Mother of the Believers Part 43

And then I saw the Prophet turn his gaze to Muawiya and for a second there was that strange and chilling flash of premonition in his black eyes. And then the Messenger smiled, and I was surprised to see a hint of sadness on his face.

"No. I have given the Quraysh victory."

40.

The next morning, Muhammad entered as a conqueror the holy city from which he had been expelled. Khalid ibn al-Waleed had led an advance guard to secure the city, but there was little resistance. The exhausted citizens of Mecca stayed inside their homes, quietly praying to their G.o.ds that the man whom they had persecuted would show them the graciousness that had escaped them when they held the reins of power. And their prayers would be answered, but not by the idols that they had fought and died for. The days of Allat, Uzza, and Manat were over, and Allah had emerged triumphant. The many had been defeated by the One.

My husband rode his favorite camel, Qaswa, back into the city that had been his home until he had questioned its ancient taboos and challenged its powerful elite. My father, Abu Bakr, rode at his side, followed by the ranks of the Muslim army, marching forward with dignity and discipline down the paved streets toward the Sanctuary.

I was on my own camel, riding in the covered howdah that been the source of so much trouble when I had been left behind in the desert. The Muslims had a policy now that they would not break camp until the Mothers had all been safely tucked away in their honored carriages and accounted for. Normal decorum required that I sit behind the heavy curtains of the howdah until the company had come to a halt, but the excitement of the day won out and no one objected when I peered through the woolen covers at the glorious sight of the Sanctuary, which I had not seen since I was a little girl.

The Kaaba was as I remembered it, the towering cubical temple covered in rich curtains of multicolored silks. The circular plaza around this holiest site of the Arab people was still littered with the three hundred and sixty idols that represented the different G.o.ds of the tribes, but this abomination would soon be at an end.

The Messenger rode ahead of us and circled the holy house seven times while proclaiming G.o.d's glory. He then stopped his camel and climbed down, approaching the Black Stone that was placed inside the eastern corner of the building. The Stone was said to have been lodged there by Abraham himself when our forefather had built the original temple with his son Ishmael. According to the Messenger, the Black Stone had fallen from heaven and was the only remnant of the celestial paradise from which Adam had been expelled.

The Messenger kissed the Stone of Heaven with reverence. And then he signaled to Ali, who strode forth with his mighty sword and began to slash away at the idols that had polluted the House of G.o.d from time immemorial. He tore down the ancient statues of the Daughters of Allah, followed by the grinning carved faces of the Syrian and Iraqi G.o.ds who had been imported into the Sanctuary when their images were no longer welcome in the Christian world. As the idols fell, a tremendous chorus of chants rose from the Muslim ranks, cries of Allahu akbar Allahu akbar and and La ilaha illallah La ilaha illallah. "G.o.d is great. There is no G.o.d but G.o.d." From this day forward the Arabs were no longer a disparate group of competing tribes, each with its own customs and beliefs. They were a single nation, united under one G.o.d.

And then, when the plaza was covered in rubble and the last of the idols had been smashed to dust, the Messenger of G.o.d opened the doors of the Kaaba and gestured toward us, his family and closest followers. My father and Ali came to his side, as did Umar, Uthman, Talha, and Zubayr. Fatima joined them, holding the hands of her little sons, Hasan and Husayn. And then Prophet looked at me and nodded. I hesitated, feeling my heart pounding with antic.i.p.ation, and then I led my sister-wives to the entrance of the Holy of Holies, where the Spirit of G.o.d dwelled for eternity.

The Messenger stepped inside and we climbed the stone steps, following him into the darkness. There were no torches inside the Kaaba and for a moment I was blind and lost. And then my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I could see the three marble pillars that held up the stone roof of the temple. And on the far wall towered a mighty carnelian statue of Hubal, the G.o.d of Mecca.

The Prophet stared at this icon for a long time, the symbol of everything that he had spent his entire life fighting against. And then he raised his staff and pointed it at the idol, and for a moment he looked very much like Moses confronting the hubris of Pharaoh. And then the Messenger of G.o.d recited a verse from the Holy Qur'an: Truth has come and falsehood has vanished. Verily falsehood always vanishes Truth has come and falsehood has vanished. Verily falsehood always vanishes.

I heard a rumble and I suddenly felt the ground beneath me shaking. And then as the tremors intensified, the majestic icon of Hubal shuddered and pitched forward on its face. The idol fell to the ground and shattered like a crystal vial thrown from a great height.

The ground became still and a deep silence fell over the Kaaba.

And then I heard the voice of Bilal, the Abyssinian slave who had been tortured in the Sanctuary so many years before. He was calling out the Azan, Azan, the call to prayer, summoning men to the Truth that could no longer be denied. the call to prayer, summoning men to the Truth that could no longer be denied.

There is no G.o.d but G.o.d, and Muhammad is the Messenger of G.o.d.

41.

The Messenger of G.o.d pitched his tent on the outskirts of the city, where each and every one of the residents of Mecca came to give him their pledge of loyalty. Abu Bakr sat at his right and Umar at his left hand, while Uthman stood to one side and gave to each of the new converts a gift of gold or jewels from the Bayt al-Mal, Bayt al-Mal, the Muslim treasury, a gesture of reconciliation and welcome to the new order. Ali stood behind the Prophet, the Muslim treasury, a gesture of reconciliation and welcome to the new order. Ali stood behind the Prophet, Dhul Fiqar Dhul Fiqar unsheathed and held aloft, a warning to any who might try to take vengeance on the man who had defeated the proud lords of Mecca. unsheathed and held aloft, a warning to any who might try to take vengeance on the man who had defeated the proud lords of Mecca.

It was not idle posturing, for the Messenger had recently survived an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt. During a visit to the conquered city of Khaybar, the Prophet had been welcomed by the Jewish chieftains who were eager to keep the peace after their humiliating defeat. But not everyone in the city shared their leaders' sentiments, and a woman of Khaybar had poisoned a feast of lamb that had been prepared for the Prophet by his hosts. The Messenger had tasted the meat and immediately sensed that something was wrong. He had spit out the poisoned morsel, but several of his Companions had been less fortunate and had died painfully at the table. The terrified Jewish leaders, fearing that their tribe would be annihilated in punishment, had found the cook and forced her to confess that she had acted alone. Ali had been prepared to execute her on the spot, but the Prophet had restrained his outraged cousin. My husband had asked the defiant Jewess why she had tried to kill him, and she had responded with her head held proudly that she was merely avenging the deaths of her kinsmen at Muhammad's hand. And to everyone's surprise, the Messenger had nodded with understanding and pardoned her.

As I looked at the faces of the defeated Meccans lining up before my husband, I did not see what I had glimpsed on that Jewish woman's angry face. I saw no fire of defiance, no hint of rebellion still in their hearts. They were humbled and weary, tired of fighting, tired of losing, tired of being on the wrong side of history. I felt a particular flash of satisfaction when I saw Suhayl, the pretentious envoy who had negotiated the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, bow his head before his new master. There was no insouciance in his voice, no flash of contempt in his dark eyes. Just eager grat.i.tude that the Messenger had chosen to show clemency to men like him who did not deserve it.

And there were moments of sincere reconciliation and joy. The Prophet's uncle Abbas, who had been his secret ally inside Mecca all these years, could finally embrace his nephew openly. And to my great joy, my estranged brother Abdal Kaaba, who had nearly killed his own father at the Battle of Uhud, rejoined our family. The Messenger embraced my brother and gave him a new name, Abdal Rahman. I had never seen my father so happy as on the day that his eldest son returned to his bosom, and it was as if years of pain fell off Abu Bakr's face and he was a young man again.

My half sister, Asma, also received a blessing when her elderly mother, Qutaila, came and finally embraced the faith that she had rejected years before. It was a tearful reunion, and I wondered how Asma had endured all those years cut off from the woman who had given her birth and then rejected her when she chose her father's religion over the ways of the ancients. I suddenly realized how lucky I really was to have had a loving family that remained intact despite all the hards.h.i.+ps we endured, and how brave my sister had been all these years when her heart had been weighed down with such unspoken sorrow.

And then a towering black man stepped forward and I felt my breathing stop. I recognized him immediately, for his visage had been burned into my heart since the disaster at Uhud. He was Wahsi, the Abyssinian slave who had killed the Messenger's uncle Hamza with a javelin.

I saw the Prophet stiffen as the hulking African knelt before him, his right hand held aloft. My eyes flew to Ali and I could see his green eyes burning with anger, and for a second I wondered if Dhul Fiqar Dhul Fiqar would slice Wahsi's head from his muscular shoulders. would slice Wahsi's head from his muscular shoulders.

The Messenger leaned forward.

"You are the one who killed Hamza, the son of Abdal Muttalib. Is that not so?" There was a hint of danger in my husband's voice, and I could see a line of sweat drip down the Abyssinian's broad face.

"Yes," he said softly, his head bowed in evident shame.

"Why did you do this thing?" my husband asked, his black eyes unreadable.

"To secure my freedom from slavery," the African said, his voice trembling.

The Prophet looked at him for a long time. And then he reached forward and took Wahsi's hand in acceptance of his baya'ah, baya'ah, his oath of loyalty. his oath of loyalty.

"We are all slaves to something," he said. "Wealth. Power. l.u.s.t. And the only freedom from the slavery of this world is to become a slave to G.o.d."

Tears welling in his eyes, Wahsi clasped the Messenger's hand. He recited the testimony of faith and the Prophet nodded, accepting the conversion of this man who had murdered his beloved uncle Hamza, his childhood friend and the only older brother he had ever known.

And then I saw my husband's eyes glisten with tears and he turned away from the African.

"Now let me not look upon you again," Muhammad said, his voice caught in his throat. Wahsi nodded sadly and departed, and I did not see him again for all the days that the Messenger lived.

AS THE SUN SET, the last of the Meccans stood before the Prophet, ready to accept members.h.i.+p in the Ummah. Ummah. Among them was an old woman, hunched over and covered in a black Among them was an old woman, hunched over and covered in a black abaya abaya. Her face was covered by a black veil, but there was something hauntingly familiar about her eyes.

Yellow green and piercing like daggers. The eyes of a snake that was poised to strike its prey.

I felt a wave of alarm rising in my heart, but before I could speak, she knelt before the Prophet and placed her long fingers in a bowl of water, and the Prophet dipped his own fingers in the bowl in formal acceptance of her allegiance.

"I testify that there is no G.o.d but G.o.d and that you, Muhammad, are the Messenger of G.o.d. And I pledge my allegiance to G.o.d and His Messenger."

The voice was hoa.r.s.e but unmistakable and I saw my husband's eyes narrow. His smile was gone and his face now rigid as stone.

"Remove your veil," he said in a powerful voice that sent a chill down my spine. There were murmurs of shock from some in the tent, as the Messenger was always respectful of the modesty of women and had never before asked anyone to remove her niqab niqab.

The old women hesitated, but Muhammad continued to stare at her without blinking. Ali stepped forward, his glittering sword raised menacingly.

"Fulfill your oath. Obey the Messenger," he said, and the tension in the air became unbearable.

And then the woman raised her hand and ripped off the veil, revealing the face of the Messenger's greatest enemy. Hind, the daughter of Utbah, the most vicious of his opponents, the cannibal who had eaten the liver of Hamza as the ultimate sign of her contempt for the believers.

I gasped when I looked upon her, for I barely recognized her. Her dangerous eyes were unchanged, but her once-beautiful face had been cruelly ravaged by time. The perfect alabaster skin had turned a sickly yellow and was scarred with deep lines. Her high cheekbones, which had highlighted the chiseled perfection of her features, were now skeletal crags. She looked like a corpse, and the only evidence of her living spirit was the steady rise and fall of her sagging throat as she breathed with some difficulty.

The Prophet looked at her with his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with anger.

"You are she who ate the flesh of my uncle," he said simply, no accusation in his voice, just a harsh statement of fact.

I saw the revulsion on the faces of the Companions, and I glanced at Umar, who had been her lover in the Days of Ignorance. The horror in his eyes at the sight of the decrepit woman he had once loved was palpable.

Hind ignored the stares, the cruel whispers, and kept her eyes on my husband.

"Yes," she said simply, acknowledging before the world the crime that easily merited her death.

My eyes fell on Ali and I saw Dhul Fiqar Dhul Fiqar glowing red. I would have dismissed the vision as an illusion created by the flickering torches, but I had seen enough to know that the sword burned with its own anger. glowing red. I would have dismissed the vision as an illusion created by the flickering torches, but I had seen enough to know that the sword burned with its own anger.

And then I realized that Hind was looking at the weapon as well and her ugly face curved into a truly terrifying smile.

"Do it. Kill me," she hissed defiantly, and yet I could hear what I thought sounded like a plea beneath the affectation of pride.

There was a hush of silence as the Prophet looked at his adversary, a trembling sack of bones who had once been the most beautiful and n.o.ble woman among the children of Ishmael. And I saw a sudden softening in his eyes that mirrored the change in my own heart, for in that moment I truly felt sorry for her.

"I forgive you," he said simply. And then he turned away from her and placed his attention on a mother who was standing behind her, a young woman carrying an infant in her arms.

Hind looked at him, confused. Her eyes went to Ali, who had lowered his sword, and then to Umar, who refused to meet her gaze. She stared at the other Companions and then at the men and women of Mecca around her, but all chose to ignore her. In that moment, I realized that Hind had been both pardoned and condemned. For she had gone from the most feared and hated enemy of Islam to a n.o.body, a woman who was irrelevant to the new order, who had no power or say in anything that happened in Arabia from that day forward. As she turned and hobbled away, I realized that my husband had given her the one punishment she could not endure. The curse of anonymity.

The defeated old woman skulked away and left the tent, her head bowed. I should have stayed inside by my husband's side, but something in my heart compelled me to step outside, to see for myself the final end of my greatest nightmare.

Hind was already past the guards who had been placed at the perimeter of the Messenger's tent when she suddenly stooped and turned. Her yellow-green eyes met mine and for a second I saw a hint of the pride and dignity that she had always carried. The old crone hobbled over to me and looked at me closely. My face was hidden behind my veil, but my golden eyes shone forth unmistakably.

"You are the daughter of Abu Bakr," she said, with an unnerving smile, the look of a cat as it plays with a mouse it has caught in its paws.

"Yes," I said, suddenly regretting my decision to come outside.

"I always liked you, little girl," Hind said in a raspy voice that still tinkled with seduction. "You remind me of myself."

I felt my face flush at her words and my pulse pounded in my temples.

"I seek refuge in Allah that I should ever be like you!"

Hind smiled broadly, revealing a row of cracked and blackened teeth.

"Even so, you are," she said with a laugh that lacked any joy. "There is a fire inside you that burns very bright. They can cover you with a hundred veils and it will still s.h.i.+ne through. But know this, my dear. The fire of a woman's heart is too hot for this world. Men will fly to it like moths. But when it burns their wings, they will snuff it out."

I felt the hair on my arm standing up and chills ran through me. I turned to leave, when Hind reached forward and took my arm in her bony grasp. I tried to pull free, but her fingers were like the jaws of a lion, crus.h.i.+ng down on my bones. And then she put something in my hand, something that sparkled under the evening stars that were slowly taking possession of the sky.

It was her golden armlet, the band of snakes intertwining until their jaws met to encase a glittering ruby.

I stared down at this strange and awful symbol of Hind's power, a totem that she was now pa.s.sing along to me as the sun of her life set into the horizon of history. It was a gift with terrifying implications, and one that I had no desire to accept.

But when I raised my head to protest, Hind was gone.

42.

It was my husband's distinct tragedy that soon after each victory he was given in his mission, G.o.d always exacted a terrible price from among his loved ones. Shortly after we returned to Medina and the city was alive with rejoicing at the final victory of Islam, the Messenger's infant son, Ibrahim, fell ill and began to waste away.

Despite the desperate prayers of the community and the efforts of those who were skilled in medicine, the poor boy deteriorated rapidly, his tiny form ravaged by the camp fever that few grown men could survive.

I watched through eyes reddened by tears as Muhammad stroked his dying son's curly hair in farewell. A steady flow of tears ran down his face, causing one of the men present, a Companion named Abdal Rahman ibn Awf, to raise his eyebrows in surprise.

"O Messenger of G.o.d, even you? Is it not forbidden?"

The Prophet spoke with some difficulty, his eyes never leaving the face of Ibrahim as the flow of life seeped out from the child.

"Tears are not forbidden," the Messenger said softly. "They are the promptings of tenderness and mercy, and he who does not show mercy will have none shown to him."

And then my husband leaned close to the little boy, who was looking up at him with dreamy eyes as his soul began to detach from this valley of sorrow.

"O Ibrahim, if it were not that the promise of reunion is a.s.sured, and that this is a path which all must tread, and that the last of us will overtake the first, truly we would grieve for you with even greater sorrow. But we are stricken indeed with sadness for you, Ibrahim. The eye weeps and the heart grieves, but we say nothing that would offend the Lord."

I felt my heart quiver in grief as Ibrahim smiled up at his father, his tiny hand wrapped around the Messenger's finger. I saw the little boy squeeze one last time and then his eyes closed, and Muhammad's son pa.s.sed away into eternity.

WHEN WE HAD WEPT all the tears we could, the Messenger covered Ibrahim's face with a sheet and stepped outside to address the agitated crowd. I looked up in the heavens and saw that the sky was dark, and realized that the sun was in eclipse and the stars were s.h.i.+ning in the middle of the day. all the tears we could, the Messenger covered Ibrahim's face with a sheet and stepped outside to address the agitated crowd. I looked up in the heavens and saw that the sky was dark, and realized that the sun was in eclipse and the stars were s.h.i.+ning in the middle of the day.

The Muslims were gazing up in wonder at the thin crescent where the sun had been only moments before, and I heard a man cry out.

"Behold! Even the heavens weep for the Prophet's son!"

I did not doubt that this was a sign from G.o.d for the poor, innocent child who would never have a chance to experience the joys of life and love in this world.

But even at this moment, when grief had overpowered us all, the Messenger remained true to his faith.

"No," he said loudly, his voice echoing through the streets of Medina. "The sun and the moon are signs of G.o.d. They are eclipsed for no man."

And with that Muhammad reminded us that he was no more than a man himself and that his own son was no more special than the hundreds of children who died every day in the cruelty of the desert, whose families were forced to grieve alone, without the loving support of an entire nation.

My husband turned away, his face looking very tired and old. I reached over and took his hand, and he held mine tightly, his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with grat.i.tude. And then we walked back inside and began the preparations for the funeral.