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

by Kamran Pasha

  “You are not Muslims and so you are not subject to the laws that God has revealed in the holy Qur’an,” he said, his voice quivering with anger. “I can only judge you by your own laws. Do you understand?”

  Kab nodded, never letting his eyes leave Sa’d.

  “Yes,” was all he said.

  Sa’d stepped back and faced the elderly rabbi. Ibn Sallam had been the only one of the exiled tribe of Qaynuqa who had been permitted to stay in Medina, as he had always been respectful of the Muslims’ beliefs and had never disparaged my husband’s claim to being a prophet. The old sage had lingered in the oasis, ministering to the remaining Jewish tribes, until the Bani Nadir had been expelled and only the Qurayza remained.

  “Tell me, Rabbi, what does Moses say is the punishment for a tribe that breaks its treaty and makes war upon its neighbor?”

  It was a simple question, asked in a respectful tone, but I saw the color drain from Ibn Sallam’s wrinkled cheeks.

  “The text is ancient,” the rabbi responded slowly, as if choosing every word carefully. “The words refer to a time long past.”

  Sa’d ibn Muadh turned back to the Jewish chieftain.

  “Do you believe, Kab, that the Torah is God’s Word?”

  Kab smiled softly, realizing Sa’d’s intent.

  “I do.”

  Sa’d spoke loudly now, so that his words echoed throughout the granary.

  “Then God’s Word does not change from day to day,” he said. “What was revealed to Moses in days long past will serve as a witness against you tonight.”

  Kab nodded

  “So be it.”

  Sa’d faced the rabbi and pointed a finger at him.

  “Ibn Sallam, what does your Torah say about the fate of a tribe that makes war upon its neighbors?”

  Ibn Sallam hesitated. He looked at Kab, who nodded. And then the old rabbi unraveled the sacred scroll of the Torah from which he had been praying and read aloud, a quiver of sadness in his raspy voice.

  “In Devarim, which the Greeks call Deuteronomy, in chapter twenty, verses ten through fourteen, the Lord says: ‘When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it. And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.’”

  I felt a chill as I heard these words and realized that the fate of the Qurayza had been set. They had been doomed by their own scriptures to suffer the fate that their ancestors had unleashed upon others a millennium before. The men would be all killed, and the women and children would live as slaves in the land they had once ruled.

  Sa’d nodded and met Kab’s eyes.

  “Your Book has spoken,” he said.

  Kab did not flinch at the cruel sentence but simply nodded in resignation, as if he had expected no less.

  As we turned to leave, I heard the rabbi lead the prisoners in a haunting chant that I could not understand but whose intonations, rife with weariness and sorrow, did not need to be translated. I cast a final glance at Najma, who continued to stare straight ahead as if locked in her own dream, and then stepped outside.

  We walked back to the center of the city in silence. When we reached the Masjid, the Messenger embraced Sa’d and thanked him for bravely pronouncing the judgment. The dying man nodded, and my father and Umar helped carry him back to his bed. I had no doubt from his gaunt and yellowing skin that he would not live long enough to see the punishment of the Qurayza carried out.

  That night, I lay by my husband’s side, facing away from him rather than nestling against his bosom as was my habit.

  “You are angry at me,” he said gently.

  I hesitated, unsure of what I was feeling in the hollow of my stomach.

  “No,” I said at long last. “They would have killed all of us had they been able to attack. If we let them leave as we did the Qaynuqa and the Nadir, they would have come back to attack us. The judgment is cruel, but they cannot complain. The Qurayza have been punished by their own traditions.”

  The Messenger took my hand in his.

  “Not quite.”

  I looked up at him in confusion. In his dark eyes I saw no more anger, but a profound sorrow.

  “The rabbi read the wrong section of the Book, as I had asked him to.”

  My eyes went wide.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The Messenger squeezed my fingers and I could feel the depth of emotion that he was suppressing.

  “The law of Moses he read was a punishment only for distant tribes who fought the Children of Israel from other lands. It was not the punishment for a neighboring tribe.”

  I looked up at my husband, unsure of what he was holding back.

  “What would have been the punishment in the Torah for a neighboring tribe?”

  The Prophet looked at me and I saw lines of great sadness in his eyes.

  “The rabbi read to me the verses that followed,” he said. “The Book says that in the cities that are near, the judgment is to kill everything that breathes.”

  I was stunned and shuddered at the horror. Could the God of Moses, the God of love and justice that we worshipped as Allah, be so cruel that He would call upon the Children of Israel even to slay women and children?

  It was a barbaric code for a barbaric world, and I began to understand why God had sent a new prophet to mankind. A new Book that sought to restrain and regulate the madness of war for the first time. In a world where greed and lust for power were enough to justify bloodshed, the holy Qur’an said “Fight those who fight you, but do not commit aggression.” In a world where soldiers raped and killed innocents in battle without any guilt, the Revelation had established rules that prevented such atrocities from happening. Women and children could not be killed under the rules of Islam, and protection was extended to the elderly, as well as to the priests and monks of the People of the Book.

  Allah had even forbidden the destruction of trees and the poisoning of wells, tactics that were widely employed by so-called civilized nations such as the Byzantines and the Persians. And the Messenger did not permit us to use fire as a weapon, for only God had the right to punish His Creation with the fires of Hell. Flaming arrows would have helped us burn down the houses of the Qurayza and end the siege, but the Prophet rejected the horror of burning people alive in their homes, even if it was the accepted practice of warfare throughout the world.

  We had shown restraint, but in a world where death hung over the sands like a bitter cloud, bloodshed was inevitable. I looked up at my husband and realized from the sadness in his face that he did not relish the massacre that was to come. He had done what was necessary to save his community from extinction, and the death of the warriors of Qurayza would send a clear message to all the neighboring tribes that treachery would be punished. Once the Qurayza had been dispatched, more chieftains would realize that it was in their best interest to join the alliance. A state was being born out of chaos, and the price of establishing order was high.

  I leaned close to the Messenger and buried my face in his breast, letting the gentle pulse of his heart lull me into a dreamworld in which there was no death, no blood, no tears. A world in which love alone could end tyranny and save the weak from the depredations and cruelty of the strong. A world where there was no war and men could lay down their swords and live without fear of attack from their neighbors.

  It was a world that could exist only in dreams.

  17

  A mass grave had been dug in the marketplace, ten feet wide and
nearly thirty feet deep. It looked like a miniature of the mighty trench that had protected the city from the invaders. And it was perhaps fitting, if macabre, that the men who had betrayed us would now be buried in a ditch that resembled the very defense they had sought to undermine.

  The prisoners were brought forth in small groups, starting with the tribal leaders whose intrigue had brought this disaster on their people, as well as those who had been identified as having actively fought against the Muslims during the siege of the Jewish fortress.

  I accompanied Najma, the sole woman among the seven hundred men who had been sentenced to death. I tried to remind myself that this girl who looked so much like me was no innocent. She had chosen to participate in the battle and had injured several good Muslim soldiers, killing one man who had left behind a wife and three children. And yet in my heart I knew that she was simply acting in defense of her own community. With my fiery spirit, I expected that I would have done the same if the situation had been reversed.

  I led Najma out of the granary, holding on halfheartedly to the rope that bound her by the wrists. I was prepared for tears and shouts of rage, anything except what I found. The girl was in the best of spirits as we walked down the paved streets of the oasis toward the spot that would soon be her grave.

  As we approached the marketplace and the crowd that had come to see justice against those who had committed treason in the midst of war, Najma smiled broadly and began to laugh and wave to the startled onlookers. Seeing the girl gaily walking to her death, people looked away and I saw a few women wipe tears from their eyes.

  Najma turned to me and I saw in her eyes a terrifying madness. It was as if some djinn had come and possessed her, buried her mind beneath the veil of insanity so that it would sleep through the horrible moments to come.

  She smiled at me broadly and glanced at my saffron-colored robe, the hem lined with brocaded flowers in red and green.

  “Your dress is beautiful. Is it from Yemen?”

  It was, but I could not find any words to respond. Her madness frightened and confused me, and I suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here.

  Najma shrugged at my blank stare.

  “I was planning on having a dress ordered from Yemen,” she said in a high voice. “For my wedding one day. Oh well. I won’t need it now.”

  I felt my throat constrict and I forced myself to speak.

  “I’m sorry,” I croaked.

  Najma laughed as if I had told her the most wonderful joke.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. Najma paused and then looked at me closer. “You’re married to Muhammad, right?”

  I nodded.

  Najma smiled and then picked up our pace. As the colorful pendants and dainty tents that lined the marketplace came into view, she began to skip, pulling me forward with her little dance.

  And then, just as we approached the grounds where the grave had been dug, she stopped and turned to face me.

  “Is he good to you? Your husband, I mean.”

  I felt tears blurring my vision.

  “Very,” I managed to whisper.

  Najma clapped her hands awkwardly, the bindings on her wrists stymieing her efforts to express her glee.

  “Wonderful! How many children do you have?”

  I shook my head.

  “None.”

  Najma’s mouth widened in an expression of genuine compassion.

  “That’s too bad,” she said, leaning close to me in sympathy. “You’d be a good mother. But I’m sure it will happen soon. And then you can sing your baby a lullaby. Here’s one my mother used to sing to me at night.”

  And then the poor girl started to sing some quiet, haunting verses about a bluebird that built its nest only in the moonlight because it loved to work beneath the canopy of the stars.

  She continued to sing even as we walked into the central plaza, where the massive ditch had been cut out of the earth. I saw the first group of three men who had been set for death led toward the grave. Their faces were stoic, but I could see terror in their eyes as they faced Ali, Talha, and Zubayr, their executioners

  The men did not protest as they were made to kneel before the pit and bow their heads over the dark chasm. Talha and Zubayr lifted their swords, and I saw Ali raise the glittering Dhul Fiqar.

  And then the three swung their blades down and sliced off the traitors’ heads with a sickening crunch. The decapitated bodies writhed as blood exploded from the severed necks. And then the corpses fell forward and vanished into the darkness of the grave.

  I watched, sickened and fascinated, as three more men were brought forward to meet judgment. Najma had continued singing unabated when the first executions were performed, but she suddenly stopped and I saw her looking at one of the men being led to the pit. I recognized him as Kab, the chieftain of Qurayza, who I understood was her uncle.

  For a moment the cloud of madness in her eyes lifted and I saw the true face of the young girl whose life was coming to its end. Horror and grief shattered her pretty features as she watched her beloved uncle fall to his knees before the grave.

  While the other two men loudly said prayers to the God of Moses, Kab turned to face the niece who was about to watch him die.

  “Forgive me, sweet girl,” he said. And then he bowed his neck over the edge of the pit and closed his eyes.

  Ali moved forward, and with one swift blow, Kab ibn Asad lost his head, his body rolling over the edge to join the corpses below.

  I heard a terrible sound from Najma, something that made my blood curdle. It was not a scream or a cry of sorrow, but a wild and insane laugh.

  “Look at them! They fall down like dolls thrown across the room by a naughty child! How silly!”

  Her laughter became more manic as Ali approached her, his forked blade still dripping the blood of her uncle.

  And then the Prophet’s cousin leaned down beside her and looked into her eyes, and I saw in them a gentleness that seemed utterly out of place.

  “It will not hurt. I promise,” he said softly.

  Najma threw her head back in raucous laughter, her crimson hair flying in the wind.

  “Oh, silly boy. You can’t hurt me! No one can hurt me!”

  And then she moved toward the pit. I suddenly stepped forward and grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

  The girl turned and looked at me. We stared into each other’s eyes for a moment that seemed like an eternity. Two young women, enemies by fate, yet sharing the common bond of girls who had been swept into something that was far greater than themselves. The terrible, unstoppable flood of history, which destroyed all hopes and dreams that stood against its mighty flow.

  And then she winked at me as the madness that, paradoxically, kept her sane in these final moments returned.

  Najma laughed and skipped all the way to the grave’s edge. Her laughter grew louder as she knelt and looked down into the chasm where her loved ones now lay. I heard her guffaws grow mightier and more shrill and soon I could hear nothing else, not the raging wind, not the steady murmur of the crowd that had come to quench its thirst for blood. Not even my own heart, which I could feel pounding in my ears.

  Her laughter accelerated, vibrating faster until it sounded like a primordial scream from the depths of Hell itself.

  And then Ali raised Dhul Fiqar and Najma’s laughter abruptly ended.

  A silence fell over the execution ground that was even more terrible than the madness of the young girl’s cries. I turned and ran away, unable to watch anymore. I raced through the streets of Medina, the terrible silence enveloping me like a thick blanket.

  I ran to my mother’s house, as I could not bear to go home. I was afraid that my husband would read my heart and divorce me for the blasphemies that were raging in my soul. I was trembling with anger. Anger at the cruelty of life, anger at the pride of men that divided tribes and nations. Anger at a God that had given us free will and left us to destroy ourselves with our own stupidity.

  In my mind’s e
ye I saw again and again Ali’s blade falling on that foolish, treacherous girl’s neck and I felt a flash of rage at this man who could perform his grisly duty with such quiet calm. Many have wondered about my estrangement from the Messenger’s son-in-law, a divide that would one day cost the lives of thousands of men and plunge our nation into civil war. Although the greatest wound between us was yet to be inflicted, I looked back and realized that my feelings for Ali changed that day from guarded admiration to a quiet dislike, a tiny flame in my heart that would one day be kindled into a fire that would consume the Ummah.

  What I had witnessed that day in the marketplace had scarred me more than the cut of any earthly blade. Of all the horrible things I have experienced in my life, my dear Abdallah, none has stayed with me as vividly as Najma’s laugh. I sometimes think I can hear it again, echoing across time and space, full of despair and madness, begging for a chance to live and to love, to marry and bear children and sing lullabies to the little ones that would never be.

  The lost cry of a girl who had made the terrible, unforgivable mistake of defying the flow of history.

  18

  The Bani Qurayza had been destroyed and the Messenger of God was now the unchallenged ruler of Medina. His victory, as expected, led to the arrival of delegations from all over Arabia. Tribal chieftains sought to forge alliances with the rising Muslim state through bonds of trade and kinship. Envoys came from both north and south. And, to my surprise, a delegation came from Mecca itself, from the house of our greatest enemy.

  I felt fury building in my heart as I looked upon Ramla, the beautiful daughter of Abu Sufyan, who had arrived at long last to make my childhood nightmare come true. She had aged well in the past seven years, and even though there were lines around her eyes, her cheeks were still rosy and her skin soft and unblemished. I had thought I was rid of her when the Messenger had married her off to his cousin Ubaydallah ibn Jahsh, the brother of my rival Zaynab. Ramla had been openly disappointed in Muhammad’s failure to embrace her charms in the aftermath of Khadija’s death and had reacted with caustic bitterness to the news that I would become his wife instead. Perhaps sensing her hurt feelings, the Prophet had wisely sent Ramla and her husband away to join the refugee community in Abyssinia, where she had remained safe during the terrible years of conflict.