Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (13 page)

I
stood holding my father’s hand as Abu Sufyan, dressed in the formal black robes of judgment, led a group of similarly clad chieftains before the golden door of the Kaaba. I saw that he held a heavy lambskin parchment in his hand and that Abu Jahl stood to his right, a triumphant smile playing across his face.

When they were all gathered in the courtyard of the Sanctuary, I counted over forty of the most powerful men, not only of Mecca but of the Bedouin tribes who grazed their flocks just beyond the black hills that served as the borders of the city.

My eye caught movement to my left, and I saw Abu Talib, the Prophet’s uncle and the head of the clan of Bani Hashim, standing with his brothers, Hamza and Abbas. He looked even more aged and tired than when I had last seen him, and Hamza held his shoulder firmly to help Abu Talib maintain his balance. I saw the three brothers looking at the gathering of the chieftains, from which they had been pointedly excluded, with evident concern.

And then Hamza scowled and I followed his eyes across the courtyard to see his half brother and spiritual enemy, Abu Lahab, standing by his wife, Umm Jamil. She had become one of the most vocal female voices against the Prophet and his Message. Umm Jamil’s petty vindictiveness was legendary, and I remembered how the Messenger had limped to my father’s house after she had carefully strewn thorns behind him while he prayed at the Sanctuary so that he when finished and turned to leave, his feet had been torn and bloodied.

The persecution by his own uncle and aunt had so upset the Messenger that God had come to his defense, sending a Revelation that condemned both of them to hell for eternity. This had only enraged Umm Jamil even more, and the next time she had seen the Messenger, she had thrown a pot full of steaming goat feces and entrails over his head.

Now she and her slug of a husband stood gloating as the lords of Mecca moved to destroy our faith once and for all.

Abu Sufyan looked sternly at our small crowd of believers, who had been summoned to hear the proclamation that had been decided in secret council that morning. And then he read from the document, his voice firm with authority.

“In your name, O Allah, we the leaders of Quraysh proclaim this solemn oath. The Children of Hashim have harbored a dangerous sorcerer named Muhammad, a madman whose lies defile the sanctity of Your House and Your children, the gods of the Arabs. His sedition has driven men away from the sacred Pilgrimage and has covered Your holy city with the shadow of poverty and fear. As custodians of Your Sanctuary, we can no longer stand by and watch corruption spread through the earth. We therefore proclaim this day that the clan of Hashim is outlawed. No man of Quraysh may marry a woman of Hashim or give his daughter in marriage to a man of Hashim. And no one of Quraysh may sell anything to anyone of Hashim, nor purchase anything from them. And this proclamation shall stay in force until the Bani Hashim lifts its protection of the heretic Muhammad or the sorcerer renounces his false claim of prophecy.”

He finished reading and raised his head to face us again.

“So say we all.”

The other tribal chiefs loudly declared their support of the proclamation, raising their right hands in affirmation.

I saw my father’s face fall as he watched the chiefs move forward one by one to place their individual wax seals on the document. A crowd of hooligans and rabble-rousers had been strategically gathered by the chieftains, and they now played their designated role by shouting practiced curses and slurs at the Muslims, inviting the gods to rain punishment on us from the heavens.

Abu Sufyan bowed to the angry mob with a deep flourish, as if accepting the will of the people. He took the proclamation and climbed the stone steps leading up to the gold-embossed door of the Temple. I gasped, as I had never seen anyone go inside the Kaaba. It was said that the lords of Mecca would enter the Holy of Holies only on extremely rare occasions when the future of the city was at stake, such as when a Yemeni army had besieged Mecca fifty years ago, shortly before the birth of the Messenger.

Clearly, this proclamation of exclusion was seen by the chieftains as requiring the highest divine endorsement. Never before had the lords gathered together to denounce and expel one of their own, not just one man but an entire clan, and deny by common agreement a whole caste of people any source of food or income to survive.

Abu Sufyan entered the Kaaba, his head bowed in humility and recognition of the fact that he was stepping on sacred ground that was normally forbidden. When the doors swung inward and sunlight flooded the normally dark interior, I saw a flash of crimson inside and caught sight of a towering cornelian quartz idol that I had heard about but never seen before.

Hubal, the god of Mecca, an ancient idol that had been brought all the way from Syria hundreds of years before. Its carved right hand had broken off during the long caravan ride from the north, and the ancestors of the Quraysh had fashioned for the idol a new hand of solid gold. The Messenger had said that of all the pagan abominations that corrupted the sacred ground of the Sanctuary, none was more hateful to Allah than this monstrosity that sat inside the House of God, its jagged face smiling obscenely at its usurpation of the authority of the One.

As Abu Sufyan stepped inside and nailed the proclamation to the dark stone wall behind Hubal, I saw his ally Abu Lahab look across the courtyard to Abu Talib, a victorious gleam in his beady eyes. The ban had cut Abu Talib’s leadership of the Bani Hashim at the knees, leaving Abu Lahab rich ground to agitate for new leadership. And then Abu Jahl approached Abu Lahab, shaking his black-turbaned head and placing his jeweled fingers on his friend’s meaty shoulder. Abu Jahl sighed in exaggerated sympathy, speaking loud enough so that we could all hear him.

“If only your clansmen had your vision, my friend,” Abu Jahl said pointedly. Clearly the campaign to replace the head of the Bani Hashim had begun in earnest.

Abu Lahab wrung his hands in mock despair.

“They have been blinded by my nephew’s magic. But the ban will wake them from their dream.”

“I hope so,” Abu Jahl said. “And then perhaps they will choose someone who can lead the clan of Hashim back to its hallowed seat at the table of Quraysh.”

Clucking like old women who have been scandalized by the foolishness of the young, they walked away together, leaving us to the jeers of Abu Sufyan’s hired demonstrators.

Abu Talib watched sadly as his estranged brother departed. Having swallowed the worst humiliation of his years as a chieftain, the old man turned to leave the Sanctuary. Hamza and Abbas helped Abu Talib cross the courtyard slowly, his head held high in dignity even as the drunken crowd flung insults upon him.

I watched as Abu Sufyan emerged from the Kaaba and closed the glittering doors with reverence. He turned to join the gathered chieftains and thank them for their unified support of his plan to expel the Bani Hashim from Mecca. And then he saw me, a thin little girl who would soon be denied food and medicine under his orders, and I thought I saw a flash of shame and regret on his face before he turned his back on me.

I was young, but I understood enough of what had happened to know that the world had changed and that we were in an extremely precarious situation. I tugged on my father’s sleeves.

“If no one will buy or sell to us, how will we eat?”

Abu Bakr bent down and put a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“When the Children of Israel fled Pharaoh and wandered in the wilderness, God gave them food. Even so, He will feed us.”

His face was calm and composed as always. But in his eyes, I saw fear.

T
he boycott by the Quraysh forced the Muslims to evacuate the city. Forbidden to buy food or the basic necessities of life within the boundaries of Mecca, we sought refuge in the blackened hills beyond its precincts. But as we quickly learned, the borders of a city are determined not by walls, rivers, or mountains but by the sphere of influence dictated by the might of its armies, by the network of its merchants. And Mecca’s circle of power extended well beyond arbitrary lines drawn in the sands of Arabia.

With neighboring Bedouin herders and passing caravans refusing to take our money or accept our services in trade, the believers were forced to forage in the wilderness like jackals or vultures. We pitched camp by a small wadi owned by my father. A tent city sprang up by the muddy stream that provided our only source of water in the midst of a gray wasteland.

I was only six years old, but whatever innocence of childhood I possessed had died. My pale face had become the shade of burned copper and my small hands were chafed from carrying pails of water that were almost as tall as I was. My knees were perennially scratched and scarred, the tender flesh torn from climbing through the rocky hills looking for precious eggs at the first sight of a hovering pigeon that might have built a nest nearby.

I rarely laughed anymore and had adopted the grim stoicism that I saw carved on my mother’s worn face. Her soft skin had lost its luster and had taken on the hardness of dry leather. At night, I could hear her crying in the small weather-beaten tent next to the one where Asma and I slept. Our mattresses were nothing more than a collection of rags that served many purposes in the camp of the exiles. At night we would spread them on the ground and lie upon them. In the morning, they would be rolled up and used to clean any pots that had been fortunate enough to be filled with food the night before. And once they had been washed in the questionably potable water of the spring, they would serve as our change of clothes for the day.

Childhood should be a time of play, of running through the streets with joy in one’s heart, of flying kites and letting the soul soar with them beyond the dome of the sky into a world of dreams and possibilities. In my old age, I look back and remember the countless crimes our enemies subjected us to in the early days of Islam. I have forgiven most of these transgressions, as the Messenger enjoined us. But the pain of those childhood years, spent hovering under the shadow of starvation, pestilence, and death, has been so deeply imprinted in my heart that I cannot let it go. Whenever I think back on those dark days, I feel anew the rage and despair that come with being small and powerless in a world that rewards only cruelty and strength.

It was the memory of that deprivation and fear that would drive me in years to come to seek power when I should have sought wisdom. And my grief is that many men would die because of a child’s terror of the scorpions that crawled past her as she lay on hard desert ground in the night.

Eventually the end came, as it always does. If I have learned one thing in the years of my existence, one nugget of wisdom from having lived in the midst of disputations over faith and the nature of the world, it is that everything ends. This is both the blessing and the punishment of God upon the foolish tribe that calls itself man. We can embrace the end or we can weep, but the ghost of time closes all doors with a finality that can never be gainsaid.

So it was that one night, I emerged from a torn green tent and looked out at the dozens of believers, dressed in dirty rags, sitting by makeshift campfires along the tiny riverbed. The sparks crackled and flew into heaven, like desperate prayers. I felt a terrible weight in my heart, for I carried news that would extinguish many hopes tonight.

I saw my father at the edge of the camp, gathering acacia leaves from a scattered copse of trees. We had been reduced to rationing these prickly green sprouts that even our animals were dubious of as our supply of dried meat dwindled. Some of the refugees would eat them raw, while others, especially the children, could stomach them only if they were cooked into a thin broth.

Abu Bakr saw the look on my face as I ran over, and he stopped in his tracks, dropping the basket of leaves.

“How is Khadija?” he said, a hint of dread in his voice, as if he already knew the answer.

I had spent the last two days at the side of the Mother of the Believers. She had been struck by the potentially deadly camp fever and had been fading in and out of consciousness for the past hour.

“She is still feverish,” I said, panting to catch my breath. I paused, fearful to say what my father already suspected. “Mother worries for her life.”

I saw the color drain from his tired face.

“I seek refuge in Allah! Without Khadija, I do not know how he will go on.”

Abu Bakr looked across the camp and I saw that he was gazing at the Messenger, who stood alone at the top of the hill, his head bowed in prayer or sadness. Or both.

And then I felt the ground shudder as Umar stormed over. His dark face was contorted in rage as usual. He stared at the emaciated faces of the refugees kneeling by the wadi and then turned to my father with a now-familiar rant.

“It’s been two years! When will this end? Where is God’s help?”

My father was the only one besides the Messenger who seemed to have a soothing effect on Umar’s volatile emotions. Abu Bakr was as much of a doctor as a friend to this volcano of a man, whose fire easily consumed lesser souls.

“Calm yourself, Umar,” my father said patiently. “The people need you to be strong.” He did not add what I knew he was thinking—especially if the Mother of the Believers died. The Muslims would need men who were made of granite rather than flesh to guide them through the madness and despair that would follow.

But Umar as usual failed to read that which was underneath the words. He was never a subtle man.

“How can you be so calm?” he said with increasing fury, like a child demanding an answer to an inexplicable mystery. “You’ve lost everything. You were once one of the wealthiest men of Mecca, and now there is no difference between you and the slaves whose freedom you bought!”

Abu Bakr sighed. Even my father’s impatience with this moody giant had its limits.

“Whatever I had was on loan to me from God,” he said. “Were I given tenfold what I have lost, I would gladly spend it all for God and His Messenger.”

Apparently, he had found the words that Umar needed at that moment, and the son of al-Khattab stopped shaking. A gentle calm descended on him. My father looked again to the Prophet, who now sat down upon a mottled gray rock and buried his head in his hands as if weeping. I saw deep pity on Abu Bakr’s face. Few knew as well as he the anguish of the Messenger, who had been preaching One God for almost ten years and had achieved nothing but exile and starvation for his followers.

“Go to him,” my father said softly. He knew that the Messenger saw me as one of the few bright lights in this vast blanket of night that covered his life. Even though I rarely laughed on my own anymore, I was still a performer at heart, and I had been the only one who could bring a smile to his face with my games and antics.

I walked over to the Prophet and saw that his face was wet with tears. For a moment, I stopped breathing. If the Messenger of God had been reduced to despair, what hope would there ever be that I could find joy in my dead heart again?

I put a hand on his shoulder and tried to keep it from shaking.

“Don’t be sad,” I said, and it was more of a desperate plea than a compassionate request. “God is with us,” I added, despite all evidence to the contrary.

The Prophet raised his head and looked at me for a long moment. He took my hand and squeezed it gently, and I pretended to cry out in exaggerated discomfort and then danced a silly jig at his feet. He laughed, then scooped me into his arms, smiled into my golden eyes. It was as if my presence gave him renewed strength and purpose. Looking at me, he saw the future that he and his followers were struggling to create.

And gazing into his unfathomably dark eyes, I sensed that I had reminded him of the past as well. In later years, the Messenger told me that my childish defiance of the world, my embrace of life when those with allegedly greater wisdom had resigned themselves to death, had taught him again the lesson of his own youth. For I was the same age as he when his mother had died and he lost what little standing and hope he had in the strict social hierarchy of Mecca. It was a harsh lesson that the orphan had learned that night and relearned again and again, every night for two decades, until God had brought him to Khadija and ended one chapter of his life to begin another. It was the cruel but necessary truth that pain is an unavoidable part of any struggle, as are the inevitable defeats and humiliations of the journey. Loss is the fire that tempers steel and forges it into a sword of victory. Failure is the currency by which success is eventually purchased in bulk.

And then I saw the Messenger’s face change. The smile that lingered on his lips froze. I watched in shock as his dark eyes flew back up into his head until all I could see was the ivory white orbs that encased them. His hands began to tremble and he let go of me as tremors tore through his body like terrifying bolts of lightning.

I fell to the ground, my throat constricted in fear. I felt rather than saw my father come running up behind me. Abu Bakr scooped me into his arms and held me tight, but his eyes never left the Messenger, whose face was bathed in sweat and who fell to his side, convulsing like a fish that had suddenly been pulled out of the sea.

The Trance of the Revelation.

We had both seen this happen before, but it never ceased to fill us with awe and terror. For we knew that the Messenger’s body shook with the unimaginable power of two worlds colliding. Of the entire might and vastness of heaven itself curling into a ball and descending into the tiny and weak form of a mortal man.

It was at the moment of the Revelation that we had a sense of the power of an Infinite Mind that had created the cosmos with a single word. And now that very same power, the overwhelming energy of the Divine Word, was tearing into the sinews and muscles of this one man who had been chosen to be its herald to mankind.

I saw Ali approach with a blanket. He wrapped the Messenger around the shoulders and sat by him, brushing his dark curls lovingly as he shivered and shuddered under the weight of the Revelation.

And then, so fast that I gave a little scream of surprise, the Messenger’s eyes flew open and he bolted upright. The tremors immediately ceased, but I could still feel the air around him vibrating, as if the world itself shook with the force that coursed through his soul.

And then Muhammad, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, spoke. But the voice was not his own. It was deeper, unearthly, like an echo rising up from a chasm between life and death. And it said:

“
Do you suppose that you will enter the Garden

Without first having suffered like those before you?

They were afflicted by misfortune and hardship

And they were so shaken that even their Messenger

And the Believers with him cried,

‘When will God’s help arrive?’

Truly God’s help is near.
”

I saw a crowd of believers gathering around us, their eyes wide with wonder as the Words of God descended into their midst. The Lord of the Worlds was speaking right now, through the tortured tongue of the man whom they had followed willingly to what appeared to be their deaths.

People were crying, not from grief or fear but from joy. God had just reminded them that this terrible period they had endured was nothing more than a test that would end at its appointed time.

And strangely enough, they found deep comfort in the admission of despair on the part of the Prophet. God had lifted the stoic veil over their leader’s heart, revealing that the doubts they had all secretly harbored were in fact shared by the Messenger himself. Their fears were his.

There is no greater revelation in life than to learn that those whom we admire share our faults and our weaknesses. In that moment, stone idols fall from their pedestals and the gulf between the lover and the beloved vanishes in the joyful embrace of the beautiful imperfection of humanity.

The Messenger blinked and I saw that the angel had departed and his soul had returned to him.

He took me by the hand and ran his sturdy fingers through my crimson hair.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?” I could not imagine that the most important person in my life, the man whom my father and mother called master, would have any reason to thank me.

He smiled and spoke loud enough for the eager crowd of believers to hear.

“For reminding me that God’s help is always near.”

And then he stood and raised his hands in gratitude to God. And even though we were all still cold and hungry, standing there on the dead hill that was our wretched home, I felt as if a curtain had lifted. The air smelled different. The stench of disease and decay was gone.

And in its place was the unmistakable, and inexplicable, scent of roses.