The Jewel Of Medina (13 page)

“Sawdah, move away!” I cried. She ran to the stone wall and pressed her back against it. I turned to face my attacker. The goldsmith advanced, grinning, but he wasn’t careful, probably because he was fighting a girl. I raised my child’s sword and lunged, using a trick Muhammad had taught me to knock his knife out of his hand. He stared at me, confused, as his blade thudded to the ground. Some of the men around him laughed, but others grabbed their blades and moved slowly toward me. I looked around for Ali, but before I could call for his help Safwan leapt into the fray with a snarl, flashing his sword.

“Any coward can fight a girl,” he said. “Let’s see you Kaynuqah pigs best a Muslim warrior.”

The men clashed their blades with ours, and for a few short moments everything was just the way I’d imagined: Safwan and me fighting side-by-side. I cut the arm of one man, making him fall back. Safwan took a slice off his opponent’s nose, but the man continued to attack.

“You must leave here at once, A’isha!” he cried. “This is no place for you.”

Still bristling from his “any coward can fight a girl” remark, I turned and knocked the dagger from his opponent’s hand.

“Maybe it’s no place for
you,
Safwan,” I retorted, and took satisfaction from the way his eyes widened when he glanced over at me. But in the next instant, an arm closed around my neck and yanked me backward against a man’s hard chest, choking me as it pressed into my throat. Breath blew hot against my ear, and a bleeding hand smeared my lips.

“Lap it up, dear,” the goldsmith snarled. “Never again will you be so close to Kaynuqah blood.”

I jabbed him with my elbow, and brought my sword down on his leg. He let me go and I whirled around to fight, but Ali and his friends leapt into the crowd with their swords already in the air.

“You have done more than enough, you troublemaker,” Ali snarled at me as his friend with the big ears skewered the goldsmith through the belly. I watched, shaken, as the goldsmith fell to the ground, writhing and gurgling blood.

“We need to remove ourselves. Now!” Ali shouted.

He ran to collect Sawdah and led her to her kneeling camel. I leapt up onto Scimitar and wiped my blade with the cloth on my saddle, but kept my sword in hand in case anyone else tried to attack.

Sawdah wept, red-faced, as her camel stood. “I have never been so ashamed,” she said. “Those people saw everything.”

I tried to slide my sword into its sheath, but my hand trembled so badly I missed. A man had been killed, and I could have been also, but over what? A senseless prank! My nights of mock sword-fights and pretend battles had been games—but this was life. And death. I took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Don’t worry, Sawdah,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could. “When Muhammad hears about this, he’ll make the whole Kaynuqah tribe pay—with their blood.”

A scream curdled the thick, hot air, and I looked toward the roiling crowd of men with swords and sticks and pounding fists. Safwan was nowhere to be seen; apparently, he hadn’t forgotten how to vanish like a
djinni.
Ali’s friend with the big ears slumped on the ground, and a Kaynuqah man stood over him with a sword dripping red.

Ali glared at me as he took the reins of Sawdah’s camel. “See what you have caused?”

“I protected Sawdah while you loitered on cushions with your friends,” I said.

“Yes, A’isha, you did,” Sawdah said. She wiped her wet cheeks and gave me the tenderest of smiles. “You risked your life for me. Thanks be to alLah for a sister-wife like you!”

“You started a bloody fight with your eagerness to show off,” Ali said. He shook his head. “Maybe now Muhammad will listen to me and Umar. Wherever women go, trouble follows. The best place for you is at home.”

A B
AD
I
DEA

T
HAT SAME DAY

As I’d expected, Ali went straight to Muhammad when we returned from the market and told him all about the fight. And, as I’d expected, he portrayed himself as the valiant warrior coming to my rescue and me as the reckless child who’d caused all the trouble.

I’d made haste, with Sawdah huffing along behind me, to approach Muhammad myself. When I arrived at the
majlis,
Ali was already there, boasting and thumping his chest as he described in vivid detail the death blows he and his friends had dealt to the men who’d pinned up Sawdah’s skirt. One thing he didn’t mention was how he’d shrugged off his duties at first to gossip and drink coffee.

“I would like to hear those Kaynuqah cowards laugh at us now, cousin,” he said with a laugh of his own. “With these two blades I pierced both eyes of every man who approached me. Now their refusal to see the truth of
islam
has made them truly blind!”

Listening to Ali boast, I resisted the urge to jump in with tales of my own exploits. I wasn’t proud of the bloodbath that had resulted from something as trivial as a prank. And besides, Muhammad knew I wasn’t capable of holding off experienced fighters for long, not by myself. If I told
him about my part in the ugly scene, I’d have to tell about Safwan. Still in a daze from meeting him again, I was far from ready to discuss him with Muhammad.

As I and Sawdah stepped through the doorway, Ali pointed his long finger at me.

“Here is the one who started it all,” he said. “
Yaa
cousin, you should have seen her. A girl, and, worse, your wife, shouting out a challenge to the entire market! She broke her agreement with you at the first opportunity.”

I felt my ears burn as if his lies were candle-flames licking at their edges. Yet I held my retort because I dreaded any mention of Safwan—while, at the same time, I hungered for news of him. What had happened to him? Had he been wounded in the fighting, or killed? I tried to remember seeing him in the fray after I’d mounted my horse. Of course, Safwan had always been good at vanishing.

Fortunately, Sawdah had no such qualms about speaking.

“
Yaa
Prophet, you should have seen A’isha,” she said. “A little thing like her holding off three big men! She threatened to kill them all if they didn’t leave us alone. She would have done it, too.”

Ali folded his arms. “Truly, they would have died—of laughter. She was quite a vision, lunging around with that child’s sword you gave her. She was more dangerous to herself than to anyone else. I told you, cousin, she should be kept at home.”

“By al-Lah, she stood up for me!” Sawdah glared at Ali. “When nobody else would.”

Muhammad frowned at me. “I only used the disarming trick you taught me,” I said. “It was enough to slow them down, at least. And besides—” To my chagrin I felt myself blush, which made me redden more—“I wasn’t fighting alone, not the whole time.”

“That is right, you had that boy jump in to help,” Sawdah said. “He was no better fighter than you, though.”

“Safwan ibn al-Mu’attal,” Ali said. He folded his arms and narrowed his eyes, as if he’d caught me in a lie. “What was he doing at the market, A’isha?”

“How would I know?” I said, more sharply than I’d intended. What was Ali accusing me of? He smirked and nodded as though I’d just confirmed his suspicions.

Safwan’s handsome face as he’d fanned me with the palm frond flashed before my mind’s eye, and I began to perspire. Ali was watching me so intently, I wondered if he could read my thoughts. Had he seen me and Safwan talking together? Had he noticed how close Safwan had stood to me, and how I hadn’t moved away?

“
Yaa
A’isha, weren’t you told to summon me if there was trouble?” Ali said. “Yet you jumped in and started a fight without even calling my name.”

Muhammad’s eyes snapped when he looked into mine, and the tiny vein between his eyes bulged—always a sign of his anger.

“You behaved impulsively today, A’isha,” he said. “You could have been killed. Perhaps I would be wise to limit your freedom for a while, until you can restrain your actions.”

“By al-Lah, don’t do that!” I blurted. I pressed my hand to my chest and felt a frantic thumping, like the foot of a frightened rabbit. “I promise you, nothing like this will happen again.”

“But you have already broken a promise to me. You said if there was trouble, you would go to Ali.”

I looked down at the floor, avoiding the disappointment in his eyes. I’d been so eager to show off with my sword, I’d forgotten my promise to call Ali. And I’d acted on impulse, as Muhammad had said.

“I meant to keep my word to you,” I said. “But everything happened so fast, and I wanted to protect Sawdah—”

“A’isha is quick-spirited,” Sawdah said.

“She did not mean any harm.”

“She needs a firm hand,” Ali said. “Sawdah’s care has always been lenient. Of course, cousin, your daughters were all well-behaved.” His eyes gleamed like daggers at me. “If you do not wish to restrict your child bride, perhaps your bride-to-be will do it for you. Hafsa bint Umar could be a true
hatun,
the Great Lady of your
harim,
and prevent this kind of disaster from happening again.”

“New wife?” I asked Muhammad later, when he visited me in my room. “But why? I just moved in. Are you already bored with me?”

“Of course not, A’isha,” Muhammad said. He reached out and pulled me onto his lap. “But Umar wants to establish a bond with me, so he has
offered his daughter Hafsa. Her husband died fighting for me. She has no one to care for her.”

“Does that mean you’re going to marry all the widows from Badr?” I slanted sly eyes at him, hiding my dismay. “Where will they all live?”

Of course, I knew he had no plans to marry every widow in the
umma
. Umar was a special case. Once a bitter enemy of
islam,
he’d become an important member of Muhammad’s circle of Companions. “I must marry his daughter,” Muhammad told me. “There is no other way.”

Umar had already suffered humiliation enough, Muhammad said. First he’d asked their Companion Uthman to marry her. But Uthman, a plump, wealthy man with a mustache as long as a pump handle, had just married Muhammad’s daughter Umm Kulthum. “I cannot take another wife so soon,” he’d said.

“Having deep respect for Uthman, Umar said nothing,” Muhammad told me. “Then he approached Abu Bakr.”

Wouldn’t my father like to marry the beautiful Hafsa? Umar had asked.
Abi
bowed his head and stared at his hands, wondering what to do. If he said yes, he’d be saddled with a hot-tempered wife who would forever disrupt the peace in his home. If he said no, he would insult Umar. So he said nothing. Watching my father stand still and silent, Umar turned red, then gray, like a spent coal, before rushing away to find Muhammad.

“These so-called friends mock me with their indifference to my daughter,” he ranted.

“Uthman and Abu Bakr declined her hand, but only because I asked them to,” Muhammad said to him. “I want to marry Hafsa myself.”

As he finished his tale, I pressed my hand to my twisting stomach. Hafsa bint Umar was known to be a spoiled, self-centered woman whose screams at her husband had awakened her neighbors many times.

“If you have to marry someone,” I said, “can’t you find a wife who’s nicer? Hafsa will make me her
durra,
and I’ll be miserable.”

Muhammad chuckled. “You, the second-wife? After seeing you stand up to Ali today, I doubt it.”

I hoped he spoke the truth—yet hadn’t my mother once been strong also? Seeing the amused glimmer in his eyes, I decided to try another approach.

“Umar is a new convert to
islam,
and he was a close friend of Abu
Sufyan’s before the
hijra
to Medina,” I said. “How do you know he’s not a spy? If you marry his daughter, you might put us all in danger.”

Muhammad shook his head. Our army had crushed the Qurayshi fighters at Badr, he pointed out. Not only did the victory unify the
umma,
but it demonstrated to Abu Sufyan—and all of Hijaz—that we were to be feared and respected.

“This marriage is for the good of the
umma,
” he said. “We are a brand-new community, doing something no group of Arabs has ever done: leaving our homeland to form a family outside the bonds of kinship. Hafsa’s widowhood has created a rift among my closest Companions. If marrying her will mend that tear, then naturally I will do so.”