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

by Kamran Pasha

  Talha stared at the two figures, who were conversing nonchalantly, a richly dressed tribesmen from the Khazraj named Sameer and his friend Murtaza, a Bedouin clansmen from the tribe of Tayy to the east. They were men who had some business dealings with Uthman ibn Affan and had been invited to the Prophet’s wedding to Ramla the night before.

  “The Messenger is truly lucky,” Sameer said with a wink to his colleague.

  “She is the most beautiful girl I have ever set eyes upon,” Murtaza responded with a lascivious smirk. “Is it true that she was still a virgin on her wedding night?”

  Talha felt his heart thunder with rage. He stormed up to the men and pushed himself between them, his eyes burning.

  “What shameful talk is this? She is your Mother!”

  Sameer looked at Talha, in his faded wool tunic and dusty pantaloons, and his eyes mocked him with the casual cruelty of a rich man.

  “Only as long as she is married to the Messenger,” Sameer said.

  Murtaza stepped closer to Talha, his sunburned face smelling of oil and qat, the Yemeni leaf that was said to make men dream while awake.

  “What if the Prophet dies or divorces her?” Murtaza sneered. “What will become of this delicate flower then?”

  Talha’s heart was pounding. And then he spoke before he could stop himself.

  “Then I will marry her, if only to protect her honor from scum like you!”

  Talha froze, horrified that he had spoken aloud his darkest, most private desire, one that never should have been voiced in this world or the hereafter.

  “It sounds like you have feelings for the pretty lady you call your mother,” Murtaza said.

  The Najdi Bedouin put an arm around Talha in false comradeship.

  “Don’t be ashamed, boy,” Murtaza added, amusement dripping from his lips. “If a son had a mother who looked like that, he’d be forgiven if he entertained a dirty thought now and again.”

  And then, as if he were being moved by a force greater than himself, Talha swung forth with his scarred fist and smashed Murtaza’s teeth with one brutal blow. The stunned Bedouin fell back, blood exploding from his mouth.

  Talha stood perfectly still, unable to move, despite the pounding agony in his ruined hand. And then Sameer was on top of him and he was being punched and kicked into the ground. Talha stopped fighting and absorbed the enraged merchant’s blows without crying out, even as he had done years before when Umar had beaten him in the Sanctuary. He could hear his ribs crack under the onslaught, the pain almost as intense as the agony that emanated from his deformed and brutalized hand.

  Talha did not move, did not breathe. He let Sameer crush him into the earth. His eyes blurred and darkness flew toward him like a gentle blanket, come to cover him in the sleep of unconsciousness. If this was death, he could think of no happier end than to die protecting the honor of the Mother of the Believers.

  21

  I sat nervously inside my tiny apartment, which felt even smaller than usual, as all the other wives had gathered here tonight at the command of the Messenger. The harem had grown prodigiously over the past several years and now included six women—Sawda, myself, Hafsa, Zaynab bint Jahsh, Umm Salama, and Ramla, the most recent addition. The other Zaynab, the daughter of Khuzayma whom the Prophet had married to bring the Bani Amir into alliance, had passed away a few months before. Her loss had been hard on the lower classes of Medina, as Zaynab’s tireless efforts on behalf of the weak and the indigent had earned her the sobriquet “Mother of the Poor.”

  I look back and realize that in some ways Zaynab bint Khuzayma was the luckiest of us all, as she left the world long before the terrible trials and sorrows that were to besiege the Muslim Ummah. And, perhaps most poignantly, she had passed on to the next world after having lived a life that was full and free of undue restriction or limitation. The simple normalcy of her daily existence, the pleasure of walking in public under the full light of the sun, would soon become a luxury for the rest of us—another disaster that was forged by my passionate and willful soul.

  The tension in the room was thick, like smoke from an oven that has been left unattended for too long. The fires that were being contained behind the cool glances of my cowives was about to burst.

  None of them was looking at me, except for Hafsa, whose furious gaze summed up their feelings succinctly. My flirtatious spectacle at Ramla’s wedding had brought shame upon the entire household, as well as violence to the streets of Medina. Poor unlucky Talha had been beaten senseless defending my honor from crass talk among the merchants, and the ensuing struggle had erupted into a vicious melee as outraged Companions had rushed forward to avenge him. Though no one had been killed, the ruckus had been a terrible reminder of the fragility of peace in the oasis.

  What would happen next was unclear. But there would definitely be consequences, and the Prophet’s terse summons to all the Mothers suggested that they would all pay collectively in some fashion for my foolishness.

  I looked away from Hafsa’s accusing eyes and stared up at the roof of palm leaves, where a gray moth was sleeping amid the crevices of a frond. I suddenly wanted to be that moth, hidden in shadows and ignored by the world, but free to fly away at the slightest impulse.

  And then the door swung inward and the Messenger of God entered the room. He looked at the Mothers and nodded to each of them in turn without smiling. But when his eyes fell on me, he simply blinked and looked away without acknowledgment. My heart shattered like a mirror dropped from a treetop.

  The Prophet closed the door behind him and then sat cross-legged on the floor. He breathed in deeply and then sighed wearily. But still he said nothing.

  Moments passed, but the Messenger did nothing to assuage our growing anxiety. He simply sat, looking at us with a terrible patience that was somehow more frightening than any anger he could have expressed.

  My mouth was painfully dry, as if I had eaten a brick of salt. And still my husband said nothing.

  I could take it no longer. Even at the risk of igniting the rare fire of his wrath, I forced myself to speak

  “Is Talha all right?” I croaked as if I had not spoken in years and my tongue had forgotten its cunning.

  I could feel every eye on me now. The other Mothers glared at me in anger, but I did not return their cruel glances and focused my attention solely on the man who held my destiny in his hands.

  The Messenger stared at the opposite wall for a long moment before he finally turned to face me. I braced myself for an outburst. Perhaps I even hoped for an explosion of outrage, a flash of passion that showed he still cared for me.

  But when he finally met my eyes, there was no punishment in his gaze, no flames of wrath.

  “Talha will heal in due time,” Muhammad said softly. “But the wounds to the Ummah will take longer.”

  He sighed again, a sound that was laced with exhaustion. I suddenly saw the tiny new lines around his dark eyes and realized that he had not been sleeping well. Just as suddenly I felt regret that among all the responsibilities of leadership he carried, worry over the trouble I had foolishly caused should add to his burden.

  “I have worked for so many years to bind these quarrelsome people together as a family,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. “Yet it takes only one small incident to tear them apart.”

  The room blurred as tears flooded my eyes.

  “I’m sorry, I never intended—”

  “It was not your intention, but the damage is still done,” he said abruptly, and I felt as if I had been slapped. The Messenger was always exceedingly courteous and considered interrupting others to be the height of ill manners. The fact that he would cut me off so forcefully, especially in the presence of my rival wives, revealed how far I had fallen in his estimation. I felt my throat constrict painfully as the thought that he would divorce me stabbed into my heart.

  And then another voice sounded through the small apartment, the gentle motherly tone of Umm Salama.

  “We are you
r wives and your partners in this world and the next,” she said steadily. “What is it that you wish us to do, O Messenger of God?”

  She had chosen her words carefully and in doing so had taken the brunt of responsibility for the day’s events off my lonely shoulders and placed them squarely upon the Mothers as a group. I looked across the room at her, my eyes brimming with unspoken gratitude for her decision to end my solitude.

  The Prophet hesitated, and when he spoke, it was with the unyielding authority of the leader of a nation, not with the gentle tones of a family patriarch.

  “God has revealed these words to me,” he said, and my blood began to race. A Revelation had come to address the chaos I had created, and the thought that God Himself would intervene in this earthly affair terrified me.

  And then the Messenger of God began to recite the lyrical words sent down from heaven, and I forgot everything except the haunting beauty of his voice:

  O wives of the Prophet, you are not like any other women.

  If you fear God, do not speak softly

  In case the sick at heart should lust after you

  But speak in a firm manner.

  Stay at home and do not flaunt your finery

  As they did in the Days of Ignorance.

  The Messenger stopped and let the holy words sink in. I blinked and suddenly felt a flash of relief. The commandment was not onerous, and surely God could not mean this literally. The Messenger had often said there was much in the holy Qur’an that was symbolic and a dogmatically literal adherance to the law would undermine God’s purpose. The commandment to stay at home, locked away in this tiny room with clay walls, while the world buzzed around about me, could not possibly be a strict rule that was meant to be applied with fervor. It had to be a general admonition, to curtail the kind of social impropriety that could lead to scandal and violence, as my stupid behavior at the wedding had done.

  But when I looked at the Prophet, the intensity in his eyes froze the smile that was forming on my lips. Something dark still hung between us, and I suddenly felt frightened again.

  “You should not leave your houses unless necessary. It is for your good and for the good of the Ummah,” he said, and I felt my breath stop. The Messenger was serious about applying the commandment. We were now expected to stay inside our homes like prisoners.

  “There is more,” he said grimly. “God has issued a command to the believers as well.”

  He took a deep breath and then recited the flowing verses:

  When you ask his wives something, do so from behind a curtain.

  This is purer for your hearts and theirs.

  It is not right for you to offend God’s Messenger

  Just as you should never marry his wives after him.

  That would be an enormous sin in the sight of God.

  The Messenger stopped and we looked at one another in confusion, unable to comprehend what was being asked of us. I understood the prohibition against marrying another man after the Prophet—the rivalries and divisions that would erupt over the honor of securing the hand of a queen of the realm would tear the nation apart. But the notion that we could only speak to men from behind a curtain was startling to Arab women, who were accustomed to living in the open air. We all wanted to believe that we had misunderstood the verses. It was one thing to stay inside our homes under the compulsion of necessity, but to cut ourselves off from our fellow believers in this manner was incomprehensible. Surely this rule would be liberally interpreted.

  But the Messenger quickly put an end to our hopes.

  “From this point on, you may not speak to any man who is not mahrem except through a veil or a curtain,” he said forcefully, his eyes locked on mine, and I felt my heart sink.

  The mahrem referred to any man whom we were forbidden from marrying because of the laws of incest. Our brothers, our sons, our fathers, our uncles, and our nephews were our flesh and blood and outside the possibility of sexual relations. But all other men, including close friends like Talha, fell outside the taboo—and now we could no longer talk to any of them except from behind a barrier. It was a stunning and extreme change, one that I had not been prepared for, and I could not imagine how I could possibly comply with God’s commandment.

  The Messenger stood up to leave and we all watched him go as if we were in a dream. But as he opened the door, I saw a flash of the outside world, of the hustle and bustle of the Masjid and the streets of Medina, and suddenly felt tears in my eyes as the realization struck me that I would never be able to venture out into that world as I had done all my life, free and proud.

  From now on, my life was to become a prison, even when I was not confined to the tiny apartment whose mud walls seemed to be closing in on me. For whenever I ventured out into the sun, my face would be hidden away behind a veil. The bars of my jail would follow me everywhere and were unbreakable, forged from a tiny strip of cotton that was stronger than the mightiest Byzantine steel.

  22

  The next several months were among the most difficult of my young life. Accustomed to freedom of movement in the oasis, given deference and right-of-way anywhere I went as a Mother of the Believers, I was suddenly trapped inside the confines of my tiny chamber. The small window that looked on the Masjid courtyard was covered with a thick black curtain made of coarse wool, and a similar sheet blocked the threshold of my door. Not that it mattered. Once the commandment of the veil had been revealed, the men of Medina had assiduously avoided my company, fearful of bringing the wrath of God down upon their heads. Even if the walls of my apartment had been torn down and I sat open and exposed to the sun, not even a blind man would have dared approach me.

  Even the women of Medina were now nervous about keeping my company, and I had few visitors aside from my sister, Asma, and my mother. The other wives, similarly trapped behind the veil, blamed me for their predicament. Even Hafsa, with whom I had developed a friendly alliance against our beautiful rival Zaynab bint Jahsh, was bitter and rarely spoke to me anymore.

  My lonely days were spent reading the holy Qur’an, which was no longer being secretly inscribed on palm leaves or the shoulder bones of goats but was being preserved on pieces of sturdy parchment bought from Egyptian traders. I found comfort in the stories of the prophets who had endured great tribulations during their sacred missions, men like Moses, who had been forced to leave behind the riches of his princely life and flee into the desert, where he would hear the Voice of God. Or of my forefather Ishmael, who had been expelled from a life of comfort in Abraham’s home and sent into the arid wastes of Arabia to found a new nation that would renew God’s covenant with man. These stories of exile and redemption had always held great meaning for the Muslims, who saw in the painful journeys of the past an echo of their own lives. But they began to take a greater personal meaning for me, as I found some comfort in the hope that even as these holy ones of God had endured deprivation and loss in the service of a higher cause, perhaps my own confinement would serve some purpose beyond a punishment for my sinful flirtations.

  In those difficult weeks, the Messenger continued to follow his policy of spending alternating nights with each of his wives. Even though he had been clearly angered by my behavior, once the commandment of God had come, the Prophet had been conciliatory, recognizing that any further harshness would only add salt to our wounds. I would look forward to our time together once a week and would inundate him with questions about life outside my prison walls, the state of affairs in Medina, and the ongoing war with the Meccans. The Prophet seemed surprised and even delighted by my interest in political matters, something he rarely discussed with his other wives, and he was able to release the weight of his daily life as a statesman in my presence. So, despite my resentment at the new limitations placed on my life, I found that my relationship with my husband actually improved in the aftermath of the veil.

  Our hours of conversation were my only relief from the monotony of my life, and I found our bond growing deeper, more intimate, eve
n as the demands of the world grew heavier on his shoulders. For the past several years, I had been afraid that I was becoming less important to the Prophet, as his harem steadily expanded and every beautiful woman in Medina vied to become one of the Mothers. Yet the irony of my caged existence was that the love between us was reignited, and the rumors that I had been displaced as the Prophet’s primary consort were replaced by whispers of envy at my unbreakable hold on his heart.

  One day, the Messenger came and asked if I would join him on an excursion into the desert west of the oasis. His spies had learned that one of the Bedouin tribe of Bani Mustaliq had reached a pact with Mecca and was planning a raid on Muslim caravans returning from Syria along the seacoast. The Prophet had decided that the best course of action was a preemptive strike against the tribe. The Muslims could no longer afford to cower behind a defensive posture. In the aftermath of our near extermination during the Meccan invasion, we needed to take the offensive at the first sign that our enemies were regrouping. And so the Muslim army would go out and defeat the Bani Mustaliq before they could prepare their attack. And the Messenger wanted me to accompany him on the expedition.

  I felt a flush of joy that brought tears to my eyes. This would be the first day in weeks that I would leave the confines of my home and see the world again. Even though I would be required to wear a full veil, hiding my face from mankind, I would at least be able to walk again in the sun and breathe the rich musky air of the desert. And most important, I would have several nights alone with the Messenger.

  I jumped up and down like a little girl, clapping my hands, and my husband smiled at my enthusiasm. And I could see the flame of desire lighting in his eyes and my heart pounded faster. I ran to the small acacia chest in the corner that held all of my meager personal belongings and removed the long dark cloak and veil that had become my prison outside my prison. The cloak was made of thick cotton that covered my body like the black shadow of an eclipse, the flowing robes specifically designed to hide any hint of my delicate curves. It was like a shroud for a living corpse, which is what I had come to feel like in the lonely days of the past month. But I donned it now with pride and excitement, as if it were a glorious wedding dress made of silk and gold. And in a way, it was. For tonight I would have a chance to bind myself to the Messenger all over again, to convince him with my persistent kisses that he was the only man I would ever love.