The Jewel Of Medina (8 page)

The day I’d dreaded arrived all too soon.
Ummi
swept into my room and flung open the curtains, spilling the sun’s harsh light like water over my face.

“This is one day you will not be hiding in your room,” she said. “Arise and dress yourself, A’isha. The wedding guests will arrive in one hour.”

I lay in bed for as long as I could, until the need to relieve myself at last tugged me upward like an insistent hand. I pulled on a clean chemise and
skirt and tramped barefoot into the courtyard, barely feeling the cool grass under my feet. In a few hours, the sun would blast us with its fiery breath, and Muhammad would take me home with him to recline in our marriage bed. My breath came in short gasps at the thought, as though he were already lying on top of me, and I ran in circles around the yard until all I could hear was the
thrum
of my pulse in my ears and all I could feel was the pounding of my feet on the ground.

When the guests began arriving, my mother called me indoors to greet them. The smell of roasting meat drifted in from the cooking pit beside our house, but for once my mouth did not water with anticipation.
Ummi
smiled to see my skin all glowing and pink from running.

“I knew you would be excited when the Great Day arrived,” she said.

I said nothing, not to her; not to Umm Ayman, Sawdah’s friend and Zayd’s wife, who crinkled her old face at me and told me how fortunate I was; not to Muhammad’s daughter Fatima, who hissed that I’d never replace her mother in Muhammad’s heart; not to his
hatun,
Sawdah, who pinched my cheek and said what a good time we’d have together as sister-wives. And, when all the women had gathered in our living room and I found myself forgotten, I sneaked outside to play—for the first time in years—with the children filling the courtyard.

Children—lots of children! My body felt as light as air as I bounded out to join them: cousins, children of my parents’ friends, little girls, older girls, girls I’d never seen before and girls who often came to play with me, and, praise al-Lah! boys, rambunctious, boisterous, gleeful boys, boys with big ears like jug handles, boys with voices that cracked, boys who chased each other with stick-swords and captured girls as their hostages, making the girls shriek with delight. Children kicked a goat’s-bladder ball across the grass, shouting and squealing. They pushed each other daringly high on the swing, then leapt into the air to land on the ground. They pushed and tugged and growled at one another on the teeter-totter, struggling for the seat at the very top.

Within moments I’d not only joined them but I stood at the pinnacle, ruling the seesaw like a queen. Nadida clambered up toward me, and I waved my stick-sword, thinking she would try to push me off.

Then she said “Safwan,” and I stopped.

“He arrived in Medina last night,” she said.

I almost fell off the teeter-totter. Boys circled below me like upside-down
vultures, touching my bare feet with their sticks. I kicked them away with a mighty roar. Was Safwan here now?

I snarled and pushed Nadida to the ground, showing off for a Safwan who might or might not be watching. When my
ummi
came out to call me indoors, I growled at her, too.

“Can’t you see I’m playing?” The children around me gasped, thinking I’d be whipped—but I wasn’t worried. Since Muhammad had asked my parents to “be gentle” with me, they’d treated me like a princess.

Now, though, my mother’s eyes glittered, as hard and black as onyx.

“A’isha, this is no time for games. He waits for you inside. Everyone waits!” She grasped my ankle and yanked me to the soft dirt. My playmates cheered and screamed.

“Go to your husband!” Nadida cried, carried away as usual. “He waits for you in bed.”

My mother gasped, glaring at her, and yanked me to my feet. Stomping toward the
harim
she dragged me behind her, nearly pulling my arm from its socket.

“Look at you,” she scolded as she jerked me along, to a cacophony of hoots from my delighted playmates. “Breaking your
purdah,
risking our good name, and rolling in the dirt on your wedding day. Are you the daughter of Abu Bakr, or a wild animal?”

Inside the house, the smell of cardamom sweetened the air from the
majlis,
where my father sat with the men and drank fragrant coffee. I craned my neck as we passed, searching for Safwan. I tried to dig in my heels as
ummi
pulled me along, but my feet only bumped along the stone-and-clay floor.

In the living room the women fanned themselves with date-palm fronds and smiled as
ummi
pulled me past them to the walled-in area behind the house where our family bathed. A large pot of water steamed over a bed of black coals, which gave off an acrid odor. Asma dipped a rag into the pot and began to scrub my face.

“Soiled and spoiled,” she said. Her eyes danced under heavy eyebrows. “Some wife you are going to make.”

My mother raised my shirt over my head, ignoring my protests. I felt my face flame to be so exposed, and I covered my budding breasts with my arms, which made Asma laugh.

“You won’t keep those date-seeds hidden much longer,” she teased.

“Starting tonight, you’ll have to share them with your husband.” She winked at me. “Just hope he doesn’t nibble too hard.”

I felt a creeping over my skin as if I’d rolled in a nest of scorpions, and I shivered even as my sister poured hot water over my back.

“Do not be a fool, Asma,” snapped my mother. “This is only the marriage, not the consummation. A’isha has not begun her blood flow yet.”

No consummation! I didn’t know what the word meant, but it had something to do with blood. I pressed my hands harder against my chest so my heart wouldn’t burst through.

“Why marry her to him now, when she is so young?” Asma said.

“Blame your father, not me,”
ummi
said, and poured a cup of water over my head. “This rivalry with Ali has affected his reason.”

“But whoever heard of a nine-year-old getting married?”

“That is what I asked Abu Bakr.” My mother hurled the cup into the pot, splashing water over the edge and onto the hard-packed dirt, where it scattered like marbles. “But you know how he is. Stubborn, like his youngest daughter.” She gave me a pointed look, then continued her conversation with my sister.

“‘These are new times,’ your father said. ‘We have a new home in a new city, with a new God. Why should tradition still rule when it comes to marriage?’ As for me, I prefer to wait. But your father makes the decisions and I obey. Tradition still rules in that respect, it seems.”

From a camel’s-hair bag she pulled out my wedding gown and held it up to me. Once again, I nearly burst into tears at the sight of it. But then I reminded myself to pretend I was happy. That way, everyone would be caught off guard when I and Safwan ran away.

“This is too large for you,”
ummi
said. She slipped the gown over my head, covering my eyes and binding my arms while I fantasized about escape. “We did not expect a wedding so soon.”

The silk felt cool and soft against my skin, like water. The neck of the gown scooped slightly, baring the hollow pressed like a thumbprint into my throat. The white sleeves rippled loose at the shoulders, then tapered to encircle my wrists like a father’s hand. For a moment, I felt beautiful—until my mother offered me my reflection in a piece of polished brass and I noted my hair’s garish color, like a flag, and the muddy green tint of my eyes. Why couldn’t I have lovely dark features like the beauties the poets wrote about?

I asked for a scarf or wrapper, but my mother shook her head. “The Prophet loves your red hair. You know that.”

Another devil-wind began deep in my stomach, then whirled wider and higher until I thought it would consume me completely. By al-Lah, it was already beginning! The marriage hadn’t even happened yet, and already Muhammad—or, at least, the idea of him—was determining how I should dress.

I saw my dreams of freedom fade like the light from my grandmother’s eyes as she’d lain on her deathbed. Dizziness staggered me. This was not my life! I, A’isha, was supposed to wield a sword and race camels in the desert. Instead I was about to march under my
ummi’s
glaring eye to a life of servitude with a
shaykh
—an old man—and the toothless, grinning Sawdah as my only companions.

But the promise of a rescue brightened my mood like a shimmering oasis on the desert horizon. By the time Sawdah poked her jowly face into the room and announced that “he” was ready, I’d talked a smile onto my lips. My mother must have noticed the change because she squeezed my shoulder in a rare sign of affection.

“Such pride you bring to our family today,” she said in a choked voice. I turned away from her, ready to bolt, but she stopped me with a hand on my arm.

“Walk slowly, with your head high, for everyone will be watching,” my mother said. “A bride carries herself with dignity.”

But how, with legs that trembled as if they had no bones? I wobbled as I walked, my legs growing heavier with each step and my pulse thudding in my ears, into the dim
harim,
the women’s living area, where women rattled tambourines and lamp flames flung dancing shadows on the walls. Raha floated like a cloud to me, her eyes shining, and handed me a fragrant bouquet of lavender.

“Be strong, Little Red,” she whispered as she pressed her cheek to mine. “Al-Lah will reward you for it.” Then she turned to the other women and lifted her hands into the air. “Our A’isha, exalted above all women!” she cried.

Ululations filled the room like the warbles of a thousand and one birds. Shining, smiling faces swirled before me like colors through a prism. Sawdah, grinning and showing her black teeth and blacker holes where
teeth used to be, strew rose petals at my feet. Their fragrance softened the faint unctuous tinge of burning lamp oil before getting lost among the perfumes the women wore. Muhammad’s daughters from his marriage to Khadija, who had died years ago, stood in a cluster and watched the procession: Ruqayyah, pale as the belly of a pigeon and smiling wanly; Umm Kulthum, broad-waisted and robust; and bland, bowl-faced Fatima, whose polite smile didn’t reach her eyes. Where was Safwan’s mother? I glanced past the faces before me, into the corners, into the hallway beyond. Hadn’t she made the journey from Mecca with her son?

“Keep going,” my mother whispered. “To mine and your father’s bedroom. The Prophet waits for you there.”

I stepped into the dark hallway, my legs still shaking. No one had to tell me to walk slowly now. My pulse charged my legs with blood, urging them to run—but in the opposite direction. Just beyond the curtain to my parents’ bedroom, I could hear the laughter and shouts of men. Men! I had been cut off from them for so many years—and now I was going to have to walk into a room full of them.

One by one Muhammad’s daughters disappeared through the curtain, then the neighbors, still ululating and rattling their tambourines, followed by Sawdah with her rose petals. Next it was my turn. I stopped, staring at the saffron silk curtain, which had once been my mother’s wedding gown.
Where is Safwan?

“Go, A’isha!” My mother’s voice jolted me back to the moment. I told my right foot to step forward. Nothing happened. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. My future awaited on the other side—a fate chosen by others, as though I were a sheep or a goat fatted for this day. I began to tremble like the branch of a tree.

“What are you waiting for? Ramadan?” My mother’s voice rasped in my ear. Her hand reached forward to pull the curtain aside. Light poured like honey over my skin, light from myriad lamps and candles warming me. The thick aroma of—what? A fragrance so rare, so intoxicating—frankincense—prodded my nose and mouth, gagging me. Song trilled from the throats of the women who lined the room, while the men who’d crowded at the front craned their necks to see me: the wealthy Uthman, twirling his mustache with ringed fingers; the narrow-eyed Umar, now a convert to
islam,
licking his thick lips and appraising me with cold eyes.

Hamal, the man whose hairy backside had haunted my days and nights for years, winked at me, and I shivered.

My father towered over them all, as tall and imposing as the angel Gabriel himself, his beard burnished with henna, his bearing proud, his eyes radiating love for me, drawing me into the room at last. He greeted me with a kiss on the cheek, as soft as an oasis breeze, then draped a beautiful necklace of milky-white agate stones about my neck.

“Do not be afraid,” he whispered. “Summon your courage and make us all proud of you.”

I faltered ahead, step by agonizing step. Ali, with his bad-smell sneer, stood in front of me, blocking my view of everyone behind him. I twisted my neck to see around him, wishing he would disappear. Back in the front of the room, my father now held a silver bowl of milk in both hands, like an offering. Gazing soft-eyed at me. Blinking wetly.
Abi
, crying! I wanted to run to him, to curl against him and forget all the knowing eyes in the room. After only two steps, I stopped again, glaring at Ali. Then my sister’s hands were on my back, shoving me forward. Soft laughter broke up the singing as I stumbled ahead, tripping on the hem of my gown. Ali stepped aside just in time to avoid the stomp of my sandal on his foot. I looked up from the floor to the end of the pathway now cleared for me—and I cried out in alarm. Muhammad sat just a few steps away on my parents’ bed, holding his hand out to me, his eyes as soft as cloud-misted moons.

I reeled, unsteady, as if the earth were buckling under my feet. I stared at Muhammad, face to face with my future, and swallowed the bile that rose in my throat. He offered me his beautiful smile with those flawless teeth as bright as the sun.

“A’isha,” he said, his deep voice meant to comfort, but jolting me like an earthquake. “My delightful child-bride.
Yaa
Little Red, there is nothing to worry about. It is only me.”

His face looked so kind—and so old. His hand nearly touched me. I drew back, eliciting gasps from the crowd. The shock on his face brought tears flowing like rivers down my cheeks.