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

by Kamran Pasha

  I did not look back. Had I done so, I would have seen the woman in black bow her head in shame before removing her veil.

  And I would have recognized the cold, statuesque beauty of a girl I had seen on a handful of occasions when the Messenger had met formally with the chieftains of the Jews.

  A girl named Safiya, who had just betrayed her own people.

  3

  I tore through the palm grove, blinking wildly as the wind blew grains of dust into my golden eyes. The sun had set and a blanket of darkness was rapidly descending on the grove. I managed to clamber up the path and suddenly I could see the ominous walls of the Bani Nadir blocking my path.

  I was relieved to hear the gentle tones of my husband’s voice in prayer. He was reciting a sura of the Qur’an that had recently been revealed, a beautiful poetic verse meant to ward off evil.

  Say: I seek protection from the Lord of Daybreak,

  From the evil of that He has created

  And the evil of darkness when it falls

  And the evil of witches who cast spells

  And the evil of the jealous when he envies.

  My eyes adjusted to the fading light and I saw the Messenger leading the Maghrib prayers at the base of one of the towers of the wall. I breathed a sigh of relief that he was safe. Suddenly I felt very stupid. I had no idea who the veiled woman was, and yet I had taken her ramblings as truth. Feeling my cheeks flush in embarrassment, I turned to go home.

  And then I heard something. A sound coming from above. I looked up and my falcon’s eyes fell upon the old turret high above the ground and I saw the distinct outline of figures pushing hard against the old stone from above.

  A tiny cascade of pebbles streamed down the side of the tower and then I understood. My eyes went wide with horror and I ran across the path, hurtling toward the Prophet like a crimson arrow.

  “No! It’s a trap!”

  And then I crashed against my husband with such force that I knocked him aside in the midst of his prayers. The Prophet fell backward and his followers immediately stopped the ritual and leaped to his defense.

  And then with a mighty roar, an avalanche of stone blocks larger than my head came tumbling down the side of the tower as the turret crumbled and collapsed. The heavy boulders crashed right where the Messenger had been standing and would have buried him in their deadly cascade had God not used me to push him out of the way.

  I heard a tumult of cries as the Companions grabbed the Messenger and pulled him back from the wall into the safety of the garden. They took refuge under a thick palm tree and formed a protective circle around him. The men had come unarmed to the feast, but I saw such frenzy in their eyes that I knew they would fight any attackers, using their fingers and teeth if need be.

  I looked down at my husband, who appeared to be in shock. And then I saw the familiar tremor racing through his bones and I knew that he was having a Revelation. And then he went still and his eyes opened.

  He looked at me in surprise, and then at his followers, and finally at the pile of sharp rocks that covered the space he had occupied only moments before. He blinked rapidly as his sense of self returned.

  “Gabriel appeared to me as I prayed and said my life was in danger…but God would protect me…”

  He ran a hand across my face, which was smeared with dirt.

  “Thank you,” he said softly. I suddenly realized that I was trembling as wildly as he did during his mystical trances, and I hugged myself tight and tried to end the shaking.

  I heard footsteps approaching and I saw my husband’s face darken. The smile vanished and was replaced by something so terrible that I quickly looked away.

  Huyayy, the chieftain of the Bani Nadir, came running to our side.

  “My friends! Are you all right?” he cried with an obsequiousness that did not come naturally. “What a terrible accident! I will order our masons to fortify the wall so that something like this will never happen again.”

  It was such a transparent ruse that I stared at Huyayy in surprise. And then I saw beneath his protestations of innocence a mix of desperation and fear. This mighty statesman, this merchant renowned for his influence in worldly affairs, had been reduced to employing this crude and ultimately ineffective scheme to eliminate the Prophet.

  The Messenger looked at him with both pity and contempt.

  “You will not need to rebuild your wall,” he said, ice in his words.

  “I don’t understand,” Huyayy said, continuing to feign innocence.

  My husband stepped forward with dignity and took hold of Huyayy’s richly embroidered lapel.

  “The Bani Nadir have broken the Treaty of Medina with their treachery. Your lands are forfeit.”

  Huyayy’s fawning mask fell and his face twisted into an ugly sneer.

  “You do not have enough men to compel the Bani Nadir to abandon their homes.”

  The Messenger did not move. His eyes remained locked with his adversary’s poisonous gaze.

  “Once the Bani Amir learn of your intention to kill a guest under guise of sanctuary, they will stand by Medina,” he said with the power of absolute certainty. “As will their allies among the Bedouins. By God, you will leave your homes. Whether alive or dead, the choice is yours.”

  And with that, the Messenger let go of Huyayy and stormed down the path back to the safety of Medina. The men immediately followed, but I lingered for a second. I stared at Huyayy, who suddenly looked lost, as if he could not understand how the journey of his life had led him to this moment.

  I saw the sadness in his gray eyes, and I felt a chill race down my spine as I remembered the veiled woman with the same eyes who had betrayed the Bani Nadir. And then I ran to join my husband, the full tragedy of Huyayy ibn Akhtab branded on my heart.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, I stood at the edge of the oasis, watching as the Jews of Bani Nadir evacuated their homes and prepared for the long march north. The rumor was that they would take refuge in Khaybar, a Jewish stronghold at the edge of Byzantine territory. As I watched the men load their possessions on camels and mules, my eyes fell upon a young girl with sandy hair sitting alone upon a horse. Her gaze met mine and I immediately recognized the gray eyes, which now shimmered with tears.

  I nodded to Safiya in gratitude, but she looked away. And then the daughter of Huyayy ibn Akhtab turned and rode out into the desert, the secret that we shared a burden that would forever haunt her days.

  4

  I stood outside the birthing chamber as Fatima’s screams of agony echoed from beyond the thin palm-wood door. The Messenger stood by my side, holding his small grandson, Hasan, in his arms. My husband looked even more pale than usual, and his eyes were red from lack of sleep. Ever since his daughter had begun labor three nights before, he had been holding a vigil in her small house. Each of his wives had alternated spending the hours at his side, and I had just arrived to relieve the elderly Sawda, who shook her head wearily as Fatima’s cries intensified.

  “She is in so much pain,” my sister wife said to me quietly. “I don’t understand it.”

  I glanced over at my husband, who held his grandson tight, as if afraid that some evil djinn would appear and spirit him away into the netherworld. The boy was now two years old and his face looked remarkably like the Messenger’s, although his eyes were light brown and his curly hair had streaks of gold in it. Hasan looked at us, his grandmothers, with a placid smile, as if he could not hear the heart-wrenching cries from the adjacent room. I was always struck by how perpetually happy the child was. Indeed, I could not remember Hasan ever crying, and he seemed to find every moment of his little life a source of great delight and wonder. The “miracle child,” the people of Medina had called him, the boy who should have died in Fatima’s malnourished and tiny womb.

  Hasan’s mother had endured great suffering in the final weeks of her first pregnancy and had been unable to rise from her bed, requiring constant attention from the other women of the household. So when we learned that Fati
ma was carrying a second child, the women of the Ahl al-Bayt worked feverishly to prepare a comfortable home and bed for the Prophet’s daughter. We expected another difficult pregnancy that would require us to spend many long nights at her side. But this time it was different. Fatima had shown no signs of discomfort in the days and weeks prior to the onset of labor, and we were delighted that our fears had come to nothing.

  But the moment her water broke, Fatima had suffered terrifying pain. Her unearthly screams had chilled me to the bone, and for the first time made me thankful that I had failed to conceive a child myself.

  My husband saw Sawda and me looking at him and he spoke for the first time in hours.

  “It is not her own pain that she feels. It is her child’s.”

  I stared at him in confusion, unable to understand what he could possibly mean. But then I realized I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nothing about Fatima had ever made much sense to me.

  The Messenger turned his attention to his son-in-law Ali, who sat cross-legged on the hard floor, his head buried in his hands. My husband placed a comforting hand on the young man’s shoulders as Fatima’s wails continued unabated. It seemed so strange to see this mighty warrior hunched over, as if the suffering of his wife were far more painful to him than any wound he had endured at Badr or Uhud. I suddenly realized with a flash of surprise that Ali truly loved Fatima. I had never thought much about it before that moment. Perhaps I had assumed that the marriage was nothing more than a political union meant to bring the young man closer to Muhammad, his cousin and mentor.

  But looking at his sagging shoulders, his body trembling from suppressed grief, I finally understood that the bond between Ali and Fatima was deeper than I understood. They were both misfits, people who did not and could not fit into the cruel world, and in each other’s company they must have found solace. And if, as it appeared, Fatima failed to survive the childbirth, Ali would be truly alone. With few friends or supporters aside from the Messenger himself, he would be plunged into a desert of solitude that would make the empty wastes of the Najd look green with life. For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for him.

  And then, without any warning, the cries from the birthing chamber ceased abruptly, followed by a terrible silence that was more frightening than all the hours of agony that had preceded it.

  Ali lifted his head and met the Messenger’s eyes. I saw both men exchange a look of terrible grief and I felt tears welling in my eyes. The Prophet had lost another daughter. Fatima, his most beloved child, who was the plainest and simplest of his girls, and yet the one he treated with such open devotion that it bordered on reverence. Ever since Khadija had died, Fatima had been the rock that held him steady amid the crashing waves of his destiny. Even though I knew that I was his favorite wife, Fatima held a place in his heart that I could never reach. And now she was gone.

  I moved to comfort my husband, when, to my absolute surprise, I heard the cry of a baby. The Messenger and Ali both turned to stare at the door to Fatima’s chamber, which swung open, revealing an elderly midwife named Malika standing in the threshold, her birthing apron covered in blood.

  Malika looked as if her face had aged a dozen years in the past hour. And just beyond her weary form, to my disbelief, was Fatima in her bed, alive and holding a tiny baby swaddled in green.

  “Blessings to the Ahl al-Bayt.” Malika spoke, her voice as heavy and exhausted as that of a warrior crawling back from the battlefield. “The Messenger has another grandson.”

  As if swimming deep underwater, my husband stepped slowly inside the room, followed by Ali. Sawda and I hesitated and then stepped behind the men, keeping a respectful distance as they leaned over Fatima and stared in silence at her newborn baby boy.

  As I stepped inside the birthing chamber, I felt as if I were entering a dream. My vision flickered like a candle caught in a storm and I felt a strange chill even though the night air was unseasonably hot.

  I watched in awestruck silence as the Prophet leaned close to the new baby. His elder grandson, Hasan, was still held tightly in his arms, and the smiling boy laughed with delight at the sight of his baby brother. The Messenger held Hasan close to the baby, and the child kissed the newborn on the forehead. And then my husband handed Hasan to his father and took the bundled baby in his arms.

  I saw the infant’s face for the first time, and I was startled to see that his eyes were already open and were looking at the Messenger with surprising intensity. The Prophet gazed into the baby’s eyes, which, I saw, were as black as his own. And then he whispered the prayer call into the child’s right ear before handing the baby to Ali, who repeated the prayer in newborn’s left ear.

  It was a miracle that Fatima and the baby had survived. And it was a blessing that the Prophet had been given another grandson through whom his lineage would continue. But there was no rejoicing. I looked around the room, confused to see the solemn looks on the men’s faces and tears of evident sorrow on Fatima’s bloodless cheeks.

  I felt as if I had walked in on a funeral rather than a birth, and I finally turned to Ali, unable to hold back my unease.

  “Why are you not smiling? You have a son!”

  Ali looked at me with those mysterious green eyes. As always, I felt he was seeing past me to another place, another time.

  “My heart smiles, but my lips cannot. He has a burden I wish for no man.”

  And then Ali looked down at his son and I was shocked to see a tear roll down his cheek. In all the years that I had known him, I had never seen this strange young man weep, except in prayer.

  Shaken, I turned to face Fatima, who was gazing at me as if seeing me for the first time.

  “What will you name him?” I asked with a forced smile, hoping to bring some semblance of normality to this otherworldly scene.

  Fatima opened her mouth, but it was a long moment before any sound came out. When she finally spoke, her voice was like a whisper carried on the wind.

  “He has already been named.”

  Fatima turned her head to her father. My husband stood at Ali’s side, stroking his new grandson’s thick black hair with his forefinger. His eyes glistened, but I saw no sign of tears. It was as if a light had been lit in his soul, one that I had seen only during his painful moments of Revelation.

  “Husayn,” the Messenger of God said. “His name is Husayn.”

  I looked at the three of them, Muhammad, Fatima, and Ali, and at the two boys, Hasan and Husayn, and suddenly felt as if I were intruding. I was the Messenger’s favorite wife, the beloved of the harem, and yet in that moment I was a stranger. My heart ached with the realization that whatever bond linked these five, it was one that I would never truly be able to understand or participate in. Theirs was a world that I could gaze into only from afar, a shore I could never truly step onto because the ocean that divided us was greater than the expanse of the heavens and the earth.

  I turned and saw that Sawda and the midwife had already departed, wisely leaving this intimate moment for those in whose veins the blood of the Messenger flowed. I realized sadly that though I shared Muhammad’s bed, I could never share in his blood. I did not belong here, either.

  Without another word, I walked out of the room and left the unsettling dreamworld of the Ahl al-Bayt for the refreshingly familiar streets of the oasis.

  5

  Muawiya watched with a cold eye as his father hosted a gathering of the allied tribes. The Hall of Assembly had been decked out in flowing curtains of various hues—indigo, emerald, turquoise, and lavender—each representing one of the major clans present at the summit. It was a motley group that included the uncouth Ghatafan Bedouin tribes that grazed their flocks to the north of the enemy in Medina, and their ancient enemies, the proud Bani Sulaym, who had cultivated the lava fields to the east. Muawiya noted with interest that the only thing that unified these disparate and competing tribes was their hatred for Muhammad’s steady accumulation of power. The refugee from Mecca was truly bringing Arabia toge
ther in more ways than one.

  The hall was buzzing with loud gossip about the troubling turn of events. Muhammad’s diplomatic efforts, once constrained to the northern tribes of the peninsula, had recently expanded southward. He had forged an unexpected alliance with the Yamama, a tribe that controlled the grain routes from the south. The tribal leaders had adopted the renegade faith and had joined in Muhammad’s boycott of Mecca, denying the pagan tribes wheat and barley. Without any warning, one of Arabia’s key suppliers of food had joined the enemy, and the threat of starvation for Mecca and its allies was very real. It was this shocking development that had forced Abu Sufyan to call together the heads of the southern tribes in the hope of uniting them in a final stand against the danger of Medina.

  Abu Sufyan clapped loudly to gain their attention, and a blanket of silence fell upon the crowd of tribal chiefs. Muawiya read the men’s faces and saw anger and fear in their eyes. These were desperate people, ready to take desperate action, a fact that his father relied upon to bring together men whose fathers had been at one another’s throats, whose tribes had warred with each other for centuries.

  “The situation to the north has become intolerable,” Abu Sufyan said without any preamble. “Muhammad’s alliance with the Bedouins has choked off all our trade with Syria and Persia. And now Yamama has fallen under his spell and the enemy has brought famine to our doors.”

  Hind stepped forward, decked in a flowing robe made of red silk that rustled seductively. Muawiya saw some of the men whisper, undoubtedly speaking of her madness at Uhud, which had become the infamy of Mecca. But there was no sign of that crazed demon, hungry for human flesh, and she walked with her usual grace. And when she spoke, her voice was steady and calm, although Muawiya could see an unnerving glint in his mother’s eyes.