The Jewel Of Medina (15 page)

Sawdah shook her head at me. “You are a good girl, A’isha, but you have made a big mistake.”

“She goaded me,” I said. Sawdah grunted. As if in a dream, we moved to the entrance of the cooking tent, neither of us daring to say more.

From the mosque we heard shouts, another crash. We heard Hafsa’s sobs like the wailing of one in mourning, and Muhammad’s low voice coming closer. My pulse rippled and I leaned against Sawdah, slightly dizzy. Would he divorce Hafsa for this outburst? That would be a disaster for her, and my fault. But no, his friendship with Umar was too important. At least, though, he wouldn’t allow Hafsa to be
hatun
. But would he let me fill that role?

From behind the tent flap we watched Muhammad stomp through the courtyard, his face as hard as stone. His red ceremonial robe was streaked with
kohl
, and his turban sat askew and unraveling on his head. He strode across the grass to Hafsa’s hut. She burst from the mosque screeching his name.

“Am I less than an ass, who at least is sold to the highest bidder?” she cried, then tripped and fell to her knees.

I would have run to help her up, but Sawdah grabbed my arm. “You have done enough.”

In truth I had—and alas! None of it could be undone.
Forgive me for this pain I’ve caused
, I prayed. Hafsa pulled herself up off the ground and ran to the hut, threw open the door, and flung herself inside. From there, I and Sawdah could hear her screams. Probably all of Medina could hear them.

In a while the noise subsided. Sawdah and I stood in the strange, sharp silence, watching and waiting. The door to the hut opened and Muhammad stepped out. He had rewound his turban, but the black stains remained on his robe. As he walked past the cooking tent, he jerked his head around to look at me.

In his eyes: Betrayal. Anger. Disbelief.

“May al-Lah forgive you, A’isha.” His calm voice cracked, and tears welled in his eyes. I opened my hands to him, wishing I could carry his sorrow, but he bared his teeth.

“May He give me the strength to forgive you, also,” he said. “With your cruel words you meant to break only one heart, I know. But, by al-Lah! By betraying my trust, you have broken two.”

M
UHAMMAD
I
S
D
EAD

U
HUD
, A
PRIL
625

For weeks after that terrible night when I’d humiliated Hafsa, Muhammad chose his words carefully when he spoke to me. His guarded demeanor made me want to cry, but I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t deserve his trust.

That would change at Uhud, I vowed.

Abu Sufyan was bringing an army to attack Medina. Our scout’s report surprised no one: We knew he’d been recruiting warriors. After Quraysh’s humiliating loss at the battle of Badr, he needed to salvage his reputation. Since Badr, poets had been spouting satirical verses throughout Hijaz, making fun of the Meccans.
Lazy merchants with soft hands and softer heads,
our own city’s poet Hassan ibn Thabit had famously quipped.

Losing that battle had cost Abu Sufyan many Bedouin allies—tribes he’d relied on to protect his precious trade caravans—because Bedouins liked to fight on the side of winners. Loyalty meant nothing to some of these tribes, who wanted only more loot and female captives. Abu Sufyan could promise neither until he defeated our army.

So when our scouts reported that he was approaching our city with five
hundred men, we were ready to meet him. Our army had been training for months.

“Let them come to us,” Muhammad said, standing on his tree stump in the mosque and announcing the invasion to the
umma.
“We will defeat them easily on our own ground.”

But he was outnumbered. The men who’d fought at Badr were heroes in the
umma,
and those who’d missed that battle wanted their chance at glory. Hurling arrows from behind the city’s walls wasn’t nearly as exciting as chopping off heads in hand-to-hand combat.
We must go out to meet them,
these hotheads argued.
Give us the chance, also, to be martyrs for al-Lah.

At last Muhammad relented. “If they want to fight, can I say no?” he said when I protested. He and his warriors donned what little armor they had, gathered the women who’d volunteered to help, rode a full
barid
to Mount Uhud, and waited, as they had done at Badr.

To my delight, Muhammad had allowed me to come along—as a helper, but secretly I hoped for a chance to do battle against Quraysh. I remembered clearly the ugliness on Abu Sufyan’s face as he’d slapped and dragged away poor Raha in Medina. Since that night, I’d tended a flame of resentment in my breast, waiting for the day I could repay that overfed swine for his cruelty. At the same time, I yearned to redeem myself in Muhammad’s eyes for showing off in the Kaynuqah market and starting a fight, then betraying his confidence in order to humble Hafsa.

A mere girl, I wasn’t allowed to join the army, even though I knew I could outfight half our men. A few women had taken sword in hand at Badr, but for the most part our task was to carry water and tend our wounded. No matter: Whatever Muhammad asked of me I’d perform so well that he would know I was worthy of him, and of
islam.

At Uhud, I could tell from the frown creasing Muhammad’s face that I was far from his mind. He was worried that, by agreeing to meet the Qurayshi here, he’d made the wrong choice. The desolate landscape, all dirt and sand and burnt-black rock, offered little protection. And our army was pitifully small. We’d started out with one thousand men, but then our scouts reported seeing three times that many warriors and camels on the Qurayshi side, plus two hundred on horseback. After that news, the leader of the Hypocrites, Ibn Ubayy, ran away with three hundred of our warriors.

Midmorning, I and dozens of other women from our camp watched, stunned, as the Qurayshi army came spilling down the distant hills, pouring like a silver flood over the colorless sand. Their chain-mail and painted shields flashed the sun into our eyes and filled me with dread. Just below us, Muhammad arranged our troops in a broad swath, with their backs to the jutting mountain of black rock. After being awake all night planning strategy and praying, he looked haggard, bleary-eyed and pale.

“If Quraysh reaches the higher ground, we will be lost,” he said. He placed fifty archers on the rock-strewn pass. “Guard the mountain as if it were your mother,” he commanded. “Do not leave her side no matter what happens, do you understand? Remain on that pass even if you see birds picking the flesh from our bones.”

His ominous words filled me with dread, and I realized for the first time the horror of war. My heart began to pound violently and would not stop, even as Muhammad led our troops in prayer. We women on the hill joined the prostrations, murmuring praise to al-Lah and asking Him in our hearts for an easy victory.

“Their numbers may be large, but we have al-Lah on our side!” Muhammad shouted. The roar of our men rose like a whirlwind, lifting my hopes and soaring my spirits. Compared to the armored troops kicking up dust in the distance, our fighters made a sorry sight, most of them in flimsy robes without even a shield to protect them, and a cavalry of only two horses. Yet what Muhammad had said was true: We had defeated Quraysh at Badr with fewer men—and less training—and, al-Lah willing, we would best them again.

Caught up in the excitement, I ran down the hill toward Muhammad, through the men who milled about in readiness for the battle. I wanted so badly to fight. Muhammad knew I was skilled with sword and dagger. If I asked him again to let me join the battle, would he relent? As I scanned the crowd in search of him, I heard a voice that made my heart seem to turn over.

“I should have known you would be here.”

I looked around: Safwan stood behind me, tall and lean, chain-mail fitted like a skin over his broad shoulders and chest. His tilted eyes smoldered. His thin mouth curved slightly.

Locked in his gaze, I flinched. What if someone should see us exchanging glances? I lowered my eyes.

“Good luck today.”

“
Yaa
A’isha, you know it takes skill to win a battle. Fortune only helps in matters of love. And my luck in that area is pitifully poor.”

“May you fare better with the Qurayshi, then, than you do with women,” I said in a ragged voice, glancing around for fear someone might be watching us. Everyone else, though, seemed too intent on preparing for battle to take notice of a warrior and a battlefield nurse.

“I aim to kill the Meccans, not kiss them,” Safwan said. I could feel his eyes pulling at me. Almost against my will I looked up at him again. His gaze was so deep I thought I might fall into it and never return. “And there is only one woman for me.”

A cry arose from the pass.
Quraysh is arriving! Prepare to kill or be killed in the name of al-Lah!
I turned with my heart in my throat to see our enemies charging in a rush like a wind storm with swords in their hands and death in their eyes. I cried out, terrified, and clutched Safwan’s arm.

“The battle begins!” I choked, and turned to run up the hill, but Safwan patted my hand.

“They’re only trying to frighten us,” he said. “We still have the formalities to go through. You’ll see: They’ll stop when they draw near and start boasting about how they’re going to slaughter us all. Then they’ll send their best warriors forward and we’ll send ours, and those men will fight to the death.
Then
the battle will start.”

Umar marched past, looking like a peacock with feathers waving from atop his helmet. He stopped when he saw me standing in the ranks, and shouted at me to retreat and join the women at the camp. With a burning face I glanced at Safwan, but he had gone.

Umar eyed my sword dangling on my belt, and held out his hand for it. “We will not have children fighting on the battlefield, especially females.”

Give up my sword? I’d have rather handed him my arm. But the men around us were watching. Defying one of Muhammad’s commanders would be an ill-omened start for the battle. So I pulled my child’s sword from its sheath and handed it to Umar, then trudged up the hill to the tents.

Hafsa came over to join me. Since our fight I’d worked hard to gain her forgiveness, and she finally seemed to be warming to me.

“Did you think my father was going to let you join the battle? He didn’t want any women here.”

“He’s afraid I’ll outfight him,” I grumbled.

The Qurayshi army spread like a swarm of locusts over the sand, dwarfing us. The drum of my pulse filled my ears, and sweat trickled down my back. By al-Lah, how would our puny army escape annihilation? In the front and center of their force stood Abu Sufyan, fat as ever, moistening his lips with his thick tongue and showing his yellow teeth in a grin. Bile rose in my throat and I glanced wildly around for a sword to replace the one Umar had taken away.
Please, al-Lah, give me the chance to kill him today.

On Abu Sufyan’s right a young fighter threw hostile glares over a beard that reached almost to his navel. On his left, Khalid ibn al-Walid, the famous Qurayshi fighter, sat astride a dark horse, his back as straight as a standard and the scar on his cheek livid.

Abu Sufyan stepped forward and raised his hands to silence his troops. Gradually, the din of their murmurs and clanking armor faded. Our army stood in perfect formation, not even twitching an eye.

“Men of Medina!” Abu Sufyan called. “Members of the Aws and Khazraj tribes. We have no quarrel with you. You are not the ones who raid our caravans and steal our gold and silver. You are not the ones trying to destroy our city by demeaning our gods. We have come to fight Muhammad, son of Abdallah ibn al-Muttalib, and the men of Mecca who follow him.

“You see the size of our army. We have many Bedouin fighters with us, bloodthirsty warriors. You have a puny handful of ragtag soldiers without armor or horses. Is this man Muhammad worth losing your lives for? Because we will kill you all, if that is what it takes to reach him.
Yaa
Khazraj, go home! Go home, Aws! It is not your blood—”

Before he could finish his speech, the
ansari,
or “Helpers,” as we called the Aws and Khazraj, began to shout back at him.

“We will never leave our Prophet!” some cried.

“Long live Muhammad, Messenger of al-Lah!” others said. Pride swelled my chest. Sawdah, who had joined Hafsa and me, sniffled and wiped a tear from her cheek.

“Al-Lah bless the Helpers,” she said. “They love us more than our own relatives do.”

The fight began, and we raced onto the field, tying our bandage-cloths about our waists and toting water skins. At first we stood idle, for our warriors proved impenetrable, clustered on the field as they had at Badr, keeping the Qurayshi army from bursting through to the mountain. The Qurayshi hurled themselves at us in great waves, but our unity was a cliff they couldn’t scale. We women cheered as they fell back again and again—with fewer numbers each time. We had good reason to exult: If Quraysh succeeded in destroying our army here, they’d push on to Medina and kill the men who remained, then make slaves of us women and children. Their goal was to rid Hijaz of Muhammad, the
umma,
and
islam
. Our goal was to survive. And so far, it looked as though we might prevail.