Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (26 page)

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.

U
mm 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.

O
ne 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.