The Jewel Of Medina (50 page)

“I choose you,” I said.

He lowered his mouth to mine, and we drank each other deeply as if our love were the rain we’d been praying for these past years. I pressed my head to his heart, hearing it beat for me, feeling my pulse keep time with the murmurs and sighs that were his own love’s song.

“A’isha,” he murmured. “My beloved.”

He kissed me one last, lingering time. It was a kiss that promised many more in the days and years to come. Then, too soon, he untangled himself from my arms and reached for his turban.

“Don’t go yet,
habibi
,” I begged. “Tarry with me awhile.”

His eyes brimmed with love. “I will return,” he said. “Very soon.”

I felt a stab of jealousy until I realized that his smile was a grim one. I knew he didn’t want to leave me but that he had a duty to perform. I remembered my sister-wives’ tears as they’d nursed me and fretted over their futures, and fear for them sprang me to my feet to stop him.

“Muhammad, wait!” I said. He turned to me, and I clasped his hands. “Are you going to divorce your other wives?”

The vein on his forehead darkened. “That is what you desire, is it not?”

I lowered my gaze, ashamed of the person he thought I was. “At one time, it might have been. But not now. My sister-wives—they’re all so frightened.” I told him what I’d heard as they’d nursed me, how their lives would be as dust if he cast them aside. “They need you, Muhammad.” I swallowed my own fear and met his gaze. “Even more than I do.”

The vein on his brow disappeared in the tracks of his broad smile. “My A’isha,” he said. “A woman at last.” His words spread a warm glow from my heart to my fingertips, and I pulled myself a little taller.

He turned to leave again, but I halted him with a touch.

“Please don’t tell my sister-wives what I’ve said about them. They spoke privately, among women, and they may not want you to know their fears.”

His nod was curt. “On the other hand,” he said, “they may be pleased
to hear how you spoke on their behalf. And this is one pleasure I would not want to withhold from them.”

I waited for an hour, pacing more trenches in my floor. When Muhammad returned to me, would he bring good news or bad? Some said it would save the
umma
if he divorced us all, that it would stop the speculation that he was weak where women were concerned. Others said it would destroy
islam
by breaking the ties Muhammad had built with his marriages. As for me, I knew only that losing Muhammad would destroy my sister-wives.

The knock on my door made me jump. I raced to answer it—my heart throwing itself against my chest. In the doorway stood Muhammad, his face grave—and, clustered behind him, all the women of the
harim
, their eyes spilling tears. Sorrow covered me like dirt over a grave, and I cried out, knowing they were lost.

Zaynab stepped forward, her plump arms outstretched, her gold eyes flashing. “We have heard how you pled for us to our husband,” she said. “Now—” a sob caught in her throat, snagging her words, “—we have come to thank you, and to make you our
hatun
.”

I opened my mouth, but, in my astonishment, no words would come. Then, in one motion, my sister-wives joined Zaynab in stretching out their arms to me, then folding themselves in a deep bow. Muhammad stood in their center, his wild hair flying, his smile leaping like light from his face before he whisked off his turban and bowed nearly all the way to the ground.

T
EN
T
HOUSAND
F
IRES

M
EDINA, THEN
M
ECCA
, F
EBRUARY
630
S
EVENTEEN YEARS OLD

Each day was an unfinished thought. Night was a secret bursting to be told. People spoke in hushed tones. Questions marked all our faces.

Our invasion of Mecca was close at hand, and as eagerly anticipated as the next rains.
Why does the Prophet delay?
my sister-wives would ask me. I’d shrug, pretending I knew nothing. In truth, Muhammad had kept our departure date a secret even from me. He planned to surprise the Meccans with our army. Yet I could guess why we tarried, for I saw the answer in Muhammad’s eyes when he laid his hand on Maryam’s swollen belly. He was waiting—we all waited—for a child.

I wasn’t jealous. I had nothing to fear now from this child or from my sister-wives. Since they’d made me the
hatun,
no one could take my status away, not even the mother of Muhammad’s heir. Nor should anyone want to, for I governed the
harim
fairly, forgoing the revenge I’d vowed against Zaynab, whom I hated no more. My sister-wives had honored me. Would I treat them dishonorably in return?

In truth, I admired Zaynab for giving up the position. She’d resisted at first, Hafsa said, but then, after meditating and praying, agreed—and
convinced Umm Salama to support the change.
It is a small gesture, compared to the effort A’isha has made on our behalf,
Zaynab had said.

We were no longer enemies, but my troubles were far from over. Now that I was the
hatun
, Ali criticized me more than ever, commenting on the chaos in the cooking tent as if it were new, spitting out the food I cooked and claiming it tasted like poison, and following me to the market like a persistent shadow in hopes of catching me in some sin that would degrade me and my father in Muhammad’s eyes.

Muhammad took little notice of Ali. His only thoughts were for the baby. “He’s patient, like his father,” I teased Muhammad, who fretted constantly about the lateness of the birth.

“Babies have been being born since Eve had her first young one,” Sawdah told him. “It will come in al-Lah’s time, not ours.”

Time stretched thin and quivering, ready with a birth of its own. A group of horses escaped from their pens and galloped into the mosque, where they injured a praying man with their flailing hooves. Meanwhile, Maryam, unconcerned with our impending invasion, sang and laughed as though each day were the first of spring. I and Sawdah walked every morning to her home, fretting over another battle with Quraysh and worrying over our loved ones in Mecca until the whitewashed bricks of Maryam’s house came into sight. Like everyone else in the
harim
, I’d been glad to see her exiled to the country, but now I envied her. Here she tended her own flower garden; through her window she could view the craggy orange-black cliffs ringing Medina. Here she could rest her mind, away from the demands of the burgeoning
umma
.

Every day in Medina brought more mouths to feed. Muhammad’s influence was spreading like sunlight across a land darkened by ignorance. Converts to
islam
poured into Medina, few of them with knowledge of farming. These new
umma
members suffered as we had at first, from the Medina fever and, most of all, from empty purses.

As Muhammad’s
hatun
, I was supposed to provide their first meal. Under my direction, barley simmered constantly, and servants presented bowls of it to as many as fifty people a day. We wives ground the meal, hauled water, made bread and milked goats as we wore the new veils Umm Salama had fashioned to free our hands.

The tributes to Muhammad from foreign leaders had dwindled, for
there were only so many kings in our world. Muhammad sent Zayd and a few others to invite the Byzantine emperor to accept
islam
, but they were mocked and jeered out of Constantinople. Then, in the desert, tragedy struck. The emperor’s warriors pursued our men and killed them all. Zayd’s death haunted the
umma
, causing even Zaynab to cry copious tears. Umm Ayman carried her grief like a flag, stumbling glassy-eyed through the streets and shrieking Zayd’s name as though a
djinni
tormented her.

Muhammad held his own sorrow close, as he always had, retreating to his apartment for several days and emerging to utter a hoarse prayer over his body. Then he disappeared into the
majlis
with his Companions for long meetings.

On his visits to me Muhammad spoke not only of Zayd, but also of the Byzantine emperor’s rejection. We couldn’t count on help from that wealthy empire. The drought that had plagued us since before the Battle of the Trench persisted still. Our allies would have to pay a tax to Medina, or we’d starve to death.

“Yet there are many, like the emperor, who think us insignificant,” Muhammad said. “Few will agree to pay a single
dirham
until we prove our strength by ruling Quraysh.” Seizing Mecca was crucial to our survival.

For our visits to Maryam’s home, I and Sawdah carried my replenished medicine bag and Sawdah’s incenses and charms. I went reluctantly, at first, out of duty to Muhammad. But soon Maryam’s home became our oasis within the oasis. She and her eunuch, Akiiki, welcomed us into her house filled with green plants and plush red and gold carpets, with blue and purple and yellow and green cushions strewn about like flower petals. A tapestry on the wall depicted a haloed Virgin Mary on an ass, her belly plump with her child under a star bursting forth from the heavens. A window looked out over pastures where ewes and lambs grazed and frolicked, luring me out to play. But I had more important tasks to attend: The massaging of Maryam’s hands and feet, which suffered from poor circulation, and of her belly, where Muhammad’s child seemed intent on kicking its way out.

Not once did I hear Maryam complain: Not when the child bulged against her skin, making it shiny and taut. Not when it weighted her steps to make moving about a chore. She’d hold Akiiki’s arm when she walked, laughing.

“My baby’s house is growing nearly as large as his mother’s,” she would say. “He will have to come out soon, though, for my body has no windows.”

Going home was the most difficult part of each day. We’d say our farewells with light hearts, then stroll arm-in-arm through the fertile gardens and rolling meadows until the city enveloped us again in stink and gloom. Our covered faces marked us as Muhammad’s wives even to strangers, and we inevitably found ourselves dodging those questions—
Why does he delay? When do we go?
—and averting our gazes from anxious eyes.

One evening, as we took our last breath of sweet air and pulled our wrappers tight for the descent into Medina, we heard shouts from behind. Akiiki, looking like an animated stick, ran toward us with waving arms. He spoke no Arabic, but his expressive gestures were easy to understand. As he spread his hands over an imaginary bloated belly and thrust them downward, we knew the child was coming. Sawdah waddled back to Maryam’s house with the eunuch while I fled into town to fetch Umm Hanifi, the midwife.

I found the old woman attending a labor in the tent city, her hands coaxing a slippery babe from between a woman’s legs as if she were pulling a plant, roots and all, from the soil. At the sight of me children and old men patted my robe, searching for the barley and dates I usually brought. I promised them food tomorrow, but they would not leave me, and in their hunger I thought they might devour me, instead.

“
Yaa
Umm Hanifi, the Prophet’s child is coming soon,” I shouted to her over the fray. “Sawdah sent me to fetch you to Maryam’s house. Her labor pains are coming hard and fast.”

She nodded as if I’d announced the time of day and pulled a long knife out of the sheath on her belt.

“Sawdah knows what to do,” she said as she sliced the cord holding the child to its mother. “Look for me on my donkey when I have bathed and rested.”

Back at the house I found Maryam sweating and gasping on her bed with Muhammad holding one hand and Akiiki holding the other. Sawdah handed Muhammad a palm-frond fan, and he waved it over Maryam’s hot face.

“You had better start the fumigation,
yaa
A’isha,” Sawdah said. “Umm Hanifi will move at her own pace, but we can get things started.”

Maryam moaned. I lay my hand on her stomach and uttered a silent prayer to al-Lah for her comfort.
Forgive me, also, for my envy over this child
, I asked.
Please do not let it harm the baby or its mother
. As though in response, I felt a ripple like water flowing over a sharp rock.