The Jewel Of Medina (3 page)

“Ali, please,” Muhammad said, more sternly. Ali folded his arms across his chest and curled his lips. My courage wavered under his scrutiny. Did he truly know the reason I had lost the caravan? Maybe it would be better for me to tell the truth—but a glance at my husband’s concerned face changed my mind. Even Muhammad, who knew me as if our souls were one, wouldn’t understand why I’d risked so much for so little—and he might not believe me when I told him I was still pure.

“You sat down to wait,” Umar said. “What occurs next in this unlikely tale?”

I closed my eyes, feeling faint. What was the story? I and Safwan had
rehearsed it during our ride. I let out a long sigh, calming my frantic pulse. This next part was true.

“As the sun rose, I found shade under a grove of date-palm trees,” I said. “I lay down, keeping cool. Then I must have slept, because the next thing I remember is Safwan’s hand on my shoulder.”

Umar grunted. “Did you hear that, Prophet? Safwan ibn al-Mu’attal is now touching your wife. We all know where that leads.”

“Why didn’t you both ride home right away?” Ali barked.

“Something happened to me.” This part was also true. “I felt a sharp cramp, like a knife in my stomach.” Muhammad’s eyes seemed to soften—a good sign, meaning he must believe me at least a little.

“I couldn’t travel, not while I was doubled over with pain. So Safwan pitched his tent for me to rest in, out of the sun.”

Ali guffawed. “And where was Safwan while you were lying in his tent?” I ignored him, wanting only to finish this interrogation and go to sleep.

“I retched for hours. Safwan tried to help me. He gave me water and fanned me with a date-palm frond. Finally he became frightened, and we came back for help.” I didn’t tell how he’d nearly made me scream with his hand wringing.
Al-Lah is punishing us,
he’d moaned, over and over again. Along with the water, I began to spit up bile and remorse.
Take me to Medina,
I said sourly.
Before al-Lah kills us both.

When I finished my tale, Ali was scowling. “This is not the full story,” he said. “Why was Safwan lagging so far behind the caravan? Was it because he knew you would be waiting for him under the date palms?”

“I asked Safwan to remain behind,” Muhammad said. “To watch for the return of the Mustaliq to their camp.”

“She has been flirting with him for years!”

I snorted, as if his words amused me instead of chilling my blood. He spoke the truth—but who else knew?

“Where is your proof, Ali?” I said, meeting his angry gaze for a moment, then dropping it for fear he’d see the panic in my eyes. “A single pointing finger makes an insignificant mark.”

Then, with Muhammad’s help, I lay down on my bed and turned my back to them all: the ever-suspicious Umar; Ali, so eager to think the worst of
me; and my husband, who could quiet an angry mob with a raised hand but who had allowed these men to slander me. Why had I returned? I closed my eyes and dreamt, again, of escape. This time, though, I knew it was only a dream. There would be no escaping my fate. At best, al-Lah willing, I might shape my destiny—but I couldn’t run from it. This much I had learned from my mistakes these past few days.

I slept lightly, tossed by fever and regret, until whispers whipped about my head like stinging sand, jolting me back to consciousness. Muhammad and Ali were sitting on the cushions near my bed, arguing—about me.

“I cannot believe A’isha would do such a thing,” Muhammad said. His voice was a broken shell, fragile and jagged. “I have loved her since she sprang from her mother’s womb. I have played dolls with her and her friends. I have drunk from the same bowl with her.”

“She is fourteen years old,” Ali said, his voice rising. “Not a little girl anymore, although she is many years younger than you. Safwan is much closer to her age.”

“Shh, Ali! Do not disturb A’isha’s rest.”

“Then let us find a more suitable place to talk.” I heard the rustle of cloth.
Don’t go,
I wanted to beg, but I was too weak. So I moaned, instead. Muhammad laid his hand on my forehead.

“Her skin is hot,” he said. “I cannot leave her alone.”

“Then I must speak here.”

“Please, cousin. I value your counsel.”

I held my breath, dreading Ali’s next words. What kind of punishment would he suggest for me and Safwan? A whipping? Banishment from the
umma?
Death?

“Divorce her,” Ali said.

“No!” I sat up, ready to throw my arms around my husband’s neck and hold on with all my strength. Muhammad stroked my damp brow, his smile shifting like a shadow under a changing sun.

“Don’t leave me,” I said, forgetting about Ali, the last person I would have wanted to hear me beg.

“I am not leaving you,
habibati
. But I have decided to send you to your parents’ house for a while. Abu Bakr and Umm Ruman will nurse you back to health, al-Lah willing, away from all these wagging tongues.”

“Don’t divorce me.” Weeks later, as I waited in my parents’ house for
Muhammad’s verdict, I’d wince to recall how I’d clung to his hand and cried in front of Ali: “I love you,
habibi.
”

I meant those words as I’d never meant them before. I’d learned much during those hours in the desert with Safwan. Safwan, who’d promised one thing and delivered another, the same as when we were children.

“I love you, too, my sweet.” But his voice sounded far away, and his eyes looked troubled. I lay down and clutched his hand as though it were a doll, then drifted slowly back toward sleep.

As I slipped away again I heard Ali’s voice, urgent and low.

“Think of the
umma,
how delicate its weave,” he said. “A scandal like this could tear it apart. You must act now, cousin. Send her back to Abu Bakr for good.”

“Divorce my A’isha?” Muhammad’s laugh sounded nervous and faint. “I would rather cut out my own heart.”

“She’s tainted,” Ali said—increasing my hatred for him with each word. “You must put her away from you before this scandal marks you, also. Many men in this town would love to see you fall.”

Muhammad slowly pulled his hand from my grasp, leaving me to drift alone on my sea of fears.

“Can’t you see it?” Ali pressed. “I know you can. Then why do you look so worried? Wives are easily acquired. You will find another child-bride.”

Centuries later, scandal still haunts my name. But those who scorned me, who called me “al-zaniya” and “fahisha,” they didn’t know me. They never knew the truth—about me, about Muhammad, about how I saved his life and he saved mine. About how I saved all their lives. If they knew, would they have mocked me then?

Of course, they know now. Where we are now, all truth is known. But it still eludes your world. Where you are, men still want to hide the women away. You, in the now, they cover with shrouds or with lies about being inferior. We, in the past, they erase from their stories of Muhammad, or alter with false tales that burn our ears and the backs of our eyes. Where you are, mothers chastise their daughters with a single name. “You A’isha!” they cry, and the girls turn away in shame. We cannot escape our destinies, even in death. But we can claim them, and give them shape.

The girls turn away because they don’t know the truth: That Muhammad wanted to give us freedom, but that the other men took it away. That none of us is ever alive until we can shape our own destinies. Until we can choose.

So many misunderstandings. Here where we are, we cup the truth in our hands like water, trying to contain it, watching it slip away. Truth is too slippery to hold. It must be passed on, or it slides like rain into the earth, to disappear.

Before it disappears, I will pass my story on to you. My truth. My struggle. And then, who knows what will happen? Al-lah willing, my name will regain its meaning. No longer, then, a word synonymous with treachery and shame. Al-Lah willing, when my story is known, my name will evoke once more that most precious of possessions. Which I claimed for myself and for which I fought until, at last, I won it from the Prophet of God—not only for myself, but for all my sisters also.

My name: “A’isha.” Its meaning: “life.” May it be so again, and forevermore.

B
EDOUINS IN THE WILD

M
ECCA
, 619
S
IX YEARS
old

It was my last day of freedom. Yet it began like one thousand and one days before it: the wink of the sun and my cry of alarm,
late again,
the spring from my bed and the flight through the windowless rooms of my father’s house, my wooden play-sword in my hand, my bare feet slapping the cool stone floor,
I’m late I’m late I’m late.

Oil lamps flickered dimly against the walls, their feeble light a poor substitute for the sun I loved. As I passed the cooking room the tangy fermented smell of barley mush made me gag.
Faster, faster
. The Prophet would be here soon. If he saw me, he would want to play, and I would miss Safwan.

Yet I should have known my mother would find me: She was more vigilant than the Evil Eye. “Where do you think you are going?” she cried as I hit the solid wall she made standing in my path with her hands on her hips.

I would have reeled back, caught my breath, and run around her but she seized me with hands made strong from years of bread making. Her fingers gripped my shoulders like the talons of a hawk. She ran her gaze
like rough hands over my sleep-tossed hair, my sand-colored shift marked like a map of yesterday’s play: Roundish smudges where I’d knelt in the dirt, hiding from Bedouin enemies. A rip in the sleeve from my struggle against my captors, Safwan and our friend Nadida. Red flecks of pomegranate juice from yesterday’s meal. Streaks of gray from the giant rock Safwan and I had quietly rolled beneath the bedroom window of our neighbor Hamal, Mecca’s newest bridegroom.

My mother said, “You are filthy. You will not leave the house like that.”

“Please,
ummi,
I’m late!” I said, but she called for my sister.

“No child of mine is going anywhere looking like a wild animal,” she said. “Go change into clean clothes and meet Asma in the courtyard. She will need to tame that tangled mane of yours today, while I fetch water to wash the Queen of Sheba’s hair.”

She was talking about her sister-wife, Qutailah. My father’s
hatun,
the “Great Lady,” or first-wife, Qutailah assigned all the tasks in the
harim
. Tall, dark-skinned, and increasingly plump, Qutailah envied my mother’s fair skin and wild rays of red hair and feared her fiery temper, so she reminded her always who was first in the household by calling my mother
durra,
or “parrot,” the name for second-wife. And she assigned my
ummi
the jobs usually given to servants, such as lugging huge skins of water from Mecca’s well. It was a humiliating task, for the well of Zamzam was in the center of town and everyone could see my mother huffing home with the sloshing skins slung on a pole across her small shoulders. Facing this chore always put
ummi
in a bad mood. This wasn’t the time to argue with her.