Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (41 page)

W
e all gathered in Uthman’s spacious dining hall. The walls were covered in delicate floral tiles made of ceramic, said to have been imported directly from Constantinople, and the arched ceiling was held aloft by sturdy marble pillars. It was a palatial room set for banquets that would have made the kings of Persia feel welcome. I wondered at Uthman’s good fortune.

Even though much of the oasis remained mired in poverty, wealth seemed to flood him wherever he went. The Prophet had given Uthman the title
Al-Ghani,
which meant “the generous,” and he was always ready to share his vast stores with anyone who needed help. But no matter how much he gave away, more money seemed to rush toward him and his coffers were always overflowing. There was a legend I had heard of a Greek king whose touch could turn anything to gold, and I would joke that Uthman was the Midas of our people.

And for the Prophet’s wedding to a woman of Uthman’s own clan, he had thrown together one of the most extravagant banquets I had ever seen. The Messenger himself appeared uncomfortable with the vast wealth on display—the silver bowls filled with succulent red grapes, trays stacked with fresh breads steaming from the ovens, delicate raisins on plates decorated with fresh desert roses, their tiny leaves spiraling toward the soft petals. Goat stew, spiced with saffron and rich salts. Cakes dripping with honey and powdered with a sugary substance said to have been brought from Persia. And a seemingly endless supply of roast mutton, cut thin, the meat mouthwatering and tenderized to perfection.

The Companions, many of whom had never eaten anything beyond coarse bread and grizzled meat, stared at the feast in awe, and a few threw jealous glances at Uthman, who sat beside the lovely Umm Kulthum, the Prophet’s daughter whom he had married upon the death of Ruqayya. It was as if this gentle pacifist of a man had everything any of them could ever want, and yet he seemed blissfully unaware of how lucky he truly was. In the years to come, the feelings of resentment that I sensed from some of the younger men would worsen, and Uthman’s opulence would come with a price that would be paid by an entire civilization.

I walked among the believers, carrying trays of spiced chicken, a highly prized delicacy as the fowls were rarely found in the desert wastes and were mainly shipped from Syria. And then I saw Ramla looking at the Messenger with her delicate eyes and I could tell that my husband was smitten.

The thought of him spending the night with her, exploring the arts of love with this cosmopolitan and sophisticated woman, made me sick. A flash of jealousy raged inside me and I found myself turning to the man closest to me, the giant Umar, who was hungrily tearing off pieces of a chicken bone with his fingers.

“Why bother, Umar? Just swallow it whole already!” I said in my best teasing voice. He looked at me with surprise and then burst out laughing. I made the rounds of the men at the long cedar table, cheerily mocking them for their uncouth manners and desert coarseness. But I would follow my harsh words with a coquettish smile, a wink of my golden eyes, and they would respond as all men do to the flirtation of a beautiful woman. With zest, amusement, and subtle desire.

I soon found myself the center of attention at the banquet as I traded jokes with Talha or mocked Zubayr’s tales of his adventurous exploits as a youth before my sister, Asma, had turned him into a trained kitten. I caught Ramla looking at me with irritation for having stolen all her thunder on her wedding day, and I smiled at my little victory against my rival.

As I made the rounds of the men playing my childish games, I saw from the corner of my eye my husband watching me with a stern look. I knew that I was making him jealous, something that I had never tried to do before, and I thrilled secretly at the thought that I could still sway his heart. Even as he took Ramla in his arms tonight, part of his mind would be consumed with the memory of my little performance, my demonstration that I was still the youngest and most desirable of his consorts in the eyes of the world.

I was a silly girl of fifteen and thought nothing more of my behavior than I did of the daily gossip sessions I held with the other Mothers. I had no idea that my little game would have such dire consequences, that my foolish flirtations would change my life so drastically. And I could not have foreseen that the freedom I had treasured from birth would soon end behind the walls of a prison forged from my own folly.

T
alha let the loud commotion of the marketplace, the crowing of merchants, and the laughter of children run through him. He was feeling dejected, and a walk through the bazaar did him good. Though there was much jubilation among the believers these days, Talha was farsighted enough to see that the Messenger’s efforts to forge the Arabs into a nation would not end the war but were likely expand it. But their new enemies would not be a few thousand poorly armed desert dwellers. They would be the legions of Persia and Byzantium, empires that had mastered the art of warfare over centuries of bloodshed.

That terrible day of imperial conflict was coming upon them fast, and the Muslims would need the best and the brightest of the Arab nation to hold their ground. Men like the fearsome general Umar ibn al-Khattab and now the brilliant politician Muawiya. The role that these great leaders would play in the war to come was clear.

But the role that he would play was not.

Talha, his hand forever shattered by the sword that had been meant for the Messenger, was no longer an able warrior, like his friend Zubayr. He was not a revered statesman like his cousin Abu Bakr or a wealthy merchant like Uthman, who could single-handedly fund an entire military campaign.

He was a poor cripple who could barely afford to keep food on the table for his wife, Hammanah, and his infant son, Muhammad. His wife was a sweet and gentle woman and had never complained. But he felt like a failure. One of the first Meccans to embrace Islam as a young man, he remained the only one of that inner circle who had failed to turn the poverty of the early years into prosperity in Medina. It was that perpetual struggle that prevented him from being of greater service to the cause. And it had prevented him from proposing to a young girl before she had been chosen for a greater destiny.

Although he never said it aloud, everyone among the Muslims knew of his feelings for me. He had tentatively approached Abu Bakr to ask for my hand when I came of age. But my father had been reluctant to engage his precious daughter to a boy whose hard work had never quite lifted him from the ranks of the poor. Instead, he had promised me to Jubayr ibn Mutim in the hopes of enticing the influential young Meccan aristocrat into Islam.

Talha had been bitterly disappointed, but he had held hope that Jubayr’s loyalty to the old ways would prevent the wedding from ever happening. And he was proven right. But when my betrothal to Jubayr had indeed been abrogated, Talha had been stunned to learn it was because I had been promised to a husband with whom he could never compete, even if he had all the wealth of Arabia. And so he had forever closed that door in his heart. For Talha revered the Messenger, and he accepted God’s will, sacrificing one love for another.

Talha tried to turn his thoughts away from the past. But the world would not let him.

“The daughter of Abu Bakr was in fine form last night,” a deep voice said.

Talha looked up to see two merchants standing beside him. They examined a parcel of leather goods that had recently been smuggled from Taif in defiance of the Meccan ban on trading with Muhammad.

Talha stared at the two figures, who were conversing nonchalantly, a richly dressed tribesmen from the Khazraj named Sameer and his friend Murtaza, a Bedouin clansmen from the tribe of Tayy to the east. They were men who had some business dealings with Uthman ibn Affan and had been invited to the Prophet’s wedding to Ramla the night before.

“The Messenger is truly lucky,” Sameer said with a wink to his colleague.

“She is the most beautiful girl I have ever set eyes upon,” Murtaza responded with a lascivious smirk. “Is it true that she was still a virgin on her wedding night?”

Talha felt his heart thunder with rage. He stormed up to the men and pushed himself between them, his eyes burning.

“What shameful talk is this? She is your Mother!”

Sameer looked at Talha, in his faded wool tunic and dusty pantaloons, and his eyes mocked him with the casual cruelty of a rich man.

“Only as long as she is married to the Messenger,” Sameer said.

Murtaza stepped closer to Talha, his sunburned face smelling of oil and
qat,
the Yemeni leaf that was said to make men dream while awake.

“What if the Prophet dies or divorces her?” Murtaza sneered. “What will become of this delicate flower then?”

Talha’s heart was pounding. And then he spoke before he could stop himself.

“Then I will marry her, if only to protect her honor from scum like you!”

Talha froze, horrified that he had spoken aloud his darkest, most private desire, one that never should have been voiced in this world or the hereafter.

“It sounds like you have feelings for the pretty lady you call your mother,” Murtaza said.

The Najdi Bedouin put an arm around Talha in false comradeship.

“Don’t be ashamed, boy,” Murtaza added, amusement dripping from his lips. “If a son had a mother who looked like that, he’d be forgiven if he entertained a dirty thought now and again.”

And then, as if he were being moved by a force greater than himself, Talha swung forth with his scarred fist and smashed Murtaza’s teeth with one brutal blow. The stunned Bedouin fell back, blood exploding from his mouth.

Talha stood perfectly still, unable to move, despite the pounding agony in his ruined hand. And then Sameer was on top of him and he was being punched and kicked into the ground. Talha stopped fighting and absorbed the enraged merchant’s blows without crying out, even as he had done years before when Umar had beaten him in the Sanctuary. He could hear his ribs crack under the onslaught, the pain almost as intense as the agony that emanated from his deformed and brutalized hand.

Talha did not move, did not breathe. He let Sameer crush him into the earth. His eyes blurred and darkness flew toward him like a gentle blanket, come to cover him in the sleep of unconsciousness. If this was death, he could think of no happier end than to die protecting the honor of the Mother of the Believers.

I
sat nervously inside my tiny apartment, which felt even smaller than usual, as all the other wives had gathered here tonight at the command of the Messenger. The harem had grown prodigiously over the past several years and now included six women—Sawda, myself, Hafsa, Zaynab bint Jahsh, Umm Salama, and Ramla, the most recent addition. The other Zaynab, the daughter of Khuzayma whom the Prophet had married to bring the Bani Amir into alliance, had passed away a few months before. Her loss had been hard on the lower classes of Medina, as Zaynab’s tireless efforts on behalf of the weak and the indigent had earned her the sobriquet “Mother of the Poor.”

I look back and realize that in some ways Zaynab bint Khuzayma was the luckiest of us all, as she left the world long before the terrible trials and sorrows that were to besiege the Muslim
Ummah
. And, perhaps most poignantly, she had passed on to the next world after having lived a life that was full and free of undue restriction or limitation. The simple normalcy of her daily existence, the pleasure of walking in public under the full light of the sun, would soon become a luxury for the rest of us—another disaster that was forged by my passionate and willful soul.

The tension in the room was thick, like smoke from an oven that has been left unattended for too long. The fires that were being contained behind the cool glances of my cowives was about to burst.

None of them was looking at me, except for Hafsa, whose furious gaze summed up their feelings succinctly. My flirtatious spectacle at Ramla’s wedding had brought shame upon the entire household, as well as violence to the streets of Medina. Poor unlucky Talha had been beaten senseless defending my honor from crass talk among the merchants, and the ensuing struggle had erupted into a vicious melee as outraged Companions had rushed forward to avenge him. Though no one had been killed, the ruckus had been a terrible reminder of the fragility of peace in the oasis.

What would happen next was unclear. But there would definitely be consequences, and the Prophet’s terse summons to all the Mothers suggested that they would all pay collectively in some fashion for my foolishness.

I looked away from Hafsa’s accusing eyes and stared up at the roof of palm leaves, where a gray moth was sleeping amid the crevices of a frond. I suddenly wanted to be that moth, hidden in shadows and ignored by the world, but free to fly away at the slightest impulse.

And then the door swung inward and the Messenger of God entered the room. He looked at the Mothers and nodded to each of them in turn without smiling. But when his eyes fell on me, he simply blinked and looked away without acknowledgment. My heart shattered like a mirror dropped from a treetop.

The Prophet closed the door behind him and then sat cross-legged on the floor. He breathed in deeply and then sighed wearily. But still he said nothing.

Moments passed, but the Messenger did nothing to assuage our growing anxiety. He simply sat, looking at us with a terrible patience that was somehow more frightening than any anger he could have expressed.

My mouth was painfully dry, as if I had eaten a brick of salt. And still my husband said nothing.

I could take it no longer. Even at the risk of igniting the rare fire of his wrath, I forced myself to speak

“Is Talha all right?” I croaked as if I had not spoken in years and my tongue had forgotten its cunning.

I could feel every eye on me now. The other Mothers glared at me in anger, but I did not return their cruel glances and focused my attention solely on the man who held my destiny in his hands.

The Messenger stared at the opposite wall for a long moment before he finally turned to face me. I braced myself for an outburst. Perhaps I even hoped for an explosion of outrage, a flash of passion that showed he still cared for me.

But when he finally met my eyes, there was no punishment in his gaze, no flames of wrath.

“Talha will heal in due time,” Muhammad said softly. “But the wounds to the
Ummah
will take longer.”

He sighed again, a sound that was laced with exhaustion. I suddenly saw the tiny new lines around his dark eyes and realized that he had not been sleeping well. Just as suddenly I felt regret that among all the responsibilities of leadership he carried, worry over the trouble I had foolishly caused should add to his burden.

“I have worked for so many years to bind these quarrelsome people together as a family,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. “Yet it takes only one small incident to tear them apart.”

The room blurred as tears flooded my eyes.

“I’m sorry, I never intended—”

“It was not your intention, but the damage is still done,” he said abruptly, and I felt as if I had been slapped. The Messenger was always exceedingly courteous and considered interrupting others to be the height of ill manners. The fact that he would cut me off so forcefully, especially in the presence of my rival wives, revealed how far I had fallen in his estimation. I felt my throat constrict painfully as the thought that he would divorce me stabbed into my heart.

And then another voice sounded through the small apartment, the gentle motherly tone of Umm Salama.

“We are your wives and your partners in this world and the next,” she said steadily. “What is it that you wish us to do, O Messenger of God?”

She had chosen her words carefully and in doing so had taken the brunt of responsibility for the day’s events off my lonely shoulders and placed them squarely upon the Mothers as a group. I looked across the room at her, my eyes brimming with unspoken gratitude for her decision to end my solitude.

The Prophet hesitated, and when he spoke, it was with the unyielding authority of the leader of a nation, not with the gentle tones of a family patriarch.

“God has revealed these words to me,” he said, and my blood began to race. A Revelation had come to address the chaos I had created, and the thought that God Himself would intervene in this earthly affair terrified me.

And then the Messenger of God began to recite the lyrical words sent down from heaven, and I forgot everything except the haunting beauty of his voice:

O wives of the Prophet, you are not like any other women.

If you fear God, do not speak softly

In case the sick at heart should lust after you

But speak in a firm manner.

Stay at home and do not flaunt your finery

As they did in the Days of Ignorance.

The Messenger stopped and let the holy words sink in. I blinked and suddenly felt a flash of relief. The commandment was not onerous, and surely God could not mean this literally. The Messenger had often said there was much in the holy Qur’an that was symbolic and a dogmatically literal adherance to the law would undermine God’s purpose. The commandment to stay at home, locked away in this tiny room with clay walls, while the world buzzed around about me, could not possibly be a strict rule that was meant to be applied with fervor. It had to be a general admonition, to curtail the kind of social impropriety that could lead to scandal and violence, as my stupid behavior at the wedding had done.

But when I looked at the Prophet, the intensity in his eyes froze the smile that was forming on my lips. Something dark still hung between us, and I suddenly felt frightened again.

“You should not leave your houses unless necessary. It is for your good and for the good of the
Ummah,
” he said, and I felt my breath stop. The Messenger was serious about applying the commandment. We were now expected to stay inside our homes like prisoners.

“There is more,” he said grimly. “God has issued a command to the believers as well.”

He took a deep breath and then recited the flowing verses:

When you ask his wives something, do so from behind a curtain.

This is purer for your hearts and theirs.

It is not right for you to offend God’s Messenger

Just as you should never marry his wives after him.

That would be an enormous sin in the sight of God.

The Messenger stopped and we looked at one another in confusion, unable to comprehend what was being asked of us. I understood the prohibition against marrying another man after the Prophet—the rivalries and divisions that would erupt over the honor of securing the hand of a queen of the realm would tear the nation apart. But the notion that we could only speak to men from behind a curtain was startling to Arab women, who were accustomed to living in the open air. We all wanted to believe that we had misunderstood the verses. It was one thing to stay inside our homes under the compulsion of necessity, but to cut ourselves off from our fellow believers in this manner was incomprehensible. Surely this rule would be liberally interpreted.

But the Messenger quickly put an end to our hopes.

“From this point on, you may not speak to any man who is not
mahrem
except through a veil or a curtain,” he said forcefully, his eyes locked on mine, and I felt my heart sink.

The
mahrem
referred to any man whom we were forbidden from marrying because of the laws of incest. Our brothers, our sons, our fathers, our uncles, and our nephews were our flesh and blood and outside the possibility of sexual relations. But all other men, including close friends like Talha, fell outside the taboo—and now we could no longer talk to any of them except from behind a barrier. It was a stunning and extreme change, one that I had not been prepared for, and I could not imagine how I could possibly comply with God’s commandment.

The Messenger stood up to leave and we all watched him go as if we were in a dream. But as he opened the door, I saw a flash of the outside world, of the hustle and bustle of the Masjid and the streets of Medina, and suddenly felt tears in my eyes as the realization struck me that I would never be able to venture out into that world as I had done all my life, free and proud.

From now on, my life was to become a prison, even when I was not confined to the tiny apartment whose mud walls seemed to be closing in on me. For whenever I ventured out into the sun, my face would be hidden away behind a veil. The bars of my jail would follow me everywhere and were unbreakable, forged from a tiny strip of cotton that was stronger than the mightiest Byzantine steel.