Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam

by Kamran Pasha

  We passed by the rainbow maze of jewelry stands, cooing at the wonderful items and giggling like little girls, until we reached a table manned by a Jew from the Bani Qaynuqa. They were goldsmiths and master craftsmen, and it was rumored that their unique designs were sought by customers as far north as Babylon.

  My eyes fell on a remarkable bracelet made of pressed gold and engraved with lifelike images of doves in flight, emeralds studding their outstretched wings.

  I tried it on under the watchful gaze of the old vendor, admiring how beautiful it looked against my skin. It fit my tiny wrist perfectly, as if it had been made for me.

  “It looks wonderful on you,” Huda said excitedly. “You should buy it.”

  I felt a pang of longing, but I knew it was impossible. I took off the bracelet and returned it to the shop owner.

  “I don’t have enough money.”

  Huda looked at me as if I were insane.

  “But your husband is the Messenger of God! Surely he must be the richest man in all Medina. Doesn’t he take one fifth of all the booty from the raids on the Meccans?”

  This was the normal Arab custom. The tribal chief was allotted one-fifth of any booty secured by a raid or a military operation. With the Muslims adopting a policy of economic siege against Mecca, my husband was in a position to secure tremendous wealth from the successful capture of caravans. Huda was right. I should have been the wealthiest woman in the oasis.

  “He gives it all away to the poor,” I said in explanation. “The People of the Bench.”

  The People of the Bench were a group of Medinese beggars who regularly sat near a stone bench that stood in a corner of the Masjid courtyard. Anyone who came there was entitled to a share of food and whatever booty was to be redistributed by the Messenger. His daughter Fatima sometimes spent hours standing in the sun and attending to the long lines that gathered there every morning after Fajr prayers. I usually saw the same people, some of them able-bodied men who should have been working instead of begging, and had grumbled to the Messenger that they were lazy scamps who took advantage of his generosity. But he had simply smiled and said that even such men serve a purpose. When I looked at him doubtfully, he explained. “They teach us to give without any expectations. That is true compassion.”

  I had shaken my head in disbelief, even as Huda shook her head now to learn that the Messenger was as poor as he’d been the day he arrived from Mecca, despite the massive wealth that passed through his hands every day.

  “The prophets of the Jews were rich,” she said. “Why does the Prophet of the Arabs have to be poor?”

  I laughed.

  “Maybe the Jews get a better deal because they are Chosen.” It was a stupid comment by a girl too young to know that words have power. We laughed at my minor witticism and continued looking around the jewelry stands.

  But as we moved away from the table of the Jewish goldsmith, our words lingered. A young man named Yacub, the hotheaded nephew of the old merchant, heard us and was angered. He must have recognized me as the Mother of the Believers and added my comment to the litany of offenses that the Jews of Medina attributed to my husband. The Messenger’s unification of the oasis and his successful military expeditions had raised their fears that he would soon turn against them.

  If I have learned anything in my life, dear Abdallah, it is that fear is the worst enemy of a man’s soul. For whatever it is that we fear comes rushing to us like an arrow across the fields of time.

  As we stepped away from the table and turned our attention elsewhere, Yacub took a gold brooch from the stand and in one swift movement pinned Huda’s flowing skirt to a wooden post as she passed by. When Huda crossed over to a nearby stall, the thin fabric tore open and her skirt fell to her ankles, exposing her womanhood to the gathered crowd of shoppers.

  I heard the sharp rip and then Huda’s horrified scream. I whirled to see the poor girl desperately trying to cover her privates, tears falling from her face as men in the marketplace whooped and jeered.

  Acting faster than I could think, I ripped the scarf off my head and tied it around my weeping friend’s waist. I suddenly saw that everyone’s attention had left Huda and all eyes were on me. My scarlet hair glistened in the sun and I felt a flush of horror that strangers were now gazing lustfully at my exposed locks. It was a shameful violation of a woman’s honor, but not as shameful as what Huda was enduring. I lifted my head with dignity and met the men’s probing gazes with my own defiant eyes.

  “Stare at us all you wish, you fools! The sin is on you!”

  My words shamed them, and the men quickly looked away. I reached down to pick up the pieces of Huda’s skirts and saw the gold pin that was responsible for her embarrassment.

  I looked up to see Yacub staring at me with anger.

  “I guess it’s our turn to laugh, you little wench.”

  A shadow fell over us and I saw a young Muslim man named Muzaffar standing there. He did not look at me, but I saw that he held out a cloak in his right hand. I quickly took it from him and covered my hair again.

  Muzaffar challenged the Jewish prankster, his face red with rage.

  “How dare you speak to her that way! She is the Mother of the Believers!”

  Yacub laughed with exaggerated bravado. He could see other young men of his tribe watching his confrontation with the Muslim and he was now trapped in a deadly contest of virility.

  “You Arabs call your children your mothers.” He sneered. “No wonder you can’t tell your head from your asses! Although as mothers’ asses go, she certainly has a nice one. Maybe next time we’ll see hers, not just her friend’s.”

  Faster than my eye could follow, Muzaffar pulled out a small knife and slit Yacub’s throat with the practiced skill of a butcher. The boy fell forward, his face frozen in a deadly grin. The blood from his gaping neck wound poured out over the beautiful golden jewelry that his uncle had spent many months crafting with such great love.

  I screamed in horror, but my voice was drowned out by the shout of Jewish men rushing to avenge their fallen comrade. They threw Muzaffar to the ground and beat and kicked him until I heard the sickening crunch of his skull shattering.

  The marketplace devolved into chaos as Muslims and Jews attacked one another with righteous indignation. As I fled with Huda to safety, my heart tightened at the knowledge that a terrible new day was upon us.

  The first blood between the sons of Isaac and Ishmael had been spilled. And I had a dark vision in my mind’s eye that the trickle of death would soon become a flood.

  13

  The peace of Medina had been shattered from within, and retribution was swift. An army of a thousand men surrounded the walled district to the southwest that housed the Jewish tribe.

  In the days following the marketplace brawl, the Messenger had sent Ali to negotiate blood payment to resolve the tensions between the Muslims and Jews. Each side had lost a man in the scuffle, and according to the terms of the treaty, the matter had to be submitted to Muhammad for arbitration. But the Jews of Bani Qaynuqa turned back Ali, saying they considered the alliance void after the murder of one of their men by a Muslim.

  Tensions had risen as the Jews barricaded themselves inside their walls, and there were rumors that that the chiefs of Qaynuqa were sending urgent messages to Abdallah ibn Ubayy, the treacherous leader of the Khazraj. The Jews allegedly promised that they could marshal seven hundred men to their defense. If the Khazraj matched them, then perhaps together they could wrest the oasis from the sorcerer.

  But if such an offer was indeed made, Ibn Ubayy declined it. Though we had heard talk that he had been happy to incite the Jews to do his dirty work in antagonizing Muhammad, Ibn Ubayy was not the kind of man who would be willing to risk his own life to settle their scores.

  And so the day had come when the Bani Qaynuqa were friendless and alone. The Messenger considered their renunciation of his treaty an act of war and had besieged the settlement. The Muslims had cut off the roads leading t
o their sister Jewish tribes, the Bani Nadir and the Bani Qurayza, and the fortress had no independent wells. Soon the Bani Qaynuqa would run out of water, and they would have to fight or surrender.

  I watched as the Prophet strode among the Muslim soldiers who surrounded the gates of the Jewish fortress. He was dressed in glittering mail made of concentric steel rings, and his helmet covered most of his face. His black eyes glistened from behind his steel visor.

  A battering ram had been devised to tear down the heavy wooden doors that protected the Qaynuqa. It was a long pole made of a series of thick palm trunks tied together and reinforced with steel plates. Thirty of the strongest Muslims would join forces to pummel the gates until they fell and the fortress was overrun. The soldiers had been ordered to kill any man who was armed but to spare the women and the children.

  As war drums resounded, announcing to the Bani Qaynuqa their approaching end, I saw a man who was dressed in flowing scarlet robes approach the Messenger. It was Ibn Ubayy come to bargain on behalf of the Jews, whom he would not defend with arms.

  He pushed past Umar and Hamza, who scowled at his presence, and walked up to the Prophet, addressing him from behind as he surveyed his men.

  “O Muhammad, treat my allies well.”

  The Messenger glanced at Ibn Ubayy briefly and then continued on his tour of the company, his presence inspiring courage among the warriors.

  But Ibn Ubayy was persistent. He followed the Prophet and shouted for all to hear.

  “Muhammad! Have mercy on my allies!”

  The Messenger pretended not to hear him, even though his cries could have woken the dead in Jannat al-Baqi, the graveyard outside Medina.

  Frustrated, Ibn Ubayy came up behind the Messenger and grabbed him by the collar of his mail shirt.

  “Listen to me!”

  Instantly a dozen swords were drawn and held to Ibn Ubayy’s neck. And yet he held on firmly. The Prophet turned to face him and a silence so great fell over the field that all I could hear was my pounding heart.

  “Let go.” There was more danger in those two words than any lengthy tirade could have held.

  And yet Ibn Ubayy, for all his flaws, could not be called a coward. Feeling the prick of blades against the skin of his neck and back, he nonetheless refused to release the Prophet’s armor.

  “By God I will not, until you promise to treat them well,” he said, and I saw in his face what appeared to be real pain. “The Bani Qaynuqa have four hundred men without mail and three hundred armored. Not much of an army, but in all the years before you came to Medina, those men were my sole protection from my enemies. This Arab lives because those Jews saved him.”

  He paused and his eyes glistened with grief. If he was performing, he was an astounding actor.

  “Seven hundred men who kept me alive before you brought peace to this oasis,” he said, his voice choking. “Will you cut them down in one morning?”

  The Messenger looked at him. I could not see his face through the visor of the helmet, but I saw the tension in his shoulders fall as ibn Ubayy’s plea touched his heart.

  When he spoke, his voice was firm but compassionate.

  “I give you their lives,” was all he said.

  Ibn Ubayy’s hand fell and the Messenger walked away. He stood for a while staring after the man who had stolen his crown, who ruled Medina while he watched from the sidelines. I do not know what he was thinking, but he looked shaken and confused. Finally, he turned toward the gates of the fortress and went to deliver the good news to his erstwhile allies.

  14

  Safiya stood by the desert road, watching her kinsmen from the tribe of Bani Qaynuqa abandon their homes and leave the city forever. They loaded their carpets and small furnishings on the back of hundreds of camels and donkeys, along with whatever household items they could carry—utensils, scrolls, small pots and pans. Heavy bundles contained food for the trek through the wilderness, including stores of dates, olives, and dried meats. Her eyes caught the eye of a young boy sitting on a mule, crying that he wanted to stay, but his mother shushed him and told him to always look forward, never back.

  It was happening again, Safiya thought bitterly, just as her father had feared. The world was always changing, but one thing remained the same—Jews were being expelled from their homes. She felt a flash of anger at Muhammad, and she wanted to embrace it and fan its fire until it consumed her heart. But she couldn’t silence the small voice within her that said her people were not blameless in this matter. Had they listened to wiser voices like her own, they would have welcomed the Muslims and become their allies in bringing peace and prosperity to Arabia. But their own fears, the centuries of loss and betrayal, had conditioned them to resist change. They had sought to undermine the new order and inevitably brought upon themselves its wrath.

  Tears in her eyes, she turned to the elderly rabbi Husayn ibn Sallam, himself a member of the Qaynuqa, but one who had been granted express permission to remain because of his cordial relationship with Muhammad.

  “What will happen to them?” she asked softly.

  Ibn Sallam wiped his nose on his sleeve. His eyes were red but dry, and she guessed that he had no more tears left to shed.

  “They will go north to Syria,” he said quietly. “Our people still have a few settlements that survive under Byzantine rule. They will find refuge there.”

  “But you will stay.” It was not a question, and there was no hint of reproach in her voice, but the rabbi flinched as if he had been struck.

  “I have to.”

  She had not expected this as a response.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Ibn Sallam sighed heavily.

  “The sands of time are shifting, but I fear that our people do not see it,” he said as if he had read her thoughts. “The Bani Qaynuqa let their pride blind them to the new reality. I will stay and counsel the Bani Nadir and the Bani Qurayza to flow with the stream of history, not against it.”

  Safiya watched the lengthy train of her brethren pass outside the hills of Mecca toward an unknown destiny in the north.

  “Do you really think our people would risk further confrontation with Muhammad?” she asked wearily. She could not bear to witness this exodus again. “Why would they be so foolish?”

  The rabbi smiled sadly.

  “Our people take great pride in the fall of Masada,” he said, referring to the fortress where Jewish zealots had killed themselves and their families rather than surrender to Roman hordes. “I fear that our hearts secretly long to relive it. To die in glorious sacrifice against an invincible foe.”

  Ibn Sallam turned his eyes away from the heart wrenching sight of his tribe vanishing forever into the sands of time.

  “May God protect us from the folly of our own dreams.”

  And with that, he walked away, head bowed. Safiya could hear the mournful tune of an old Hebrew prayer on his lips, one commemorating the tragic destruction of the Temple on Tisha b’Au.

  Safiya watched as the last of the camels left the precincts of the city, taking a proud people away from everything they knew. She gazed at the yellow walls of the fortress that had housed the Bani Qaynuqa for hundreds of years. Safiya knew that by nightfall the abandoned quarter would be looted, and the empty houses would soon be occupied by Muslim families. Within a few months every trace of the ancient Jewish tribe would be lost and forgotten.

  She walked back home slowly, wondering how long it would be before she, too, would be forced to look forward, even when her heart cried like a child to go back, to cling to a past that was no more tangible than a mirage.

  Her mother had said before she died that home is where the heart is. Safiya’s heart had been made from the dust of Medina, and it deserved to return to the dust from which it had been born.

  Safiya made a silent prayer to God, Elohim, Allah, Deus, or whatever it was He preferred to be called:

  Even if you wish to take me away from this city, let it be that one day I will return.
However the winds of history may blow, let them guide the ship of my destiny home. Lord of the Worlds, King of the Heavens, let me die where I have lived. Amen.

  15

  While the Muslims and Jews came close to war in Medina, the Meccan army was regrouping under the watchful eyes of Hind. History follows the deeds of men, but often ignores the women who influenced momentous events, for good or for ill. It is time for me, Abdallah, to reveal more about the queen of Mecca. Many know her terrible crimes, but few understand the woman who perpetrated them. It is not easy to descend into such dark depths. But I have seen a shameful hint of that darkness within myself, so perhaps it is only fitting that I do so for Hind.

  Ever since their defeat at Badr, Hind had encouraged the Meccan soldiers to conduct regular drills to sharpen their skills. A second defeat was unthinkable, and Hind had promised that any man who sulked back home bearing the flag of loss would be torn to shreds by the women of city before he entered its holy precincts.

  Not that she considered Mecca holy. Hind had long ago given up believing in any divine force, plural or singular. The last time she had prayed was when she was six years old. Her mother was dying of a terrible wasting disease, and Hind had watched in grief as her beautiful face had collapsed in on itself until all that was left was a skull barely covered by flesh. The night her father, Utbah, had told her that her mother was leaving them, she had run to the Kaaba. Having stolen the sacred key from her father’s den, she had broken the ancient taboo and had climbed inside, falling prostrate before the crimson idol of Hubal. The little girl had stayed in that position until sunrise, her forehead pressed against the cold marble floor of the House. During that time, Hind had prayed to every god whose icon stood in the sanctuary, begging the deity to spare her mother. She had cried out to the daughters of God—Allat, Uzza, and Manat. The Phoenician goddess Astarte. Nergal, the angry god of war. The sun god Shams. Abgal, the lord of camel drivers. Munaf, the goddess of fertility. Aglibol, the Palmyran god of the crescent moon. The snake god Wadd. Qawm, the Nabatean protector of caravans. Even Isaf and Naila, the lovers who had defiled the Kaaba with their unbridled lust.