The Jewel Of Medina (9 page)

Sobbing, I turned away from Muhammad, the friend I’d hurt, and my
abi,
whom I’d betrayed, and ran—once again, into the formidable wall that was my mother.

She grabbed me by the shoulders and jerked me back, snapping my neck. Her eyes stabbed me with their murderous glare. I wanted to keep running but she held me tight, so I let my knees collapse, trying to sink to the floor—anything to escape my mother’s look of utter disgust.

“What are you doing?” she said in a hissing voice, shaking me and making my head loll. “Are you trying to ruin us?”

“By al-Lah, what is going on?” Umar’s gruff voice silenced all the murmurs in the room. “Is there going to be a marriage today, or not?”

“Do not scold her, Umar.” Muhammad spoke gently. “She is still young. Perhaps this ceremony is too much—” My hopes lifted at his words, but my father dashed them again.

“No!” At the sound of
abi’s
shout I turned to look at him. His eyes had lost their softness, and seemed to bulge from their sockets. He gestured toward my mother. “Umm Ruman, help your daughter.”

“What is done is done,
yaa
A’isha. You must go,” my mother said.

I shook so hard my bones would have clattered if not for the cushion of my skin. I looked wildly around me, at my
abi’s
panicked eyes. Fretting over his future. I looked at Muhammad—and, for a moment, his steady gaze calmed me. Would marriage to him be so awful? I’d be queen of Medina—one of them, at least. I would always be loved in Muhammad’s home. But—never allowed to charge through the desert, wild and free, or fight with a sword.

I might as well die now.

And with that thought, my legs collapsed, and I crumpled in a soggy, quivering heap to the floor, tucking my head under my arm like a sleeping bird to avoid the smirks and stares of the people in the room.

I heard my mother groan, and I sneaked a glance at her. She spread her hands in the air, looking up at the ceiling as if to say,
Must I do everything?

Then in a single, swift movement she snatched me up in her arms, and I was in the air, being carried like an infant against her breast. It was the first time in years I had been so close to her. As she strode across the floor I inhaled her spicy perfume and brushed my cheek against hers.
Ummi
. Before I could kiss her, though, she was dumping me into Muhammad’s lap. The onlookers cheered, and I cried even harder.

“See how she honors her mother with her tears,” I heard Qutailah say.

“Praise al-Lah for those tears,” Sawdah said. “A happy bride attracts the Evil Eye.”

Muhammad’s arms closed softly around me, and, though I wanted to shrug off his embrace, I didn’t. I tipped my streaming eyes toward my mother’s hard face, pleading, but she didn’t look at me. She brushed her palms together as if she’d gotten flour on her hands.

“May you have a long and prosperous life together,” she said. She turned and glared at my father, then stomped out of the room.

T
HE
S
CORPION’S
T
AIL

M
EDINA
, 623–625
T
EN TO TWELVE YEARS OLD

At least I’ll be free from this prison
. So I consoled myself on the day I married Muhammad. Although my body tensed at the thought of sharing his bed, my heart leapt to think of leaving my parents’ home at last. But then, at the door, he kissed the crown of my head and said “good-bye,” and I felt as though my heart were a little bird and a hand had closed around it and begun to squeeze.

“You cannot come with me, Little Red—not yet,” he said. “It would not be proper. You must remain with your parents until you grow up. But I will visit you every day.”

I watched through my tears as he mounted his camel, but before I could call out to him my mother had pulled me inside and slammed the door.

“I told you, this is the marriage, not the consummation,” she said.

“But I want to go with Muhammad. I’m tired of living in this cave.”

My mother
tsked.
“Go with Muhammad? And then what? Everyone would cluck their tongues and talk about poor A’isha, being taken so young by that cruel lecherous Muhammad.”

Qutailah, standing beside her, nodded. “The
umma
is already buzzing like a beehive over the Prophet’s marriage to a nine-year-old.”

“Why can’t I just move in with him, then?” I asked. “If everybody is already talking.”

“
Yaa
Umm Ruman,” Qutailah said, “you need to teach this child a few things.” She arched her eyebrows at my mother, then looked at me. “Men marry women for two reasons, A’isha. To give them pleasure in bed, and to bear their children. You cannot do either for the Prophet now, not until you begin your blood flow.” She wagged a finger. “Save your tears for that day.”

My mother cried out and pulled me to my bedroom, where she told me to forget Qutailah’s foolishness and get some sleep.

“Forget your silly notions about Safwan, also,” she said. “You are the wife of Muhammad now, for which you should be thankful, not crying.”

What mother ever truly knows her daughter? A stranger to my desires, my
ummi
could not begin to fathom my misery at being locked indoors or my longing for the mystery of womanhood to pin me with its red badge. For other girls, the marriage ceremony opened the doors of
purdah
and out they flew, transformed like butterflies by the wedding night. Only my blood—and my body—would win my emancipation.

I spent many hours swinging in the courtyard, searching over the rooftop for Muhammad now, the only one who could free me—even as I dreaded the price of that freedom. For nearly three years I arced toward womanhood, then swooped back to girlhood, wavering between daughter and wife, between yearning for my new life and dreading it. Inside, I bumped against the walls in my father’s dark home, hidden from view like the holiest idols in the Ka’ba, my breasts now as sacred as Mecca’s twin hills, my virginity a temple to be guarded against marauders and Hypocrites like the would-be king of Medina, Ibn Ubayy.

A man with a stout body and eyes like dark pebbles, Ibn Ubayy had been Medina’s leader before we arrived. Yet his hard swagger could never compete with Muhammad’s sweet smiles. His followers flocked to
islam
, discarding Ibn Ubayy as if he were a stale crust of bread. Jealous, he complained to anyone who would listen: Couldn’t people see how soft and weak Muhammad was?

Desperate to discredit Muhammad, Ibn Ubayy began to insult Sawdah and Fatima in public. Whenever they went to market, Ibn Ubayy or one
of his grunting friends would snuffle up and try to touch them.
How much for an hour in bed, habibati? I’d pay in gold for a feel of those glorious breasts
. Listening to these tales, I shuddered. How much to let a man sweat and grunt all over me like that? There weren’t enough
dinars
in all of Hijaz.

After our marriage, as promised, I saw Muhammad more than ever. Not only did he visit me every day, but now he spent hours with me in the courtyard, stick-sword fighting with me and playing dolls with me and my friends. My pulse had fluttered strangely in his presence at first and I shrank from his touch, fearing the marriage bed and his new power over me as my husband. But his laughter and kindnesses soon put me at ease.

I’d known Muhammad all my life. He’d held me in his arms just moments after I was born, blessing me with a special prayer as I’d flailed and rooted against his chest in search of a nipple, hungry from the start. He’d saved my life, my parents told me, by convincing my father to break the Meccan law. Too few boys were being born that year, so the Qurayshi leaders had decided that all newborn girls should be buried alive in the desert.
Are not girls also the creation of al-Lah?
Muhammad had said to my father, who wept with relief.

In Muhammad’s eyes, girls and women were more than just chattel for men to own and disown depending on their whims. They were valuable in God’s eyes, and in his own. As his wife, unlike so many other women, I would have a voice that my husband would listen to. I’d have Muhammad’s respect.

And,
ummi
said, I would also be revered by the Believers, whose number had grown since God’s first revelations to Muhammad ten years ago. One taste of al-Lah’s poetry, pouring like sweet rain from Muhammad’s lips, could transform the hardest of hearts. Even Umar, sent by Abu Sufyan to assassinate Muhammad in Mecca, had left the Prophet’s house a Believer, changed by his recitations. I had heard many such stories, told to me by my mother in breathy, awestruck tones.

Now, away from the clutches of Quraysh, our
umma
stood to become a powerful force in Hijaz, and those closest to Muhammad would gain the most.

“You will hold the highest status among women in Medina—and, someday, in all of Hijaz,” my mother said, her gaze as misty as if she longed to wed Muhammad herself.

When my menarche began, I would move to Muhammad’s home to become his wife “in every way,” my mother said, making me gasp as if a great weight lay on top of me.
What prestige you will enjoy as the daughter of Abu Bakr!
she added. And with the lumpish, motherly Sawdah as my only sister-wife, I would hold Muhammad’s heart in my hand.

“Sawdah is no
hatun,
but only a housekeeper for him,” my mother said. “Earn her trust, and she will give the position to you. Because of your age, you may have to fight to keep it if he marries again—unless you bear his heir. Then you will rule the
harim
, if that is your desire.”

I clenched my jaw, holding in my bitter words. Being the
hatun
was more than a desire for me now. After watching my mother scrub Qutailah’s clothes, struggle to carry Qutailah’s water, and endure Qutailah’s snide insults, I’d made it my goal to become Muhammad’s first-wife. Then, one day, that goal became a burning necessity.

“Trim a fingertip’s length off my hair,” Qutailah ordered my mother that hot afternoon.

“I am not experienced at hair-trimming,” my mother said. “You will do best to ask Barirah.” A new servant from Abyssinia, Barirah had astonished us all with her skills as a hair stylist.

“I sent Barirah to the market more than one hour ago. She has not returned,” Qutailah said, handing my mother the scissors.

Her mouth set grimly,
ummi
began to trim the ends of Qutailah’s hair. But, unlike Barirah, she didn’t cut in a straight, even line. The edge she made zigged slightly upward to the center of Qutailah’s back, then downward again. I felt my chest swell with dread as I watched her work, her eyes narrowed in concentration, her skin beginning to flush as she realized how badly her “trim” was turning out.

“By al-Lah, are you planning to spend all day on this?” Qutailah snapped.

“Your hair is drying so quickly, it is difficult for me to cut it evenly,”
ummi
said. “Let me cut a little more.”

Qutailah
hmphed.
“I should have known better than to entrust a woman with six thumbs to perform even this simple task.”

In truth, she should have known better. Hadn’t
ummi
warned her? When Qutailah looked down and saw all that hair spread like a carpet around her, she leapt to her feet and grabbed my mother by the shoulders.

“You idiot!” she screamed. “Look what you have done to me!” She raised her hand high above her head and brought it down on my mother’s face.

The sight of
ummi’s
tears, as rare as rain, and the flurry of her hands to cradle her burning cheek made my blood turn cold. A gleam of metal in the blazing sun caught my lowering glance as the scissors fell from my mother’s hand. I pounced on them, then pointed them at Qutailah. The fear in her eyes made me laugh, which caught my mother’s attention.

“A’isha, no!”
ummi
cried. “Drop those scissors at once.”

“Don’t ever touch my mother again,” I snarled, advancing on Qutailah. “If you do, I’ll cut you to pieces.” Her eyes grew as large as bowls.

But before I could get any closer to her my mother reached out and snatched the scissors from my hand. “Go to your room,” she said. “And wait for me there.”

I waited for what seemed like an hour, walking circles and fuming over that slap. How viciously Qutailah treated my mother, as if
ummi
were no better than a dog! And how doglike my mother had responded, whimpering and holding her paw to her face.

I would never, ever live the way my mother did. If Sawdah tried to order me around in Muhammad’s
harim,
I’d show her with one sharp sentence who was quicker of tongue. If she hit me, I’d either kill her or make her wish for death. I was A’isha bint Abi Bakr, beloved of the Prophet of al-Lah, slave to no one.

When my mother finally came to my room, her mouth trembled and her face was colorless except for the red welt on her cheek.

“I was defending you,” I said to her. Her laughter mocked me. She lifted her hand and slapped my face so hard my ears rang. I crouched over to comfort myself and also to hide from her, but when I glanced up she was crying softly.