held their ground. We had the protection of the mountain, and even as our front lines held up their shields to the unrelenting onslaught, those behind them rained spears and arrows upon the attackers.
I heard screams everywhere-the cries of pain and triumph, as well as the whimpers of the dying. To my surprise, many of the mortally wounded who had only moments before fought with such animal ferocity now became like little children, crying out for their mothers as the horror of death came upon them. It was that desperate weeping that shocked me more than anything else I witnessed that day, and suddenly the curtain of glory was stripped away and war was presented in it naked ugliness. As the smell of gore and entrails wafted up to me, I looked away, trying to hide the tears that were welling in my eyes. Tears for an enemy that would have no qualm slicing my body to shreds should any escape death and penetrate our defenses. It made no sense and I felt shame and disgust and horror all at once.
Despite my best efforts to hide my conflicted feelings, the Messenger saw the grief on my face and nodded. He understood.
I forced myself to look, to watch this deadly massacre that was unfolding only fifty feet away from me. I saw Hamza tear through the front lines, his ostrich feather splattered with grime and human remains as he cut down men with the ease of a farmer using a sickle on shafts of grain.
And then suddenly the Muslim defense became an offense. With Hamza in the lead, our warriors began to push through, forcing the Meccans to give ground and tumble back toward their camp in disarray. The reversal of momentum only increased the courage of our forces and the confusion of the enemy, and suddenly the Muslims were streaming across the battlefield and the Meccans desperately seeking to stave off our advance. I heard cries of joy as the stalemate broke and the advantage went to the followers of Muhammad. Despite my own complicated feelings at the sight of the dreadful slaughter, I called out to the warriors, even as Hind had encouraged her own men to fight.
“Victory is within your grasp, my sons!” I cried out, unsure and uncaring whether they could hear me over the din of battle. As a twelve-year-old girl, I always felt awkward referring to grown men as my children. But it somehow felt right at this moment. I saw Talha look down at me and wink, and I flashed him a smile that made color rise to his cheeks.
And then I felt the Messenger stiffen. I thought perhaps I had done wrong by calling out to the troops as Hind had done, but when I looked at my husband, I saw that he was paying no attention to me. His eyes were on the battlefield as the Muslims advanced near the Meccan camp at the other end of the valley.
I strained my eyes to see the source of his consternation. As the armies battled like raging ants below, I saw one figure who stood out distinctly in the chaos. Tall, black, and unarmored, he moved like a bird, flitting through the madness without engaging in combat. It was the slave Wahsi, whom Bilal had sorrowed over, and I saw that he was unarmed except for a long javelin that he held like a third arm.
Down on the battlefield, Hamza was striking down his opponents like a living tornado. He struck off the head of one unlucky warrior and then spun and sliced off the arm of a second, who had tried to stab him from behind. Wherever Hamza went, howls of pain erupted and were quickly silenced.
And then the Prophet’s uncle stopped in the middle of a swing of his blade, his head raised as if he had heard something distinct in the midst of that horrible cacophony. He suddenly turned to his left and the jumble of warriors all around him parted for an instant, like the waters under the staff of Moses. And across that gap, less than thirty feet away, stood Wahsi.
And then Wahsi threw his javelin, which flew across the plain faster than my eye could see. In one instant, it was in the black slave’s powerful grasp. And then a moment later, I saw it tear through Hamza’s abdomen and explode out through the small of his back.
I heard the Messenger sob next to me, but I could not look at him. I was transfixed at the sight of this mighty warrior, standing with absolute dignity as a river of blood poured out of his wound. And then this mountain of a man fell, and my heart crumpled with him.
A shocked silence seemed to descend over the battlefield as soldiers on both sides stared at Hamza’s corpse. And then I heard something that made my blood chill. It was the terrifying laughter of Hind and it seemed to echo from every stone in the valley.
But it was laughter that was cut short. For the sight of their commander dead on the field only filled the Muslims with fury. And then, as if Hamza in death had given a share of his lion’s heart to each man present, the Muslims charged with renewed passion. There was a frenzy in them that was terrifying. The Meccan forces were unable to defend against this rage and I saw the front lines of our advance break through until the Muslims were swarming the heart of the Meccan camp, dealing out death like children swatting flies.
“Retreat!” Abu Sufyan’s despairing and humiliated cry rang out through the valley even as Hind’s bloodlust had echoed only minutes before. I saw the Meccan shields shatter and the mighty warriors flee for the security of a mountain pass that would facilitate their escape.
I looked at the Messenger, whose cheeks were stained with tears. Hamza had been his uncle, but they were of similar age and their bond had always been more like that of brothers. Hamza had helped fill the heart of a boy whose mother and father had left him an orphan without any other siblings. I took my husband’s hand and squeezed it, and he nodded gratefully.
The Muslims had won the Battle of Uhud even as they had won Badr. But each time there was a terrible price for Muhammad personally, the price of blood that God exacted on him and his family. First Ruqayya and now Hamza. For a man who hated fighting, whose message had always been one of peace, it was as if the cosmos were seeking to ensure that his heart would never become hard to the horror of warfare. Many kings thought of their soldiers as expendable, their deaths on the battlefield no more meaningful than a hill of ants crushed by a passing chariot wheel. But for the Messenger of God, war would always be personal, and the cost would have to be borne by those he loved the most.
Still, the victory was a remarkable one, which made Badr look like a small skirmish. Now the legend of the Muslims would spread throughout the desert and more tribes would join us in alliance. A victory of this magnitude would change the history of Arabia forever. And perhaps it would not be long before the Muslims would lay siege to Mecca and liberate the Sanctuary. And then the war would end and all Arabia would become Muslim.
I tried to think like a man, forcing my reason to subdue my raging grief. I told myself that it was a victory that was worth the terrible cost. But that same day I learned that victory should not be counted until the last man has fled the battlefield.
The archers positioned at the eastern ridge of Uhud watched with delight as the Muslims ravaged the Meccan camp, tearing its haughty pavilions to shreds and grabbing weapons and gold dropped by the fleeing pagans. The men cheered as the battle thundered toward its conclusion.
A young archer named Madani threw down his bow and began to climb down the hillside, gesturing excitedly to his colleagues.
“Let’s go, or we’ll lose our share of the booty!”
Their hearts wild with joy, the archers began to climb after the youth. But their commander, a short Aws tribesman named Safi who could shoot a rabbit a hundred feet away, signaled to his men to halt.
“Hold your positions! The Messenger has not relieved us!”
“No need! The battle’s over!” Madani’s voice was followed by a loud cheer from his friends as they tore down the mountainside and broke into a run toward the besieged Meccan camp.
Safi stared after them, despairing. He turned to look at the Prophet’s base camp across the hillside and saw that Messenger was standing, his face filled with alarm.
“No! Turn back!” The Prophet’s voice thundered across the ridge. And then the horsemen under Khalid’s command emerged from the shadows at the base of the mountain and rode like lightning toward the tiny pass that would allow them to attack the Muslims from the rear.
Safi fell to his knees in horror, shame and guilt tearing through him at his failure to enforce discipline. Khalid rode up right behind the poor Madani, whose youthful laughter was cut short by one blow from the mighty warrior’s blade. The other archers who had broken ranks were either slain or fled in terror at the sight of the Meccan cavalry that their shortsightedness had now unleashed on the Muslim army.
I COVERED MY MOUTH in horror as I witnessed Khalid’s horsemen ride up in a cloud of red dust to strike at our men from behind. There were shouts of confusion that quickly turned to screams of agony as Khalid expertly cut down the surprised Muslims. And then I felt the ground around me shake as the men who surrounded the Messenger raced down the face of Uhud to help their fallen comrades. But they were now trapped between the Meccan army to the south and the cavalry that rode down to them from the north, like mollusks caught between the crushing pincers of a giant crab.
In a matter of seconds everything had changed. A clear victory was beginning to look like a horrific defeat.
And then I saw a cloud of dust heading in our direction and I realized that some of the cavalry had broken off their rearguard assault when they realized that the Prophet’s base camp was relatively undefended. My heart flew into my throat as I saw a group of warriors racing toward us, spears drawn.
The few Muslims who remained at the camp included women who had accompanied their husbands to the battlefield and were now in danger of being swept into the heart of battle. Talha leaped to his feet to protect us, as did my elderly father. They were only half a dozen men, but they quickly formed a circle around the Messenger. And then I saw the women grab discarded bows and fire upon the onrushing cavalry. The unexpected rain of arrows from these courageous ladies surprised the horsemen and slowed their advance.
But slowing the cavalry was like trying to dam a raging river. One of the horsemen bravely rode through the wave of oncoming missiles and approached the edge of our camp. His sword was raised in challenge, and the sun illuminated his familiar face. And my heart forgot to beat.
It was my brother Abdal Kaaba, my father’s eldest son, who had rejected Islam and his family. And now he was bearing down upon us with deadly hate in his eyes.
“Who has the courage to face me?” he bellowed. The sun was in his eyes and I was unsure whether he recognized the people he threatened, his own flesh and blood. And then I saw my father move faster than I could have imagined possible for a man of his age. Abu Bakr’s sword was drawn and he moved to face his son in a deadly duel. I wanted to scream for this nightmare to end, for me to wake up in my small apartment and realize that none of theses horrors existed outside my fevered imagination.
As my father moved forward, I saw Abdal Kaaba look down at him and recognition dawn. A flash of shock lit his features, so similar to Abu Bakr’s that it was as if a spirit from inside a mirror had emerged to engage in battle. But then a shadow fell over my brother’s face and his shock was replaced by a mask of steel. If father and son were meant to fight to the death in this bitter contest, then so be it.
And then my husband rose and put a restraining arm on Abu Bakr.
“Sheathe your sword,” he said gently. “Go back to your place and give us the good of your company.”
The Messenger’s words penetrated to my father’s heart. He dropped his weapon and fell to his knees as if the tendons in his legs had suddenly been cut. I saw tears flowing down his face and I stared across the rocky hillside at my brother, wondering whether he would ride forward and kill us.
Abdal Kaaba looked at my weeping father, and then at me. And then he cursed loudly and turned back, riding away from this madness as if pursued by flying djinn. But even as he retreated, others rode forward and the small company of defenders prepared to engage them. As I looked at the stony faces in our tiny circle, I said a silent prayer to God, telling Him that if I died today, I would be thankful that death came while I had these remarkable people at my side.
Along with the ever-loyal Talha, my sister’s newly wed husband, Zubayr, stood at the edge of the circle with a sword in each hand. He was the only man I knew who could use each hand equally well and he had mastered the rare ability to wield two blades at once. As a second horseman galloped up the rocks toward our camp, Zubayr began to spin as if he were a dust devil. And then, with a dancer’s grace, he swung with his right hand and struck the approaching stallion in the breast. The mighty beast threw its rider as it flailed in agony, and as the stunned horseman fell, Zubayr continued his spin, his left hand traveling in a smooth arc through the air and slicing the man across the neck. Blood spurted from his severed jugular, and the Meccan warrior was soon lying dead next to his horse.
And then Ali was beside Zubayr, Dhul Fiqar glowing with that inexplicable light, and the two fought side by side, cutting down any Meccan foolish enough to ride up that hill of death. They were a wondrous pair, cousins who moved and acted like twin brothers who could read each other’s thoughts. There was a symmetry in the way Ali and Zubayr’s bodies moved, as if they were two wings of a giant butterfly, flapping with terrifying beauty. I had never seen two men act in such perfect unison and I admired the bond of love and kinship that forged their hearts together.
I regret many things in my life, dear Abdallah, and none more than the dagger I wedged between their hearts in the years to come. Your father was one of Ali’s few friends, and the poison that I sowed in that pure field of love would reap a better fruit for our nation. Perhaps God will forgive me. But I do not know how I can ever forgive myself.
That day, trust was not a matter of faith, friendship, or blood. It was a matter of life and death. My heart, which soared to see Zubayr and Ali protect our northern flank from attack, suddenly plunged as I saw a group of men abandon their horses and clamber up the southern rock face to attack us from behind.
I screamed and pointed to the incoming wave of Meccan soldiers, their swords held in their teeth as they spidered up the boulders. Talha was instantly at my side, and when he saw the new threat, he threw himself at the warriors.
I watched in horror as three pagans set upon my beloved cousin, who was now the only shield protecting the Messenger from certain death. Talha fought with madness in his eyes, a ferocity unlike anything I have ever seen. He struck blow after blow, even as enemies’ blades tore through his mail, leaving deep red gashes.
And yet Talha remained standing. He spun and lashed out, slicing off the arm of one assailant and then plunging his sword into the chest of a second. Talha’s sword caught inside the dying man’s rib cage and he could not remove it in time to deflect a blow from the last survivor, which cut cross his back with sickening eruption of gore. I watched in horror as Talha swayed and appeared ready to collapse. And then he somehow found the strength to raise his leg and kick his attacker in the abdomen. The man screamed as he went over the rocks and fell fifty feet, landing with a sickening crunch.
Talha staggered back to the Messenger, who was looking at him in wonder. I have no idea how he managed to walk. His armor was shredded and blood was pouring from a dozen wounds. He smiled down at the Messenger, and then his eyes fell on me. Somehow, Talha managed to wink. And then he collapsed.
“Tend to your cousin!” the Prophet cried, and I was immediately at his side. I checked his neck and felt the vein pulsing weakly with life. My father leaned over Talha, opened a water flask made from camel hide, and sprinkled the contents over his wounds. I tore strips of cloth from my cotton robe and began to bandage his numerous injuries.
Talha had protected our rear flank, but Khalid’s men were now charging en masse up the hill from the north. There were too many even for Ali and Zubayr to hold back and several of the riders broke through the pass and thundered toward us. And then I saw two women, Nusayba and Umm Sulaym, who had been firing arrows at the attackers, drop their bows and grab swords. These plump housewives with no training in the art of warfare rushed at the horsemen, swinging their blades with terrifying screams of rage. The Meccans stopped in midcharge, startled to be facing these crazed women. Their hesitation proved fatal, as Nusayba plunged her sword into the neck of one stallion, which threw his rider over the edge of a cliff, while Umm Sulaym lopped off the leg of another. When the horseman fell to the ground in shock, Nusayba cut off his head.
But even these fervent defenders could not hold everyone back. I saw a warrior whose name I later learned was Ibn Qamia ride past Ali and Zubayr, who were occupied with fighting two horsemen each, and thunder past the women, who were forced to jump aside as his warhorse nearly trampled them to death.
And then Ibn Qamia saw the Messenger seated on the rocky ground, and he gave a bloodcurdling cry. My eyes went wide as I realized there was no one to defend us from this onrushing wave of death.
I saw my elderly father reach for his sword and race toward the enraged stallion. But Ibn Qamia swatted out with one hand, striking Abu Bakr on the face with the flat of his sword and knocking him to the ground. I screamed for my father, tears blurring my sight. Ibn Qamia was nearly upon us and I saw the Messenger rise, facing death with a courage that would escape lesser men. I watched Ibn Qamia’s sword flash in the angry sunlight as he swung out in a wide arc, aimed perfectly to cut Muhammad’s head from his shoulders.
“No!” I screamed so loudly that I am sure my voice rattled the gates of Hell itself.
And then I felt movement beside me, and before I could understand what was happening, Talha’s eyes flew open and he jumped to his feet, his left hand rising to block the razor sharp blade.
I watched in disbelief as the sword cut through Talha’s palm, shattering the fingers of his hand as if they were made from dried mud. As the warrior tore Talha’s hand in half, Ibn Qamia’s flawless motion was disrupted and the arc of the sword was deflected higher. Instead of striking the Messenger in the throat, the blade slashed up and smashed into the steel of his helmet.
Blood erupted from my husband’s cheek and he fell like a doll thrown to the earth by a temperamental child. The Messenger of God lay unmoving at my feet, his handsome face marred by torn flesh and metal.
Ibn Qamia looked down, stunned at his accomplishment. He had done what the greatest warriors of Quraysh had failed to do over the past fifteen years. His eyes wide with the promise of glory, he raised his sword and called out from the mountainside, his voice carrying across the valley like a trumpet blast.
“Muhammad is dead! Muhammad is dead!”
I could hear the cries of joy from the Meccans and the terrible weeping of despair from our people as the chant of “Muhammad is dead” spread through the valley. As Ibn Qamia rode away in triumph, I stared down at the Messenger, unable to move. If he truly was gone, I wanted to climb to the top of Uhud and throw myself into the darkest gorge below.
And then I saw the impossible. His eyes flickered and opened and he looked up at me in confusion.
“Humayra…”
I was suddenly flying, my heart breaking through the boundaries of time and space even as Muhammad had on the sacred Night Journey. My vision blinded by tears, I stood up and cupped my hands around my mouth as I cried out to the valley below.
“Muhammad lives!”
At first my words echoed and were lost in the din of madness below. And then I heard it. The steady thrum of a cry that resounded all around Uhud.
“Muhammad lives! Muhammad lives!”
The earth below began to shimmer with the glint of armor as our surviving warriors, energized by new hope, defiantly fought off the Meccans and climbed back up the side of the mountain.
As the Muslim soldiers returned to the safety of the high ground, I knelt down beside the Messenger and saw that his shattered helmet had absorbed most of the blow. My husband had lost two teeth and a good deal of blood, but he would survive with little more than a scar on his cheek that would be easily concealed under the rich black curls of his beard.
And then I heard the whinny of horses and realized that the danger was not yet over. Khalid’s men were regrouping and would launch another raid up the mountainside unless we could get the Prophet to safety.
Ali and Zubayr had returned to his side, and they helped the Messenger to his feet. Working together, we helped my husband climb to higher ground. Zubayr saw the crevice of a cave above us that would provide shelter and hide the Messenger from potential assassins until our army had retaken control of Uhud. Ali climbed up first and held his hand out to the Messenger. But the Prophet was disoriented from the pain and could not navigate the steep rock face to reach the ledge. I saw him desperately search for a handhold as he began to swoon.
And then, despite everything he had already done and sacrificed, poor broken Talha somehow managed to hoist the Messenger on his back and climbed the sheer rock wall until he had cleared the ledge. I cannot imagine the pain that must have racked his shattered hand as he pulled them both up and I felt a deep welling of love for Talha, a bond that would make him closer than a brother in my heart.
With the Messenger safe, I could turn my attention to the world below. The battle was over. The Muslim victory had been reversed and both sides had been left bloodied and exhausted. The last of our survivors clambered up the hill and the Meccans pulled back, realizing that it was futile to pursue the fight further.
I felt my heart pounding in my chest and I had to force myself to calm my breath before I lost consciousness. I had seen too much horror that day and I could not imagine that there was any more evil that could poison my eyes.
But Hind would soon show me that the pit of darkness had no bottom.
The battlefield smelled like a corpse that had been rotting for a week. The black volcanic ash mixed with the odor of disemboweled intestines, punctured hearts, and the rubbery gray slime of brain matter. It was a smell that would stay in my nostrils for weeks. It would penetrate my nightmares and cause me to wake up in the middle of the night and vomit.
As I looked down with grief at the many young and old who had suffered gruesome deaths on the field below, the sky darkened. The sun was blotted out by a vast flock of vultures, and the sound of their wings flapping impatiently above the valley made my skin crawl.
And then, as I peered through the battlefield for signs of any victims I knew by name, I saw a flash of color as Hind led her party of brightly clad dancers out among the corpses.
I watched in dread fascination as Hind moved among the fallen, gazing dispassionately at the muck and grime and exposed rib cages, until she found what she was looking for.
Hamza. The man who had killed her father still lay on his side, the javelin embedded deep inside his stomach. She knelt down as if to check to see if he were indeed dead, which was, of course, laughable, as he had lain there, skewered, for hours. And then Hind spoke, in a cold voice that sounded as dead as the men whose remains littered the ground beneath her dainty golden slippers.
“So here is the great Hamza,” she hissed like a cobra, her voice echoing through the valley. “They said you had the heart of an eagle and the liver of a lion. Let’s see if that is true.”
Hind grabbed a bloody knife from among the many weapons that had been dropped in the heat of battle. And to my horror, she cut deep into Hamza’s side and tore open his flesh. With her bare hands, she dug into the dead man’s flesh like a butcher ripping off fat from a shank of lamb. And then she tore out Hamza’s liver.
My stomach quivered violently in disgust as I watched Hind hold up Hamza’s liver high for the men of both camps to see. And then she put it in her mouth and ate it, the blood of Muhammad’s beloved uncle dripping down the sides of her mouth. She chewed it and swallowed, and then retched violently. Hind doubled over, vomiting back a portion of the human flesh she had consumed before all.
And then her gagging cough turned into a maniacal laugh and she grabbed the knife and proceeded to cut off Hamza’s nose and ears.
I heard moans and cries of horror from both camps. The pagan Arabs had strict taboos against disfiguring the dead of their enemies, and what Hind was doing was beyond even the meager moral restraints that their primitive religion imposed on their souls. But Hind seemed utterly oblivious to the disgust of her own people, and she began to sway like a kite in the wind.
And then, human blood still dripping from her plump lips, Hind began to dance and sing around the mutilated body of her enemy. She tore open her robes and smeared the blood of Hamza across her breasts. I could see the curve of her ample bosom as she stripped off her gold necklaces.
“O beauties of Mecca, throw off your jewels! Renounce gold and pearls! For there is no greater treasure than the flesh of our enemies!”
And with these words she whirled victoriously around the corpse of Hamza. Her madness spread to the other women like a disease. Suddenly they, too, descended on the bodies of our martyrs, tearing off their noses and ears. And then following her lurid example, they tied their bloody trophies with string and wore the human remains as jewelry. With their new prizes, they began to spin and swoon, their eyes thrown back so far into their skulls that only the whites remained. Their dance was raw and sexual.
Even though I wanted to close my eyes, it was impossible to stop watching. It was as if I were seeing a ritual so dark and ancient that it outdated the memory of man. The absolute purity of her evil was both revolting and mesmerizing, and I felt my heart pound. It was as if Hind had awakened some dark part of the soul that is buried so deep that touching it would unleash a force of transformation that went beyond life or death. It was at once terrifying and seductive and I felt myself being swept into the maelstrom of her madness.
And then Abu Sufyan rode up beside his wife and the spell was broken. He looked down at her obscene dance with unmitigated disgust.
“Enough! This is beneath us!”
Hind stopped spinning and crouched low on the ground, like a wolf prepared to strike. And then she took her hands, smeared with Hamza’s blood, and ran them across her face until her cheeks were streaked in human offal.
Abu Sufyan turned away from her, unable to comprehend how far his wife had fallen. He rode toward the base of Uhud and called out to us.
“War goes by turns, my friends, and today was our day,” he said in a booming voice. “All praise be to Hubal and the gods of Mecca! The dead of Badr have been avenged. We are now even.”
And then I saw Umar arise from among the survivors gathered on the hill. With Hamza dead, he was now the most feared and revered of our warriors.
“God is Highest, Supreme in Majesty! We are not equal. Our dead are in Paradise, and your dead are in Hell!”
Abu Sufyan stared up at Umar, and then he shook his head as if he would never understand this strange tribe that was in its own way as mad as his wife. He rode back to the camp to begin preparations for the long trek home.
The battlefield was now empty, except for the desecrated corpses. Unable to bear the sight, I turned my attention to Abu Sufyan, who was leading his forces out of the pass, and saw the different flags and markers of the tribes. I recognized the symbols of the clans of Mecca like the wolf of the Makhzum and the eagle of Bani Abd ad-Dar. But other pennants belonged to the rival tribes that had little friendship with Mecca, from the double-headed snake of Taif to the horned rams of the Bedouins of the Najd. These old adversaries had come together to defeat their common enemy-Muhammad.
It suddenly struck me that Abu Sufyan had successfully marshaled the warring Arab tribes to the south, even as the Messenger was attempting to unify the north. Arabia was on its way to becoming one nation, and its character would be determined by which alliance ultimately gained the upper hand in this bitter conflict.
In that moment, I realized what we were fighting for. Islam stood as a lonely light flickering in a wasteland covered in darkness. If Hind and her ilk were allowed to win this struggle, barbarism would prevail and eventually spread beyond the boundaries of Arabia like a plague. Our people would become a living curse on mankind, a nation diseased at heart that would pull the world into turmoil from which it would never return.
We had been defeated at Uhud, and now the pagan tribes would see us as weak. They would prepare to pounce on us like hyenas on a wounded lamb. If we surrendered to their combined might, the light of hope would vanish in the sands and something even more monstrous would be born in its wake. Either Arabia would unite under our banner, or it would fight beneath the veil of Hind. And the unsuspecting nations that surrounded us, torn apart by centuries of warfare and corruption, would either be rejuvenated by the message of Islam or fall victim to the unified might of a barbarian horde bent on destruction.
I understood now that the battle for Arabia was not about the survival of a new religion. It was about the survival of civilization itself.