Muhammad (8 page)

Y
ears ago Christ's army marched on Mecca to destroy us, and almost succeeded. Memories are short. People talk about the trouble being stirred up now. This is nothing compared to the madness back then. I pulled Muhammad into my house to make him listen. His influence is growing in the tribe. He understands trade, and I trade in power. If Mecca collapses, the Arabs will be powerless. We are devouring ourselves.

“Once you hear me out, you can alert the others,” I began. “You are young, but your counsel means something.”

“Am I here for a history lesson?” Muhammad asked with a serious smile.

“It's a lesson about danger,” I said. “Last time the danger came from without. This time it festers within, like a disease. I feel the plague spreading. Trust me, I've seen the worst.”

Muhammad bowed and took a seat. “Tell me.”

I cast my mind back. “News spread of an attacker marching across the desert. Bedouin boys tending sheep in the mountains were the first to spot the enemy. They ran to town crying that huge monsters were in league with thou
sands of soldiers. Mecca had no defenses. Our men couldn't form a proper army. The desert has protected us for so long, they had forgotten what war was like. This devil Christ must have been protecting his soldiers to bring them across a hundred miles of sand without dying of thirst. Panic broke out. Everyone became a nomad overnight. The clans ran into the desert to escape the invaders. People said hysterical things: Christ's followers ate human flesh; the Jews had sold them secret plans to the city. Doors were marked with signs in blood in the dead of night.”

“It must have been horrible,” said Muhammad. He was listening, but you never knew what he was thinking, not that one.

“Horrible? You've never stared starvation in the face, you and your generation. The bazaar was stripped clean as if by a swarm of locusts. A few sellers tried gouging. They offered a pomegranate in trade for a pearl. Instead, men held knives to their throats and stole the pomegranate. They deserved it too.”

Muhammad nodded. He never faltered in the respect department. However, the real question remained. Would Muhammad stand with us, the guardians?

I take some wine at noon for my blood, and it can go to my head. I found myself shouting at him. “This must never happen again, do you understand? Never!”

“Is that why you had Uthman attacked?” he asked in a voice as quiet as mine was loud. “Is he part of the disease?”

“Nobody had anybody attacked,” I muttered resentfully.

“Did the knife go in on its own?”

“Uthman is a secret Christian,” I said. “You don't understand. And since you have eyes in your head, that means you
refuse to understand. Let everything crash. I'm old. What does it matter?”

I slumped back on a pile of cushions and poured myself another cup. There was nothing more to say. Muhammad gazed out the window. I stared into the dregs of the wine and swatted a fly. It was too hot to argue. If Mecca goes to hell, they can't blame me.

“I admire you,” said Muhammad suddenly.

I was so startled, all I could blurt out was, “Why?”

“‘Fate loves a rebel.' You know that saying?” he asked.

“I'm not the rebel. Things are going on behind closed doors. Conspirators are trying to destroy us. Fanatics, zealots. If they have their way, another army of demons will be at our walls.”

Muhammad didn't cringe. I wasn't so drunk that I didn't know I was losing my case. I couldn't live with myself if the blame fell on me. To calm my nerves, I retold the story of Christ's invasion. I assumed Muhammad had already heard it, but I needed to tell it and he needed hear it again.

“You were born that year. I knew your mother, as I knew all of the clan of your great-grandfather Hashim. Her belly was swollen when I came to warn her. Aminah wasn't the kind to be hysterical. She wanted to know everything, so I talked to her as if she was a man.”

My words were pouring out freely, but I was far away. In my mind's eye I could see her again, clutching her robe around her throat so that her hand wouldn't tremble. Aminah was too pregnant to flee, and yet staying behind could mean her death.

“She had barely heard of the king of Yemen, whose name was Abrahah al-Ashram. You know the insolent vanity of
those people. Paradise begins when you cross the border into their green land. Abrahah despised Mecca for one thing—the Kaaba and the wealth it brought us. Why shouldn't hordes of pilgrims come to his kingdom instead of this wretched desert town? In a dream he saw the solution. He had to build a shrine so grand and luxurious that it would awe any pilgrim who set eyes upon it. He obeyed his dream and called his bejeweled shrine Qullays. If a god had spoken in his ear, Abrahah's ambition might have been realized, but he was listening to demons. They quickly betrayed him. No pilgrims turned away from the Kaaba. The Arabs made up songs ridiculing his gaudy, empty temple. Now Abrahah's vanity turned to anger. He rounded up an army of mercenaries, spear throwers and archers, the scum of the earth, but experienced in war. They began their march on Mecca, and what did our Bedouin brothers do? They greased the way with food and water, sold at a premium. They even provided guides from the hill towns who were jealous of Mecca. Abrahah created wonder with a pack of huge gray monsters, as the ignorant called them. They had never seen drawings of elephants.”

I stopped my story and looked at Muhammad. “You think this is only a tale, but the future depends on what I'm saying.”

He quietly asked me to go on.

“When word spread that Abrahah's army was only a few miles away, the Quraysh gathered in council. The invader sent word that he would kill no innocent civilians. His wish was to enter the city, raze the Kaaba to the ground, and depart. The emissary who brought this news was lucky he wasn't beheaded on the spot. The Quraysh became furious
and vowed to defend Mecca to the last man. One elder dissented, though. ‘We can rebuild even the most sacred building,' he argued. ‘But if we die, there will be no one left to bring the Kaaba back.'

“That lone voice was your grandfather, Abdul Muttalib. The invaders had scoured the hills to steal our animals, and he had lost the most, more than a hundred camels. If Muttalib could keep his head in the face of such a crime, he was the man to send to the enemy camp as ambassador. Muttalib went and bowed before Abrahah, although obeisance stuck in his throat like a mouthful of thorns. To him he said, ‘Sire, withdraw from our home. We cannot fight you, but our idols are not under our control. I cannot vouch for what they might do. Accept tribute from us instead.' Muttalib offered money and fruit from the best orchards to be paid in perpetuity. Abrahah sneered at tribute, which he saw as a sign of weakness.”

“Like a true Arab,” Muhammad interrupted.

“No, that's the cruelest part. He was an Abyssinian, a foreigner. Yemen had fallen to their king. In those days the demon Christ seduced Abyssinia, and his hand was guiding everything.”

“From what I've heard, Christ doesn't inspire war,” said Muhammad mildly.

I grew irritated. Why did he refuse to see?

“Christ inspires whatever makes him more powerful. He's no different from any other god,” I said glancing at the wine jug. I resisted temptation, as persuasion deserts a loose tongue.

“Muttalib returned to Mecca with the bad news. He counseled calm. He repeated Abrahah's promise not to harm the populace, but panic spread without check like a contagion. Whole streets were abandoned overnight and became prey
to wandering ghosts and thieves. The tribal elders held no sway. They fled faster than anyone. Now came the decisive moment.”

I paused so that Muhammad would be slightly uneasy, uncertain what I was really about. He knows my reputation for canniness and power brokering. Nothing I do or say is casual.

I let anticipation hang in the air. Then I said, “On the night before the invader reached our gates, I spied on your grandfather.”

“Why?” Muhammad was obviously caught off guard.

“Because the Kaaba meant more to his clan than to anyone else. Without the idols, what would happen to the sale of their precious water and the money it brought? Muttalib had done his best to get his family to safety. The only one he couldn't persuade was Aminah, and her peril gave him added incentive. I followed him from his courtyard to the doors of the Kaaba. He seized the handles with both hands and began to wail. He wailed to every god he could think of. He invoked the one God, Allah, but he didn't exclude even the most insignificant idol made of cracked plaster. When he was finished, he composed himself. From the shadows I couldn't hear what he muttered to himself, but we were both Arabs. He left the rest to fate.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Can you believe that his prayers were answered?

“That very day a sickness fell over Abrahah's army. Soldiers broke out in sores that oozed poison. Some say a swarm of biting insects swooped down on their camp, but I saw with my own eyes. Within hours the troops began falling to the ground. A day later they were dying in piles. I sneaked beyond the city walls and spied on them. There
were no insects. An invisible curse felled them. The war elephants with brass balls on their tusks stood around listlessly, unable to move. Like a man caught in a nightmare, Abrahah realized that the predator had become the prey. The tribes would sniff out this calamity and descend to devour him. He turned tail and ordered an immediate retreat. Suddenly the demon army and its monsters vanished like a mirage.”

“I have listened,” said Muhammad, “but there is a tale within the tale. Why is this about me?”

“Be patient. Your grandfather, Muttalib, was overjoyed, and his prestige soared. Drunken celebrations clogged the streets. Rich men slept with all their wives and woke up exhausted the next morning. Muttalib remained sober. He called a council to create ways to prevent such a threat from ever happening again. Laws were passed forbidding Jews and Christians from living in Mecca. A street patrol was formed, and armed men guarded the prosperous neighborhoods.”

“The guardians, which you lead,” said Muhammad quietly.

I smiled and extended an arm. “I'm not threatening you.”

“Then why does it feel that way?” he asked.

“Listen to me. The man who demanded that the Jews and Christians be driven out was your grandfather. His decree rests upon your shoulders.”

Muhammad was grim. He had never counted on spies. I knew he consorted with the
hanif.
The old ones like Waraqah were beyond my power. If I hadn't liquored up some half-crazy thugs, Uthman wouldn't have been warned. And yet it was necessary.

I expected Muhammad to react with fear or passion, but not with violence. I had no dagger hidden under my couch for a talk with him. He did surprise me, though.

“Do you know why I called you a rebel?” he asked calmly.

I shook my head.

“Because you lead the revolt against change. The new terrifies you. The danger isn't an invisible curse this time. It's the invisible, period.”

I gave a disgusted sigh and reached for the wine jug. There was no reason to hold back now. “You talk like one of them.”

“They are us. That's what you don't see. What are you really guarding? Slow rot. I smell it in this room.”

His voice was strong and steady. He was willing to utter words that get men killed. Had I underestimated him? I pretended to be unmoved while I recorded everything he said in my mind.

“How are they us?” I asked.

“The Quraysh control this city for one reason. It's not money. My grandfather made and lost a fortune. His sons were left weak and stripped of riches. I was reduced to living like a servant in my uncle's house, the last to be given bread and the first to be beaten when his sons were in a rage. But I know that without Abraham, our father, the Quraysh are nothing. We owe him everything. The water of life springs from him. For years that has meant less and less. What is Abraham without the faith of Abraham? Tell me your answer, and I will join you. If you can't, rot with the rest.”

I cannot imagine how he managed this speech without challenging me to a fight. Muhammad's eyes flashed, but his hand remained quietly by his side.

“You are no longer welcome inside my gate,” I said with cold formality.

“I obey with sadness,” he replied.

A moment later he vanished. I threw my wine cup across the room. It smashed against the wall and dripped purple juice down the plaster. No matter, it was undrinkable, spoiled by the heat. Flies buzzed around my head, attracted by the sickly sweetness of a drunkard's breath. There were too many to swat. I covered myself with a blanket and waited for sleep.

B
ecause I wandered in from the desert, nobody knows my name. They call me “the chick,” because I sit all day with my mouth open, waiting for people walking by to drop food in. It's a cunning way to beg. Everyone knows who I am, and all of Mecca marvels at how I survive. At times there can be nasty surprises. I'm a decent man, or I would tell you some of the filthy objects street urchins have dropped into my mouth.

Today I'm a beggar, but I have ambitions. I hope to become a fool. People pity fools, and those who don't are at least superstitious about them. The best fools have gone mad over God. They even think they speak with God's voice, but it's all babble. I think about that when I'm curled up in an alley on a cold night. Is it better to be pitied or despised? Those are my two choices.

I don't feel sorry for myself. On feast days and especially weddings it's good to sit with your mouth open as the guests pass by. A few will be feeling merry enough to toss a sweet-meat your way. The last wedding was Muhammad's. Mecca couldn't stop talking about it. A trader in his twenties mar
rying an old woman. Why did he agree? It wasn't for her beauty. The lady Khadijah is forty. Two rich husbands have died on her. So it had to be for her money. He must have played a close game. The widow is rich enough that she resisted all offers from greedy suitors. Rich enough to be the one who proposed to Muhammad too, not the other way around. No one felt she was stooping beneath her station, though, because Khadijah's purity is impeccable. She was waiting for a pure husband, they say.

And most people were glad that Muhammad was rising. I watched him passing in and out of her gate in the days before the ceremony. Being a beggar, I have a high opinion of him. He's never thrown a pebble down my throat to see if I'd choke and get a bit of a laugh, like some others. One day he struck a filthy boy who was about to drop a ball of dung in my mouth.

Naturally, I expected much from the wedding of a man like that. I arrived at the bride's house a few days early. Mostly women came by, always giggling. I turned my face away. It hurts to see the face a pretty woman makes when she sets eyes on me. Next was a young man in dirty sandals carrying a bolt of fine woolen cloth. I seized his leg and held on tight.

“Let me go,” he cried. “You're crazy, not blind. Can't you see I'm only a servant?”

But I didn't let go until he shook his leg and hopped up and down like a nomad bitten by sand fleas. It was funny, really, because he didn't dare drop the bolt of cloth to beat me. After that little prank time hung heavy. I got hungry sitting there with my mouth open, until a large ripe date dropped in. Opening my eyes, I saw Muhammad.

“May Allah give you joy,” I murmured, rolling the sweet fruit around on my tongue.

Muhammad was in a rush, but he paused with a curious look on his face. “Does the name of Allah help your begging? I wouldn't think so.”

I fawned, hoping for another date. “God shows me who is his son when I am fortunate enough to see one.”

“So Allah is just one of your tricks, to see who can be flattered?”

Muhammad didn't say this in an insulting tone. He was smiling and at the same time he pulled another date from his sash, putting this one in my hand. A proper and decent gesture.

I bowed. “I'll tell you my secret, sir. I speak of Allah, because I am practicing to be a fool. When fools speak of God, people are more likely to be superstitious about them.” Muhammad shook his head with amused wonder and went on his way.

If I heard the tinkle of ankle bells but no giggling, it was usually Khadijah herself bustling past me on her way somewhere. She is always in motion. A rich woman must work twice as hard as a man to keep thieves from her hoard. In summer her caravans are headed for Syria, in winter for Yemen. She paces around the camels at dawn, inspecting every bale and sack. But Khadijah isn't pinch-faced and shrewd, if that's what you think. She wraps her head in black to go out at night, and many a poor wretch cowering from the cold and damp has felt her hand on his shoulder. She brings soup and a cloak, even to strangers. She busies herself behind the scenes to marry off her poor relations and drops gold in their dowries, so that the girls
won't wind up with a crook-backed bully no respectable woman would touch.

When she passes me, I murmur
ameerat,
or “princess.” Khadijah smiles. She's heard that kind of flattery all her life. More than most, she actually deserves it.

One thing about her is resented, though. When feast days come and the other women observe the tradition of running around the Kaaba, she closes her shutters and stays home. The Hajj is not for her, and Khadijah has enough money that she can make no bones about it. Behind closed doors, say the gossips, she doesn't fondle Muhammad's beard. They sit together and mock the idols. Who knows what trouble it may get them into one day.

As the wedding drew near, the groom's visits became more frequent. Sometimes he was too preoccupied to notice me, but if he did, he had a scrap or two to spare. One morning he caught me hobbling to my place by the gate.

“How did you become lame?” he asked.

“My toes were bitten off by dogs,” I said.

“Show me.”

I peeled the rags off my feet and let him see the ragged row of toes and stumps where curs had chewed on me.

“Is your pain severe?” he asked.

“Not enough to make me kill myself, but too much to laugh all day,” I replied.

Our eyes met. He could see that I wasn't whining to cadge a bit of bread, and I could see that he was actually interested. I wasn't lying at all. My mother made a bad marriage to a drunkard. To make matters worse, her mother-in-law hated her. One day I was left in her charge when I was still a baby in swaddling clothes. Out of contempt, my grandmother left
me under a tree while she went to the town well for water. This wasn't in Mecca, but in one of the hill towns surrounding it, on the edge of the wilderness. My grandmother knew very well that packs of wild dogs roam at will, making so brave as to wander into town. Two of them found me under the tree and began to gnaw at my feet, which were sticking out of my bundled clothes. My screams brought a man running, and with a stick he beat the dogs off, but not before they had taken a few toes from each foot. They say when my grandmother returned, she didn't wail. Out of spite, it cost her nothing to see me maimed. Not that I remember anything about it. But one imagines.

You should not suppose that Khadijah spotted Muhammad in the marketplace and felt herself swoon. Nor did he leave love poems pinned to her shutters comparing her almond eyes to a fawn in the moonlight. They were both sober people. She knew two things about Muhammad that anyone in business would be intrigued by. First, he was not all that experienced, having left Mecca on small caravans such as his uncle, Abu Talib, could afford. Second, he could be trusted. Once the Arabs pin a name on you, it travels with you the rest of your life. I will always be “the chick,” and Muhammad expects always to be Al-Amin, the one you can trust.

Khadijah sent her steward Maysarah to greet Muhammad and formally make him an offer. He was to oversee one of her caravans to Syria, and in return the lady would pay him twice the commission she usually offered. You'd think that Al-Amin, the “trustworthy one,” wouldn't need such an extravagant bribe, but Khadijah understood that a woman must be prepared to pay enough to discourage thieving from her agents.

The caravan came and went. The steward Maysarah was sent to keep track of the trades and balance the books, but he was also part family spy. Having been with Khadijah since her father and mother died, he had his mistress's ear, and over the years Maysarah had never betrayed her. When he came home with glowing words about Muhammad's character, Khadijah broke her vow never to marry. Passion didn't carry her away. She waited some months. She continued to line Muhammad's pockets. He rose in her esteem, and one day she sent a messenger, her intimate friend Nufaysah, who touched Muhammad's hem with her forehead as if he was the master, offering Khadijah in marriage. A flurry of negotiations started. Uncles got involved, haggling over details like men with a thousand camels to lose or gain. Two clans, the Hashim and the Asad, came together on the suitability of the match, and thus it was.

That's the story as I heard it from servants who squat in the courtyards and gossip with other servants.

Does a woman's heart melt over balanced accounts and good behavior? You know the answer as well as I do.

It would have been auspicious for rain to fall on the wedding day, but it dawned bright and hot like every other day. The first to arrive were young male cousins, loose and wild. Being without women, it suited their mood to kick me, as if to prove that someone in this world was more miserable than they. I closed my mouth when they passed, just to be safe.

But I was also sunk in thought. I must find special words for the groom when he came in procession. It served me well to impress him; he was about to be rich. I kept turning over the same question in my mind.
What would a fool say?
For Muhammad, the best tactic was to babble about God,
since I knew he had a weakness there. The crowd was growing thicker now. Like civets, the guests left a perfumed trail behind them as they entered the bride's house. Rich robes swirled in the light wind. The richest women had seed pearls dangling from their gauzy veils. Someone dropped a coin in my mouth, and when I looked closely, it appeared to be silver.

At last Muhammad arrived. He smiled to the left and right, but his eyes looked pensive. He shuffled his feet the way he always did, not lifting them high to protect his new sandals from the dust. When he came abreast of me, a dozen hands were reaching for him. I didn't raise my voice, but quietly said, “Lucky is the man who marries God today.”

I was in luck. He noticed me and looked down. “I marry a good woman today, not God,” he said.

“She might as well be a bad woman,” I said. “Allah is in all creatures. “

Guests who were close enough to overhear us began to mutter angrily. I was taking a risk if I kept talking such blasphemous nonsense.

“Your sons will be sons of God, even if they turn out to be drunks and cheats. Do you believe me?” I said.

“I do,” said Muhammad, which caused gasps around him.

“Then you are a bigger fool than I am,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because all words about God are lies. The Infinite is beyond words.”

A few feet reached out to kick me, but not Muhammad's. He didn't smile or frown, but only betrayed sadness with his eyes. Murmuring softly to himself, he tossed me a coin and entered Khadijah's house. A burst of laughter and applause
greeted him inside. One Qurayshi came very late, an old man without companions. I was surprised to see Waraqah. His weakness for God is worse than Muhammad's. It has lost him most of his respectability.

“Allah has truly blessed this house,” I said, rising on my knees as he rushed through the gate.

Waraqah grimaced. “Forget your tricks. I'm the bride's cousin. I have to be here.”

“For the joy of the occasion,” I murmured, to get back at him. Everyone knew that old Waraqah hated leaving his house and the mystical studies that devoured his days and ruined his eyes.

“Joy is the fruit of wine,” said Waraqah. “I have no use for it. She wants to talk business after the ceremony.”

With that, he rushed inside. Don't be amazed that a rich man would waste so many words on a beggar. Waraqah's God loves all men, which shows you how far this religious fever might spread.