The Jewel Of Medina (14 page)

After that awful day in the market Muhammad tried to make peace with the Kaynuqah, but they jeered and threw rocks, telling him to send real men to fight next time instead of an old woman and a little girl. Worried about the threat they posed to us, Muhammad sent the men of the
umma
to drive the entire tribe out of the city. Then, with that concern out of the way, he made preparations to marry Hafsa bint Umar.

I understood why Muhammad had to marry again. Yet how I dragged my feet across the courtyard on the day of the wedding! Sawdah was all smiles and congratulations, but welcoming a hateful new sister-wife into the
harim
was far from my pleasure. Especially when that wife shimmered with beauty, and with the haughtiness of a peacock in her expensive gown of the most vivid blue.

I forced my legs to carry me past the looming date palm, through the wizened acacias, across the long, gray grass and the blood-red sands to where she stood under the weeping ghaza’a tree. My eyes returned again and again to her garments, as if she were a flower and my gaze a desperate bee: to the gloss of the brilliantine under-gown, more deeply azure than the midday sky; to the rich sheen of her brocaded purple silk shift, slit in the hem and plunging in the front to display the luscious blue beneath; to the girdle of fine blue lace encircling her waist; to the silken wrapper, also a rich, heady blue, sliding down the wave of ink-black hair I was certain she dyed with indigo. My precious red-and-white gown seemed shabby, all of a sudden, and my rust-colored hair more garish than ever.

As I approached, Ali stepped up with smiling eyes and murmured to her. She laughed, darting her glance as she made a reply so low he had to bend his ear to hear. He laughed, also, and their eyes exchanged a sly glance before he moved to Muhammad.

As I stood before Muhammad and Hafsa and mouthed blessings on their marriage—tripping like a clumsy child over the hated words—Ali watched with his tongue pressed smugly against his cheek. Hafsa regarded me with her nose so high in the air she might have been offering it to the birds to perch upon. In fact, her finely plucked eyebrows reminded me of birds in flight as she raised and lowered them over eyes like toasted almonds in burnt-butter skin.

“What a lovely dress,” she said, raising them at my gown. I bit back a taste as bitter as grape seeds. Her tone made me want to rip out that shiny hair she kept flicking off her shoulders. Beside us, Sawdah fingered her amulet against the Evil Eye and wished Muhammad happiness with his new wife.

“You must be A’isha, the child-bride,” Hafsa said. Her question dripped like venom from her pointed smile.

“Muhammad’s favorite bride,” I said, glaring at her so she would know I planned to stay that way.

She raised a dainty hand to her prettily yawning mouth. “How nice for you.” She reached out and patted my head. I resisted the urge to slap her arm. “I hope you have enjoyed his attentions while they lasted.” She shifted her glance to Ali, who watched us with a cunning smile, and then back to me. “After he’s spent his seven nights with me, you may find his heart has changed.”

“Yes, after seven nights alone with you, my husband will be more in love with me than ever,” I said. I thought her eyebrows would fly away completely.

If Muhammad loved me more the next day—or at all—I couldn’t tell it. As I laid out their meal in Hafsa’s new hut, the pair settled themselves on a single cushion, so close she might as well have been sitting in his lap. And such an appetite Muhammad displayed! He and the ravenous Hafsa devoured a pile of dates nearly as big as her head.

She was resplendent. Her thick hair spilled like a river of ink over her shoulders. Her blue silk trousers embroidered with yellow birds narrowed
at her waist, then billowed over her hips, accentuating their fullness. Already she had lined her eyes thickly with
kohl
, which dramatized their erotic dance. Her gazes at Muhammad invited, then rebuffed, then teased, then laughed. Around her neck she wore a necklace of lapis lazuli flecked with golden glints like stars on a slender bronze rope.

They cooed and preened like two nightingales in a nest. I thought of the night they had just spent, of her body under Muhammad’s, and my stomach churned. The tip of her breast brushed his arm as she leaned across him for another piece of fruit. He made a sound in his throat and looked at her with a hunger all the dates in Hijaz could not satisfy.

“By al-Lah! Marriage has made you both so eager for food,” I said. Forcing a laugh. Vying for my husband’s attention. Yet he seemed oblivious to my presence.

“Yes, we are insatiable.” Hafsa pushed a date slowly between Muhammad’s lips, then pulled her fingers just as slowly from his mouth. Giving him a long, sultry gaze. “
Yaa habib,
what’s this I hear about a disturbance in the Kaynuqah market? Did your child bride really start a fight? If I were the
hatun,
it wouldn’t have happened.”

A force gathered in my belly. The hair on my neck stood up. She arched her eyebrows up at me.

“Are you still here? Eyeing my new necklace, I see. It’s a gift from Muhammad. A token of his love. I’m sure you have one just as nice.”

“A token?” I said. “Who needs a token, when I have the real thing?”

But—did I have Muhammad’s love? Had he looked at me a single time this morning, as I’d served him and his new bride? As I walked across the courtyard with my empty dish in hand, I wondered if my fears were coming true. Would Hafsa win his heart and make herself the
hatun? Please, al-Lah, haven’t I suffered enough?
I had to find a way to knock her off that throne. But how? She had six more days alone with Muhammad and two ample breasts with which to enchant him. Still as virginal as an infant fresh from the womb, I couldn’t hope to compete with her. In the cooking tent, I set down the platter so hard it broke in two.

“By al-Lah, what is the matter, Little Red?” Sawdah clucked, taking my face in both hands and peering down at me. “You look like you want to cry.”

“Cry? What do I have to cry about? Because my husband is in love with another woman, and has forgotten all about me?”

Sawdah’s grin was lusty. “You remember those first nights. Like a pair of rutting goats, eh? The man and the woman cannot keep their hands off each other. But it does not last.”

I frowned at her. Being grunted and sweated on was supposed to feel good? That wasn’t my impression that day at Hamal’s window. But—Jamila hadn’t pushed him away. Her arms and legs had clung to him and her body had moved with his, as if she were riding a horse. I felt Sawdah watching me; she was probably wondering why I didn’t agree with her. In a moment, she would guess that my marriage hadn’t been consummated. I picked up the pieces of the plate I had broken and threw them into the fire to scatter her thoughts.

“She’ll be the
hatun
soon,” I muttered. “And you and I might as well kill ourselves.”

“
Hatun?
” Sawdah frowned. “That is supposed to be my position, I guess. But I do not want it, A’isha. I raised Muhammad’s girls from his first wife, and I have my own boy from my previous marriage. I have spent enough time giving orders.”

I felt my hopes lift. “Why don’t you appoint me?”

She shook her head. “You are awfully young to be in charge of a household.”

“But not too young to fight for you,” I pointed out.

Sawdah cocked her head, pondering, then broke into a laugh. “By alLah, you speak as truly as Gabriel himself. All right, A’isha, I will make you the
hatun
of this
harim.
”

I would have flung my arms around her in glee, but she stopped me with a lifted hand. “Do not get excited yet,” she said. “Not until Hafsa bint Umar agrees.”

I kicked at the dirt floor. “She’ll never respect my authority, and Muhammad will be too dazzled to make her do so.”

“Not for long.” Sawdah chuckled. “That Hafsa has got an awful temper. Worse than her father’s, I hear. Have you heard the saying? ‘A nail that has a blunted point brings shame upon itself.’ We will not wait long before her first outburst, you will see. The clouds will part from the Prophet’s eyes then.”

An idea flew into my head. A good idea—but also a bad one. I talked myself out of it, but when Hafsa called me
durra
three times the next
day—and suggested to Muhammad that I should be kept at home—I began to change my mind. Something had to be done about her, and quickly. Clearly she was in league with Ali. I hoped Muhammad wouldn’t let slip that we weren’t consummated or Hafsa would seize the first-wife position without a thought.

She needed to be humbled. If I told her what I knew, she’d never look down her nose at me again. How could any woman preen like a peacock when so many men had rejected her?

But Muhammad had sworn me to secrecy. To diminish Hafsa, I would have to betray him. I convinced Sawdah to deliver their meals, afraid of what I might say to her. But on Friday, five days after the wedding, she sauntered into the cooking-tent and demanded some date juice—then stood idle and watched me and Sawdah clean the dishes from her meal with Muhammad.

“I said I wanted date juice,” she demanded. “Are you two deaf, or ignoring me?”

Only the first-wife in the
harim
was entitled to give orders to the others. “Did you hear something, Sawdah?” I asked.

“I am claiming for myself the role of
hatun
,” Hafsa said. She folded her arms and drummed her purple-hennaed fingertips against one of her forearms. “I’m certain you know what that means. My desires are to be fulfilled.”

“Oh, but we all have desires, don’t we, Sawdah?” I said. “As for me, I desire help with these dishes.”

“I desire to leave this tent before I say something unholy,” Sawdah said, and hurried out to collect water for the dishes.

“I know what your desires are, A’isha.” Hafsa lifted her long, elegant nose. “How sad for you that your husband doesn’t return them.”

For a long while I stood without moving, blinking at her smirking face and wondering how much she knew about me and Muhammad. Had he told her that our marriage wasn’t consummated?

“How strange to hear you speak of Muhammad’s feelings,” I said. “Since he’s never had feelings for you.”

“No? Then why did he ask to marry me?” Her eyebrows swung upward. The half-smile remained on her lips. The bad idea bounced around in my head, confounding my good intentions with evil wishes—wishes to see
Hafsa reduced, and to raise myself above her. Then, almost before I knew it, that bad idea flew right out of my mouth.

“Muhammad didn’t ask to marry you,” I said. “Your father was the one who made the request. Muhammad obliged him as a favor.” Hafsa rolled her eyes and gave a short laugh. Seeing her disbelief, I plunged into the tale of how Umar had gone from man to man in search of a husband for her—adding my own details here and there.

As I spoke, I watched her superior smile fade to a trembling frown. The triumph in her eyes turned to indignant sparks. Here were the first signs of the terrible temper I had heard so much about! But then my words began to stumble from my lips, as I saw her proud expression crumple. At the end of the story, a single dark tear rolled down her cheek, trailing
kohl
.

Yet it was too late for me to turn back now. “Your father had to beg Muhammad to marry you,” I said.

“Where did you hear these tales?” Her voice rose. “Don’t you know better than to repeat such hurtful rumors? Wait until Muhammad hears about this. He’ll beat you until your back is as red as your hair!”

“I was there when your father implored Muhammad to take you,” I lied.

“You she-dog!” she cried. “I’ll beat you for those sorry tales.” And in the next moment we writhed in a flurry of fists and kicks, teeth and hair—until Sawdah yanked us apart with arms as beefy and muscular as the legs of an ox.

“Tut! What shame! The Prophet’s wives fighting like a couple of Bedouins,” Sawdah huffed. “What would he say if he saw you?”

“He’d say she deserves to be beaten for her stupid lies!” Hafsa was screeching and pointing her index finger at me.

“Hush! You will deafen me,” Sawdah complained. “What tales, A’isha?”

“I only told her the real reason Muhammad married her,” I said. “But the truth is painful to hear.”

Sawdah grabbed her amulet. “A’isha, you did not.”

“That story is a lie!” Hafsa continued to scream. “My father told me what happened. Every man in the
umma
wanted me, but Muhammad won. He’s the one who begged, not my father. Sawdah knows the truth!
Yaa
Sawdah, tell her how Muhammad asked my father for my hand.”

Sweat popped out like blisters on Sawdah’s forehead and upper lip. She
knelt to pick up the dishes I had stacked, then stood with them in her arms. “By al-Lah, it does not matter who asked whom,” she said. “You are married to the Prophet of God. Forget the rest.”

Hafsa stamped her foot. “You’re on her side, I knew it! By al-Lah, I know where to find the truth.” She stormed past us, knocking the dishes out of Sawdah’s arms. The crash must have drowned out my warning not to disturb Muhammad while he was preparing for the prayer service. In a whirl of dust and angry oaths Hafsa was gone, leaving me and Sawdah to pick up the broken platters and bowls. As I fumbled with the pieces, my hands trembling, I wondered how Muhammad would feel when he found out I’d betrayed his confidence. Would he ever trust me again?