Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (15 page)

T
he Mother of the Believers, the foundation stone of our hopes, was dying. As the Messenger and Ali helped her up the winding marble staircase that led to the family’s private rooms on the second floor, my father took it on himself to restore calm and order to the gathered crowd of believers.

After clearing the Prophet’s house of all except the closest members of his family and a few trusted advisers such as Umar and Uthman, we climbed upstairs to check on Khadija. I held on to the cold brass banister like a girl clinging to the edge of a cliff. Every footfall I made on the polished stone seemed to thunder like the beat of a war drum, announcing the arrival of death and pestilence in its wake.

When I followed my mother and father into the Messenger’s bedroom, I saw that Khadija was lying on a mattress of goose feathers that been imported from the north. The Messenger had rid himself of nearly all luxuries since the beginning of his mission, but he could not part with this one item that brought comfort and ease to his aging wife.

She looked so peaceful, lying there with her bony hands across her chest, that for a moment I thought she was already dead. But the gentle rustle of her gray tunic as it rose and fell with her breathing said that her soul still dwelled among us for a short while longer. Beads of pearly sweat ran down her lined face and her daughters quickly moved to wipe her brow with a clean rag.

The Messenger dropped to his knees beside her and closed his eyes, his hands uplifted in fervent prayer. I had never seen him so focused, so utterly unmoving. If I had not caught the steady pulse of a vein in his temple, I could have imagined that he had been turned to stone from grief, like the very idols that he despised.

Silence fell upon the room like the closing doors of a crypt. Even the wind outside became utterly still, like the mournful quiet before the rains are unleashed. No one moved; all eyes were on the elderly woman on the bed. Hours passed as if they were moments, and eventually Fatima left her mother’s side to light a small copper lantern as the sun’s rays dipped beneath the horizon.

When the disk of the sun vanished and the evening star ruled the sky, Khadija’s eyes opened and I saw her smile at the Messenger, who was looking at her like a frightened child. Seeing the lost look on his face, this man who was the center of our community, the rock that gave us stability while the deadly waters of the world raged and churned about us, I suddenly felt very small and alone.

I realized at that moment that it was Khadija who had been the heart of Islam the whole time. Without her initial acceptance of his vision, Muhammad would have dismissed his experience on Mount Hira as a dream or a delusion engendered by a capricious djinn. Had she not believed him and encouraged him, he would have eventually become like the madmen I saw wandering the streets of Mecca in putrid rags, whose disturbed minds had tortured them until even their families had driven them out and left them to die. Whatever this new religion called Islam was, whatever it was going to be, was the product of one woman’s faith in a man. And now that woman was dying and I was left to wonder whether our faith would die with her.

I saw a figure enter the room, a man with a deeply pockmarked face and thinning hair, despite his youth. It was Zayd ibn Haritha, the adopted son of Muhammad and Khadija. He had just returned from an unsuccessful hunt in the hills where a leopard had been seen the night before and had been told by the believers what had transpired at the Messenger’s house this morning.

Zayd leaned down beside Khadija and she ran her hand across his cheek. He had once been her slave, but he had grown so attached to her and her husband that they had freed him and adopted him as a son after the tragic death of their own infant boy Qasim. Next to Ali, Zayd was the closest person to a male heir in the Messenger’s household, and many of the believers looked to him as a future leader of the community. The fact that a slave could rise to become a master over the believers was a matter of great pride for the Muslims and a subject of intense mockery for Abu Lahab and our other enemies.

I watched as Khadija gestured to Zayd, Ali, and her daughters to come close. The rest of us kept respectfully back. The fact that we were even allowed in the inner sanctum to share her final moments was enough. Family had certain rights and prerogatives that needed to be respected.

As each member of the
Ahl al-Bayt,
the People of the House, approached, Khadija said a soft, almost inaudible prayer of benediction upon her loved ones and then whispered into each of their ears. I saw them nod and rise after she shared her private farewells, tears streaming down their cheeks. First her eldest daughter, Zaynab, then Ruqayya, even more beautiful as her black eyes shone with grief, followed by rosy-cheeked Umm Kulthum and dour Zayd.

And then she took Fatima’s hand in her right and Ali’s in her left and kissed them both on the foreheads. When Fatima stepped back, the look of grief on her face was so painful that I dropped my eyes for fear of being consumed by it.

“Aisha…”

I was startled to hear my name and looked up to see Khadija looking at me with compassion. She gestured weakly for me to come.

Stunned and unsure as to why I was being included in this special circle of family, I stood there, my finger in my mouth like a shy toddler. My mother, Umm Ruman, took my hand and pulled me to Khadija’s side, before stepping back and leaving me alone with her.

The Mother of the Believers ran her hands through my red hair like a child playing with a favorite doll. And then she moved her head a little and I sensed she wanted me to come close so that I could hear her better. I leaned forward until my ears were almost touching her cracked lips.

She whispered, but her words sounded through my heart like a trumpet.

“Take care of him when I’m gone,” she said inexplicably. “You were made for him.”

I had no idea what she meant, but there was something both exciting and terrifying in her words. As if she were using her final breath to pass on to me a secret that I was to guard with my life.

I sensed the Messenger standing behind me and scrambled back to my mother’s side, unsure of what to make of the strange words Khadija had bequeathed me.

When I looked up, I saw that the Prophet was crying. With what appeared to be a difficult effort, Khadija raised her hands and wiped his tears in front of us the way she had wiped them in private all those years. In that instant, I understood the truth of their relationship. The Messenger had seen his mother die when he was only six years old and had longed all his life for the nurturing touch of which he had been deprived. Khadija was more than just his wife and best friend, more than the first Muslim. She was also the mother that God had taken away from him once before, and I realized as I looked at Muhammad’s face that he was reliving the horror of the loss that had haunted him since he was a boy.

“I am summoned to the Abode of Peace…Beloved, it is time for me to go…”

I saw through my blurred eyes the Prophet lean down and place his cheek next to hers.

“I knew the moment I saw you that you were special…Had God never spoken to you, even then would I have known that you were His chosen…”

She was looking up, her eyes staring dreamily at the ceiling, at something only she could see.

“The men in white are here…I see where they are taking me…It’s so beautiful…so full of light…”

She turned to face the Messenger, peering deep into his fathomless eyes.

“There is no god but God, and you, my love, are His Messenger…”

She sighed and went still.

There was a moment of silence so great that it reverberated like an earthquake. And then cries of grief erupted all around me. I saw the Messenger of God touch the Mother of the Believers’ lips, stroking them in final farewell.

He looked like a shadow from another world. When he spoke, his soft voice cut through the din of mourning. He spoke the Words of God that had come to him in a Revelation at the moment of Khadija’s death, words that Muslims speak even today to grieve loss and to remember who we are and where we are going.

“Truly we belong to God, and truly to Him are we returning…”

I
T WAS TIME TO
leave Mecca. Shortly after Khadija died, the Muslims were struck with another loss. The Prophet’s uncle and guardian, Abu Talib, passed away, and the reprobate Abu Lahab became the chief of Bani Hashim. We could no longer count on the Prophet’s clan for protection from the dogs of Quraysh. The persecution would only grow worse and now there would be no recourse to the rough justice of the tribes. But where could we go? The Quraysh guarded the roads to the sea, so Abyssinia was cut off to us. But even if we could escape the nightly patrols and find a boat willing to take us west, the Negus was no longer in a position to give us sanctuary.

The great king had suffered politically for having given refuge to our people once before. The priests of his African nation had decried the Muslims as dangerous heretics, because we believed in Jesus as a human prophet but denied that he had ever claimed to be the Son of God. Our people were branded as the resurgence of the Arians, a group of Christians who had questioned the Church’s teachings on Christ’s divinity but had been denounced by the Byzantine emperor Constantine as unbelievers. The Negus still sent kindly letters to the Messenger inquiring about his views on matters of theology, but they contained nothing that would suggest an invitation to come in person and debate these great truths.

There was a cloud hanging over the Prophet in those bleak days, and my sister was already referring to it as “the Year of Sadness.” The Messenger had been struck by two powerful blows in sequence. The death of Khadija, the source of his spiritual support, and the death of Abu Talib, the foundation of his earthly protection. Having lost both poles of his compass, he walked among us like a man who was unsure of who he was, where he was going. In later years, he admitted to me that he had been crushed with self-doubt during those terrible months. If these visions were real, if what he saw was truly an angel and not some mischievous desert sprite mocking him, then why had his God abandoned him and left him without any light of hope?

But, as we all learned, the Divine is a teacher who sometimes shows men what they are made of by taking away everything they have, so that the truth of their character is finally revealed. At his lowest moment, the Messenger’s soul was now as naked and vulnerable as a newborn baby’s flesh.

And it is in that vulnerability, where there are no veils anymore between a quivering, tormented heart and its master, the Lord of the Worlds, that the inner eye awakens from its slumber and true Vision is born.

Perhaps because of a destiny that I did not yet know awaited me, I was given the precious gift of sharing in that Vision. So it was that one night, after a long day of struggling with the monotonous chores of the household, I crept into my small bed to sleep. I was tired and yet I tossed and turned for hours before finally rising to answer the persistent call of nature.

But as I passed a window on the way to the latrine, I saw a flash like a bolt of lightning. At first, I thought it might be the start of a rainstorm, which we desperately needed owing to drought. Pausing to look out the window, I saw that the sky was clear and not a single cloud blotted the twinkling army of stars. The full moon appeared low in the sky, hovering just above the sacred walls of the Sanctuary. And then I realized with a start that it was the twenty-seventh night of Rajab and the moon should have been a thin crescent waning into nothingness.

As I focused my eyes, I saw that whatever it was that rose over the Kaaba was not the pockmarked moon but a blue-white disk with no discernible features. A ball of pure light. And then, faster than any celestial body I had ever seen move across the heavens, the light rose upward like a shooting star in reverse and vanished into the northern horizon.

I stood frozen at the window, my heart racing. I suddenly had no urge to use the latrine and quickly ran back to my bed and hid beneath the woolen coverlet, trying to understand the strange event I had witnessed. I suddenly felt very drowsy and I surrendered as my soul slipped into the void. My last thought was that I would never know for sure if what I had seen was real. I should forget all about the strange light before my parents started worrying and asked the Messenger to drive away the djinn that were haunting me.

I would forget about it, and the world would never know.

But that was not God’s plan.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, MY
father and I walked to the bazaar after my mother insisted that we trade a recent surplus of eggs from our coop of chickens for some fresh mutton. We walked down the streets carefully, my father’s eyes darting back and forth. With the death of Abu Talib, violence against Muslims was on the rise again, but Abu Lahab refused to pursue claims on our behalf in the Hall of Assembly. Just a week before, my poor cousin Talha had been attacked by the thugs in the middle of the street. When my father had sought to intervene and pay them off, they had beaten him as well and taken his purse. Abu Bakr and Talha had been left on the side of the road, tied together and covered in refuse, until a woman of the Bani Adi had had mercy on them and unloosed their bindings.

But there were no such incidents today. In fact, we were surprised at the emptiness of the cobbled streets, which were normally filled with people and animals heading to market at this hour.

And then we heard the sounds of raucous laughter coming from the Sanctuary, and my father turned and saw a large crowd gathered before the Kaaba. Over the din of jeers and catcalls, we could hear the distinctly rich voice of the Messenger.

“Let’s go,” my father said, and I followed him without hesitation. The Messenger had not preached openly in the Sanctuary since Abu Talib had died and Abu Lahab had warned him that the clan would not protect his followers from violence if they insulted the gods in front of the Holy House. Something had happened that made the Messenger risk a riot and speak before the pagan worshipers who had monopolized the shrine.