Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (17 page)

T
hat night, after Asma returned home late to a harsh scolding by Umm Ruman for her unseemly flirtations, I sat in a corner of the living room, playing with my favorite dolls, ugly little things made from rags and robe fiber, which I had named Akil and Akila.

I acted out the wedding between these two figures, a favorite game, but in my mind’s eye, instead of my dolls, I saw my beloved sister finally wedding the boy she had secretly loved for years. Your father, Zubayr, was considered a great catch by the girls of the city, and I had never really believed that Asma had a chance with him. But the Messenger said that God holds the hearts of men between His two fingers, and turns them any way He wishes. It was evident that God had turned Zubayr’s heart to your mother at last.

I heard the door open and saw Abu Bakr return. I rose to greet him, but he looked at me with intense eyes.

“Go to your room, little one.”

There was something in his tone that frightened me, and I stood rooted on the spot.

“But, Father—”

“Go,” he said forcefully. “I need to speak to your mother.”

Somehow I knew that whatever had upset him had to do with me. I scoured my memory for all the naughty things I had done recently and I wondered which of them had finally gotten me in trouble.

Pondering my childish sins, I turned and went to my room and closed the door. But instead of playing with my dolls on my bed, I leaned up against the door to listen. I heard muffled voices and I strained to make sense of them. Finally I decided to risk it and I opened the door a crack, just enough to hear my parents’ words with some clarity. I grimaced as the acacia wood creaked against the marble floor and I wondered whether they had heard and knew I was eavesdropping.

“What’s wrong?” My mother’s voice was hushed but brimming with concern.

“Nothing is wrong,” my father said. “I…just need a moment.”

I heard my mother pour him a glass of water. After a moment, he spoke, and his words were filled with both fear and wonder.

“The Prophet had a dream,” he said softly.

“I know. He told us all about the Night Journey,” my mother responded.

“No. This was many nights ago,” Abu Bakr said. “It was only after his vision during the Night Journey that he decided it was time to share it with me.”

My father had always been respected as an interpreter of dreams, even in the days before the Revelation. He was like the prophet Joseph, a man who had been gifted with such a keen understanding of the human heart that he could easily read the symbols locked inside the hidden imaginings of the mind.

“The angel Gabriel game to him carrying a bundle of green silk,” Abu Bakr said slowly. “When the Prophet asked what was in the bundle, the angel said: ‘Your wife.’ And then he unrolled the silk and the Prophet saw a girl.”

Abu Bakr stopped. For a moment, I saw an image of Ramla wrapped in Gabriel’s silk, and I wanted to vomit. This beautiful and cunning daughter of Abu Sufyan would soon be in the bed of the Messenger of God. My heart beat fast with indignation.

But when my father spoke next, my heart stopped

“He saw Aisha.”

For the next several minutes, I heard nothing more. It was as if I had been struck deaf and even the torment of the damned in hell would have passed by my ears unnoticed.

When the world started again, the sounds came rushing at me faster than I could comprehend.

“What do we do?” My mother’s voice was shrill, like a lamb bleating at the first sight of the sacrificial knife.

“We obey God,” he said simply.

I heard my mother slam something down on the table and the door shook with its vibrations.

“But Aisha…she is promised to Jubayr ibn Mutim!”

This was news to me.

I had met Jubayr a few times, but I could barely remember what he looked like. I was aware that he was a cousin of the hated Hind, and I had heard rumors that he had been considering converting after Ramla had joined the new faith. Apparently, I was being used as a negotiating chip by my father to entice this powerful lord of Quraysh to embrace our faith. My heart, which had soared moments before to know that I was chosen to be the Messenger’s wife, now sank into rage and despair at the thought that my own family could bargain my life away so casually.

“Jubayr’s father has always opposed the marriage and will be relieved when we rescind the proposal,” he said matter-of-factly, as if discussing the proper value of onions in the marketplace. “If Jubayr is destined to come to Islam, God will find him a virtuous wife, I’m sure.”

I felt rage building in my young veins. Nowhere in this discussion had anyone mentioned or cared what I might have thought of any of this.

I heard my mother’s skirts rustling as she paced across the room, a habit whenever she was nervous or unsure.

“She is so young—” Umm Ruman objected, but my father cut her off.

“No younger than most brides these days,” Abu Bakr said simply. “The marriage will not be consummated until her cycles begin.”

There was a long silence in which the only thing I could hear was the pounding of my heart.

When my mother spoke again, I could hear deep concern in her voice.

“She will become the Mother of the Believers, a role only held by Khadija. How can a child take her place?”

“The Messenger understands the delicacy of her youth,” Abu Bakr said. “He will also marry an older, more mature woman who can run the household.”

I saw Ramla in my mind’s eye and felt my stomach sink. How could I be a cowife to the daughter of Abu Sufyan? She was so much prettier than me and was older, would know how to please a man. The Messenger would grow bored with me and toss me aside for a woman who was more his equal.

“Who?” my mother asked, with the excited curiosity of a gossipmonger.

My father paused, and I prayed to God:
Please, don’t let it be Ramla
.

“Sawda bint Zama,” he said at last.

I fell back with a thud and for a moment I was convinced that my parents had heard and knew I was listening. But they did not come into my room, and I sat in shock, absorbing this information.

And then I bit down on my hand to keep from laughing.

God had answered my prayer.

Sawda bint Zama was a sweet but elderly woman, a widow of considerable wealth, as Khadija had been. She was an excellent cook and would be a valuable addition to the Messenger’s household. But she was old and her body worn. If I were indeed meant to marry the Prophet, at least I would not have to compete with her in the bedroom. And even at that tender age, I knew that men valued young and beautiful women who could give them pleasure and bear them sons. Muhammad was the Messenger of God, but he was a man like any other in that respect, and I almost clapped with glee knowing that I could give him joys that Sawda would be incapable of providing.

When I crawled back to the crack of he door and listened, I heard my father speaking.

“I knew the night Aisha was born that she was special,” he said wistfully. “When the Prophet told me of his vision, I knew that the moment of her destiny had come.”

My mother sighed loudly

“Everything will change.” There was resignation in her voice and I knew that she had accepted the will of Allah.

“Everything must change,” my father responded. “With Khadija gone, the Muslims are in despair, walking like dead men. Aisha is a fountain of life. She will resurrect them.”

My mother was silent for a moment, lost in reflection.

“The midwife said our daughter would bring death.”

“Life and death are bound by a power beyond understanding. The power of transformation,” Abu Bakr waxed philosophical. “Aisha wields that power. She is the sword of transformation. Some things must die so that others may be born. That is her birthright.”

In later years, when my hand held that sword and rained death upon the
Ummah,
I wondered if my father had had some prophetic insight of his own.

“I am afraid,” my mother said simply.

And then I heard my father, the bastion of strength in our household, admit something that I could not have imagined.

“So am I, my love. So am I.”

I closed the door and crawled into bed. My mind was racing almost as fast as my heart.

God had chosen me to marry His Messenger.

It sounded laughable, but somehow it felt right. As if some part of my soul had always known that was my purpose. I took my dolls and put them aside with a pang of loss that comes when one period of life ends and another begins.

Yet I did not know where I was in the journey of life, or who I was to be, walking the path that I had been set upon.

I felt trapped between two worlds. I was no longer a child, but I was not yet a woman.

And yet, soon, I would be the Mother of the Believers.

O
ne night, several months after I learned that I was betrothed to the Messenger of God, my father pulled me out of bed and told me to dress quickly. My mother and sister were still asleep and Abu Bakr told me to move quietly so as not to wake them up. We had an appointment tonight that it was best not to let them know about.

Confused and a little intrigued, I threw on a woolen robe over my cotton tunic. I tied my hair in a yellow scarf, but my father made me take it off and replace it with a black one that would not reflect the moonlight and draw attention to my presence. We tiptoed through the house, past my mother’s bedroom, where I could hear her snoring steadily.

I felt a sudden rush of excitement as we stepped out into the cold night. I knew that all this secrecy had something to do with my new status, and I was eager to unravel the mystery.

My father, wrapped in dark blue robes, his mouth covered by a strand of loose cloth from his brown turban, led me through the abandoned streets of Mecca. Normally there would be at least a few citizens sleeping in bunks outside their doors, as was the custom during the summer months when the cooling winds helped ease the raging heat that made sleeping indoors unbearable. But tonight was unusually cold and everyone was indoors.

I could see the air steam from my breath, and the chill only worsened as we left the city behind and crossed into the moonlit hills. I began to feel a tug of fear. What was this all about? Where was my father taking me in the dead of the night? For a moment, I had a terrible vision of Abraham leading his son into the wilderness in order to sacrifice him to God. I loved Allah and I loved my father, but I did not think that I could surrender willingly to the knife as the boy had.

Now that we were far away from Mecca and no one was likely to hear us, I tentatively spoke up.

“Where are we going?”

My father hesitated, as if debating whether to reveal his true purpose yet.

“To Aqaba,” he said finally, and pulled me along faster across the rocky earth.

Aqaba? That made no sense. It was barren area at the base of a volcanic mound where caravans stopped to let their camels rest before the final climb through the hills and into the heart of Mecca.

“But there is nothing there except stones and sand!” Suddenly I didn’t like this mystery at all.

“Tonight there will be more,” my father said. Despite my continuous barrage of questions, he said nothing else.

We climbed over the last hill that formed the official boundary of the holy city. My father stopped at the peak and looked down into the valley of Mina below. I could see a haze of campfire in the distance, illuminating a vast tent city that must have housed a thousand pilgrims. These were people who could not afford lodgings in Mecca itself and camped outside while they were performing the rites of Pilgrimage.

We started to climb down and I nearly lost my footing. My father grabbed my hand and held it tight as I saw a shower of pebbles race down the hill to shatter on the jagged rocks below. When we finally made it to the base of the hill, I started to move toward the tent city on the horizon, assuming it was our destination. But my father tugged on my hand and pulled me back. He started walking across the base of the hill away from the brightly lit camp until we reached a place shadowed between two hills and surrounded by rocky boulders.

The moon was behind the hills and no light shone down upon this craggy section of desert. It was pitch black, nearly impossible to penetrate, even after my eyes had adjusted to the darkness.

As we moved forward into this void that was darker than any cave, I finally saw the outlines of figures up ahead, heard the soft murmur of voices.

I suddenly heard a clink of metal and saw the quick flash of a blade in the dark. My father stopped dead in his tracks as a boulder moved and I realized that it was not a stone, but a mountain of a man—the Prophet’s uncle Hamza.

“Who goes there?” he snarled, and I sensed that the sword would slash down without any hesitation if he didn’t like the answer.

“Softly, Hamza. It is I.”

Hamza leaned forward until he could see my father. He nodded, but then his eyes went wide when he saw me standing beside Abu Bakr.

“You brought this child?” he asked incredulously. Whatever was happening here tonight, it was clearly not the place for a small girl. A conclusion I had already come to on my own.

“She is not like other children, a fact you know well,” my father said, a hint of pride in his voice. “It is fitting that she should be present at the Messenger’s side tonight.”

The mighty Hamza scowled, but he stepped aside.

My father led me toward the voices, and I saw a circle of unfamiliar men, along with a few women I also did not recognize. The Messenger of God was speaking in hushed tones to these strangers. When he saw my father and me, he smiled widely, but he continued conversing with the people in the group.

I tugged on my father’s sleeve.

“Who are these men?”

He bent down to whisper in my ears.

“Tribesmen of the Aws and Khazraj in Yathrib.”

Of all the possible answers, that was one I did not expect. Yathrib was an oasis ten days’ camel ride to the north of Mecca. It had the blessing of fresh water and plentiful date trees and was a regular stop for merchants heading to the markets of Syria and Persia.

But despite its strategic positioning, the city had failed to achieve the level of prosperity of Mecca, which lacked agriculture but had the benefit of peace. Yathrib was a cautionary tale for the people of Arabia. Divided between two rival clans, the Aws and the Khazraj, the city had been consumed by a century of blood feuds whose origins were long forgotten. Several Jewish tribes lived in the vicinity and had survived the constant state of warfare by strategically shifting alliances whenever the balance of power necessitated. I knew little about the politics of Yathrib, but I did know that the men of Aws and Khazraj hated each other, and I could not understand what these bitter enemies were doing here, meeting the Messenger in the dead of night.

“What do they want?” I asked, my curiosity having reasserted itself as apprehension waned.

My father looked at the Messenger with warm eyes.

“An arbitrator.”

And suddenly it all began to make sense.

The Messenger finished his converse with these foreigners and waved with his right hand to Abu Bakr to come join him. I walked rapidly by my father’s side, almost tripping over a troublesome rock that rolled under my slippers.

When I entered the circle by the Prophet, I saw his uncle Abbas talking animatedly with the newcomers.

“Why is he here?” I whispered. “He’s not a Muslim.” Abbas was known to be sympathetic to his nephew, but like Abu Talib, he had not formally embraced the new Way and had never been included in the secret deliberations of our community.

“No,” my father acknowledged. “But he loves his nephew and will do what he must to protect him.”

Abbas looked at the Messenger, who nodded, and the lord of Quraysh turned to address the small crowd.

“People of Yathrib!” he said, and his voice echoed in the small enclosure. “You know the esteem in which we hold Muhammad, and we have protected him from his enemies. But he has resolved to turn to you and bind himself to you. So if you think you can keep your promises to him and protect him, the burden will be upon you. But if you fear that you will betray him and fail in your obligations, then leave him now.”

I did not fully understand what he was saying, but the words
he has resolved to turn to you
hit me in the stomach. Was the Prophet leaving us?

A chief of the Khazraj, a thin man with a prominent wart on his left cheek, stepped forward. I would later learn that his name was Bara.

“We are ready, Messenger of God,” Bara said solemnly. “What say you?”

The Messenger raised both his hands. And when he spoke, it was as if a lion were thundering through the darkness.

“I make with you this pact on condition that the allegiance you pledge to me shall bind you to protect me even as you protect your women and children.”

Muhammad, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, then lowered his left hand and extended his right. Bara stepped forward and took his hand, his head lowered in humility.

“By Him who sent you with truth, we will protect you as you protect him,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “So accept our pledge of allegiance, O Messenger of God!”

As I watched, one by one the men stepped forward and took the Prophet’s right hand and pledged the same. Then my father lifted a silver bowl that was at the Messenger’s feet and I saw that it was filled with clear water. Muhammad dipped his right hand into the bowl, and the women of Yathrib came and placed their fingers at the other end of the bowl, the water linking them, a symbolic act through which the Prophet accepted the allegiance of the women while respecting their dignity.

As the women proceeded to make the same oath, I turned to my father, confused.

“What does this mean?”

His answer would change my life. As well as the history of the world.

“It means, sweet girl, that we are leaving Mecca.”