The Jewel Of Medina (18 page)

To my delight his smile widened, and his eyes seemed to spark to life.

“
Yaa
A’isha, you speak truly,” he said. “We have each other, do we not? And that was a wonderful dance. Let me thank you properly,
habibati
.”

It was what I had wanted, yet I trembled as he pulled me into his lap.

“You have given me my answer, Little Red,” he said, caressing my hair with his fingers. I shivered with pleasure and leaned my body against his.

“I do have more followers than ever—and friends, too,” he murmured.

“My marriage to Umm al-Masakin has been very fortunate in that respect. Her father is a Bedouin chief, did you know that? His tribe will come to our aid whenever we ask.”

Heat stung my cheeks as though I’d been slapped. How could Muhammad speak of his new wife with me sitting in his lap? Torn between the urge to leap up and run from him and my desire to consummate our marriage, I lost control of my tongue.

“So that’s why you married that dull little dough-face,” I blurted, forgetting to fight with my wits instead of my feelings, as he’d taught me. “I wondered how you could be attracted to someone so …” His face clouded, but it was too late for me to stop. “Unremarkable.”

“Your jealousy is very unbecoming, A’isha,” he said, his body stiffening. “I cannot understand it, given my attentions to you. Umm al-Masakin is quite remarkable. You can learn much from her.”

“I would like her better if you hadn’t married her,” I said, blinking rapidly to hold back my tears. A frown covered his face, but I ignored it. Had he considered
my
feelings before taking another wife?

“Umm al-Masakin’s husband was killed at Badr, and there is no one to care for her.” Muhammad raised his voice slightly. “Without my help she would have starved, and so would the tent people she has provisioned since coming to Medina.”

“While you’re busy taking care of her, who will take care of me?” I said. His wince was barely visible but I, ever vigilant to his moods, noticed it as if he’d scowled in disgust.

I lowered my eyes, ashamed. What a selfish thing to say—and stupid, also, if I wanted him to stop thinking of me as a child. Would I ever learn to think before I spoke, to hold my feelings on my tongue? Now my chance to win Muhammad’s heart was lost. Tears welled up in my eyes again, but this time I couldn’t stop them from spilling onto my cheeks. “Please forget I said that,” I said.

“Now you are the one who needs cheering,
habibati.”
Muhammad held up an arm, dangling the sleeve of his robe before me. I understood: We had played this game for years. “Look inside,” he said. “There is something for you in there.”

My pulse leaped. I’d seen the Mother of the Poor’s lovely new necklace of rubies—“for virtue,” Muhammad had said. Sawdah owned a necklace
from him, also, one made of shells from the Red Sea, but she preferred to keep it in her room. “Wearing it might attract the Evil Eye,” she’d said.

I wiped my tears and slipped my hand inside his sleeve. I felt for smooth stones or beads—and, in one last effort at seduction, I caressed the tender skin on the inside of his arm. I wanted to make him sigh with pleasure, but he chuckled instead.

“Keep looking,” he said. My fingers closed around something hard. I pulled it out to see an exquisite horse carved from ebony wood, muscular and lifelike, with a real leather saddle.

“It is Scimitar, your mount,” Muhammad said. “My son Zayd carved it for you, and Sawdah made the saddle. It is for your collection, Little Red.”

I turned it over in my hands. It was, indeed, a work of beauty. Yet it was a child’s toy. For all my efforts today, I was still Muhammad’s child bride. Probably he expected me to bury this horse in his beard, or make it whinny, then invite him to play. And, in truth, a part of me wanted to. But another part of me wanted to carry his gift to the cooking tent and hurl it into the fire.

“I think Scimitar would like to meet her new companions,” Muhammad said. “May I retrieve your other horses?”

I stared at the toy in my hands, wondering what to say. Muhammad placed a finger on my cheek. “Are these tears? Forgive me, Little Red. I have offended you with my gift.”

Regret rilled through the lines in his forehead, at the corners of his eyes, deepening them. Warmth filled my body like light from a soft-burning lamp. How could I complain to Muhammad about anything? So many worries plagued him already.

“I—I love your gift,” I managed to choke. “It’s very beautiful. These are tears of joy!” I forced a smile. “
Yaa
Muhammad, what are you waiting for? Gather the other horses, and let’s play.”

M
OTHER OF THE
P
OOR

M
EDINA, A FEW DAYS LATER

I’d tried pleading, sulking, and cajoling, but Muhammad had insisted: Not only must I walk to the tent city with his timid bride, but I’d also have to spend the morning there with her.
You will learn what it means to be truly poor, and you will gain respect for your new sister-wife
, he’d said.

Umm al-Masakin’s face shone when we told her the news. “What an honor,” she gushed. An honor! By al-Lah, was I the angel Gabriel? But then she turned and bowed to me, warming me to her.

Muhammad might consider me a child, as our ill-fated evening of “romance” had shown, but that didn’t have to be my downfall, I’d realized. Lying in his arms that night as he drank deep draughts of sleep, I’d blinked against the dark and my tears and asked al-Lah why I had to fight for all I wanted. Yet as I listed my opponents, I saw that they weren’t so formidable. Ali was a vexation, not a danger. Umar was all bluster. Hafsa had become my ally, no longer interested in being
hatun.

Nor, apparently, was Mother of the Poor a threat to my status. I’d feel more secure once I and Muhammad had consummated our marriage, but in the meantime I could hold my ground against the new wife. She was
quiet and shy—pure weakness, while I was strong. Yet Muhammad was stronger—which meant that, no matter how I resisted, I had to spend a day with Umm al-Masakin, Mother of the Poor, in the stinking, flea-infested tent city.

I dawdled as I got ready for the journey, hoping Umm al-Masakin would leave without me. She liked to depart after the early morning prayer, but how could I go until the bread was baked? I thought Sawdah would topple over when I offered to mix the dough. Then she spied Mother of the Poor waiting for me in the corner, clicking her prayer beads like nervous teeth, and she shooed me away.

I fed my runt lamb and changed clothes, and still she waited. At last I ran out of excuses to delay, and we said
ma’ salaama
to our sister-wives. How they clucked over me—as if I were going far away, instead of to the edge of Medina! Sawdah handed me her cowrie-shell necklace to wear as protection against the Evil Eye, and Hafsa whispered a warning not to get too close to anyone. “You don’t want to catch any strange illnesses,” she said.

Of course, Umm al-Masakin fed and nursed the poor every day, and she seemed healthy enough, if a bit pale. As we walked through Medina together—her with her heavy bag of medicines and a sack of barley and me with a sack of dates—I asked her how she kept from getting sick.

“By the grace of al-Lah,” she said, and nothing more.

“What about me? How do I protect myself? Is there a medicine in your bag for that?” I asked.

She cut me a mischievous look from the corner of her eye. “Would al-Lah allow anything to happen to His Prophet’s favorite wife?”

“How do you know I’m Muhammad’s favorite? Did he tell you?” Pleasure, like the morning sunshine, spilled warmth over my face.

“He does not need to say so. I must only look at his eyes when he looks at you. Even the mention of your name causes him to glow.”

“Sometimes I wonder.” I paused, pondering how much to tell. “He treats me like a child—in every way.” She blushed and pulled her wrapper about her face, and I wondered if I’d revealed too much.

We walked through town, brushing away the flies rising like steam from the scattered piles of manure, keeping our eyes down so we wouldn’t draw attention from Ibn Ubayy and his men. At this early hour, though, the
flies and the men were scarce. Umm al-Masakin moved her feet at a pace so quick I had to trot to keep up with her.

Then a baby’s cry pierced the air. I raised my eyes to see the infamous “tent city” littering the desert like dirty laundry scattered by the wind. Puzzled, I searched for tents, but I saw only tattered pieces of dingy gray cloth spread across acacia branches stuck into the sand. These “poles” leaned at haphazard angles, threatening to collapse if anyone breathed on them. Some tents didn’t even have poles. Their owners sat with pieces of cloth over their heads, or draped between their heads and those of their family members.

The stench here was much worse than anything in Medina. Urine, feces, the rotting carcass of a fly-blown dog, and unwashed bodies made a sickening stew of odors, nearly gagging me. A man hunching on the rust-red sand noticed my discomfort and laughed, baring bright, swollen gums and green-black teeth.

“
Yaa
Mother of the Poor, who is your helper?” the man asked. “I do not think she will be much help today.”

“Abu Shams! Where is your tent?” Umm al-Masakin said.

“My son found a goat, and the goat ate it,” the
shaykh
said. “My son is going to butcher the goat and give some of the meat to me, though, so I will be eating my own tent for supper!” He laughed at his ridiculous tale, and Umm al-Masakin laughed with him. I smiled politely, wondering how he could chew anything with those teeth.

“If your son will give me the skin of that goat, I can have a goatskin shelter fashioned for you in two days.” Already she had recruited Sawdah to tan and stretch animal hides for this purpose.

Umm al-Masakin motioned to me for the sack of dates, opened it, and pulled out a handful of fruit.

“These will satisfy your hunger until mealtime,” she said to the old man. I stared as she put the dates in her mouth, chewed them, and spat them into the wooden bowl he held out. He dipped his fingers into the concoction and slurped it down.

He lifted his eyes to catch me watching him. I quickly looked away, but he laughed again. “Never seen a starving man before, sister?” he said.

“
Yaa
Abu Shams, please speak to A’isha with respect,” Umm al-Masakin said. “She is the favored wife of the Messenger of God. She
honors us with her visit today. You should honor to her as you honor the Prophet.”

He raised his eyes to me—hungry eyes, filled with pain. “The Prophet is the greatest of all men,” he said. “Without him, none of us here would even have tents. But it is the Mother of the Poor who feeds us and tends to our health every day. She is the woman I honor.” He folded his arms and glared at me as if I had asked him to bow down before me.

Umm al-Masakin thanked him and led me away. “Pay no attention to Abu Shams,” she murmured, lowering her eyes in embarrassment. “The more he ages, the more eccentric he becomes.”

Abu Shams had spoken truly about one thing: I wasn’t much help to the Mother of the Poor that day. I knew nothing of the bundles of herbs, plant extracts, and incenses she carried in her bag, so I could only watch as she ground mixtures together with her mortar and pestle and gave them to a man to apply to the sores on his arms and legs, or spread them on the chest of a coughing baby, or fed them to a boy whose guts contorted with pain from the spoiled meat pies his mother had “found” at the Medina market the day before. (Just as the old
shaykh’s
son had “found” the goat, I assumed.)

In the corner of the tent, the boy’s mother moaned and clutched her stomach. “Mix that barley you cooked with some vinegar and give it to her,” Umm al-Masakin told me. “It will cleanse the bad meat from her system.”

I carried the bowl of food to the poor woman, and she clasped my hand with rough fingers, as my beloved grandmother had done when I’d visited her deathbed as a child. Now, as then, I could see the bones of her face as plainly as if she had no skin at all—but instead of staring at her in disgust, as I had the rotten-toothed old
shaykh
, I squeezed her hand in return.

“In the future, if you need food, tell Umm al-Masakin,” I said to the mother.

“Can Mother of the Poor keep the stomachs of my babies full?” She peered up at me with knowing eyes. “Their father never could. From the looks of you two, your husband struggles, also.”

“Al-Lah provides for me, and He helps me provide for you,” Umm al-Masakin said. She came over and knelt beside me. “I have only barley, not meat, but it will not make you ill.”

She pulled out a folded handkerchief from her medicine pouch, and
opened it to reveal several silver
dirhams.
The woman’s eyes tracked Umm al-Masakin’s fingers, watching the coins as if they were fish in the water and she a bird of prey. Yet she offered a feeble protest.

“God bless you, Mother of the Poor. You feed my children while your own flesh wastes away and your skin turns pale from hunger. How can I accept yet another gift from you?”