Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (19 page)

Ali nodded to Khalid, as if reading his thoughts. The
kahina
s, the wandering witches of the desert, sometimes claimed that Ali possessed a second sight that allowed him to see into men’s hearts. They even sold bronze charms to shield one’s thoughts from the strange youth. Khalid had always laughed at their superstition, but as he looked into those mysterious eyes, he felt a strange chill. As Khalid led the men out of the room, he saw Ali gazing at Waleed, who had almost killed him moments before.

“Next time we meet,” Ali said softly, “I will have a sword in my hand. And you will die.”

Waleed began to laugh, but Ali’s piercing gaze slit the sound from his throat. The proud son of Utbah, the brother of the powerful Hind, suddenly looked confused and uncertain. Ali’s tone was not that of a threat or a challenge. His voice was actually filled with an inexplicable kindness. As if Ali had read the book of their lives and seen how it would end for Waleed, and was graciously preparing him for the inevitable.

Khalid suddenly wanted to find one of the wrinkled old
kahina
s. And he was ready to give away his fortune for a charm to protect against this terrifying youth whose eyes gazed into another world.

M
y father knelt in prayer inside the dark cave on Mount Thawr. He had been there now for three nights along with the Messenger, who had joined him at the rendezvous point in the hills outside Mecca in the early morning hours after his escape from the assassins. When he prodded the Prophet about how he had managed to escape the gang of murderers who had surrounded his home, Muhammad merely smiled enigmatically and praised God. Together they had ridden out by camel into the wilderness to the south, in the opposite direction of the road to Yathrib, where they assumed that the Quraysh would be looking for them.

For the past two days, my sister Asma had stolen away in the dead of the night and brought water and supplies to the refugees hidden inside the cave. She had brought along a small herd of sheep to cover her tracks, just as my father had done to hide the footprints of the camels that carried them to Mount Thawr. Asma also carried with her the latest news and rumor from Mecca, which was aflame with word of the Messenger’s disappearance.

Abu Bakr had initially been nervous that their simple stratagem would not work, but after three uneventful days, he gave thanks to Allah that the Quraysh had underestimated them. He bowed his head on the cold earth, facing north to Jerusalem, and a part of his soul took delight that he was also facing the Kaaba. He had not questioned the Prophet when the command came to face
Al-Quds,
as the Muslims called the holy city in the heart of Palestine, but like all Arabs, the Sanctuary remained uppermost in his heart.

He finished his prostration and turned right and left, softly intoning blessings upon the guardian angels that accompanied each man. And then he rose to look for the Prophet, who had disappeared deep inside the blackness of the cave to meditate.
Dhikr,
the Messenger called it—the Remembrance of God. But before his eyes could adjust further to the gloom, he heard the sound of men’s voices and his heart leaped into his throat.

Moving stealthily, he grasped hold of a thick stalagmite pillar as he slowly approached the entrance to the cave. He did not peer through the shaft of light pouring in from the tiny crawl space, but moved just close enough to put his ear to the gray earth and catch the vibrations.

Footsteps were approaching. The thud of heavy boots against rock. And then he heard the voices rising as their owners approached the crest of stone just below the cave. He prayed desperately that the voices would be those of Umar or Hamza or Ali, but a booming echo tore away at his hopes. It was a regal voice, masculine and tinted with cruelty. A voice that could belong to only one man.

Khalid ibn al-Waleed had found them. And soon they would be dead.

Despite the cool interior of the cave, Abu Bakr felt drops of thick sweat rolling down the side of his face. After everything they had done, after everything they had sacrificed, would this be how it would end?

The Messenger had always said that God did not need man to fulfill his plan. If they failed and were slain today, Islam would continue. The worship of One God was the destiny of mankind, whether they lived to see it spread beyond the wastes of Arabia or not.

Abu Bakr was not afraid to die. But he felt great grief that his friend, who had sacrificed wealth, comfort, and status to take on the thankless burden of prophecy to a barbaric people, would meet such an ignominious end.

As the footfalls sounded perhaps no more than twenty feet away, Abu Bakr hurried back into the depths of the cave. He almost yelped in fright as the Messenger emerged at the same time and the two nearly collided. Muhammad, may God’s blessing and peace be upon him, saw that Abu Bakr was shaking and took my father by the shoulders to calm him.

Even in the darkness that entombed them, Abu Bakr could see the Prophet’s eyes gleaming.

“O Messenger of God,” he whispered urgently. “They have found us! We are lost!”

The Prophet went very still for a moment, his fingers tightening around Abu Bakr’s shoulders. My father thought for a second that he was undergoing the Trance of Revelation, and he silently thanked God. The Messenger would lose all awareness of the world when he fell into that mystical state, and if he was destined to die here, Abu Bakr hoped that Muhammad would be taken while in ecstatic communion with his Lord.

“Grieve not, for truly God is with us,” Muhammad said softly.

Abu Bakr’s heart fell. The Messenger did not understand what was happening.

“But…but we are only two men, without arms. We are trapped!”

The Prophet leaned close and whispered in my father’s ear.

“What think you of two, when God is their third?”

The serenity in his voice, the absolute trust and surrender of his words, was like the breaking light of dawn after a stormy night. Suddenly my father’s fear was gone, like a man awakening from a nightmare and forgetting the dreamworld he had only seconds before taken for reality.

Abu Bakr turned and faced the cave entrance as the voices of Khalid and Amr ibn al-As echoed at the threshold. He was ready for God’s judgment.

T
he tracker, a grime-covered Bedouin named Fawad, excitedly pointed to the cave entrance.

“They are in there!”

For the past seven hours, Fawad had led these Meccan aristocrats through the southern wilderness in search of their mad poet. Though their prey had made an effort to cover his tracks, it had been an amateurish effort at best. City dwellers might have been fooled by the sheep footprints, but Fawad’s trained eye immediately saw the unique indentations of camel hooves beneath the veneer of a shepherd’s crossing.

He had followed the telltale marks to the foot of Mount Thawr, a blackened volcanic peak that was a jumble of jagged boulders. He had studied the dark ash atop the stones and quickly saw the disruption in the layers that had been caused by hands struggling to find a grip, by leather boots kicking small rocks aside to ease the ascent.

Whether or not this Muhammad was a prophet was outside the scope of Fawad’s expertise, but he was definitely not an expert in evasion. Any child of Fawad’s tribe of Bani Duwasri would have been able to find him before the sun had set.

The Bedouin could see that the trail led to a small cave opening carved into a flat ridge. This was it, the end of their journey. The Meccans had promised him a hundred gold dirhams if he successfully located the renegade. Such wealth was beyond anything Fawad had ever imagined. Hopefully the refugees were still inside the cave (he saw no receding tracks to suggest otherwise) and the Meccans could dispatch them without difficulty. But if Muhammad and his companions were armed and a struggle ensued, Fawad could see four places amid the rocks where he could hide until the matter was resolved with some finality. He glanced at the leather purse on Khalid’s jeweled belt and reminded himself to scavenge what he could in the unlikely event that the scarred warrior did not survive the encounter.

Khalid and Amr approached the cave, their swords glinting in the afternoon sun. But instead of crouching and entering, Khalid whirled, his face twisted in fury, his sword pointing accusingly at Fawad.

“You fool!” he bellowed. “How could they possibly be in there?”

Amr tuned to face him, too, and his genial face was dark with anger.

“No one has been here in months, if ever.”

Fawad did not understand what they were saying. Clearly they had not seen the tracks that showed human presence within the past few days. He stepped forward, one eye on the weapons that were now trained on him.

And then he saw what they had seen and his face paled.

“I don’t understand,” he said, panic rising at the irrefutable evidence of his mistake.

Khalid spit at Fawad’s feet and began to climb back down the ledge. Despite his rage, the cringing Bedouin was too pathetic to kill with any semblance of honor.

“We have wasted enough time,” Khalid hissed. “Let us go back and join the northern search parties.”

A
BU
B
AKR STARED AT
the cave entrance as the men’s voices receded and disappeared back down the mountainside.

He turned to the Messenger, perplexed.

“They’re leaving. I don’t understand.”

Abu Bakr sensed more than saw that the Messenger was smiling in the darkness, but he made no reply.

Curiosity finally overcoming his hesitation, my father climbed up to the entrance and peered outside, his eyes blinking rapidly at the sudden intensity of the light. When he could finally see, his mouth fell open and a gasp escaped from between his parched lips.

The Messenger came up beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Abu Bakr turned to look at him, his face broad with wonder. And the Messenger grinned, his teeth sparkling in the sun’s warm rays.

And he quoted a verse from the Qur’an.

“Glory be to God, who when He decrees a thing, simply says, ‘
Kun fa yakun
.’

“Be…and it is.”

I
hugged my shoulders to fight off the bitter cold of Mount Thawr. The woolen shawl I had wrapped around my bosom could not protect me from the icy wind as we climbed two thousand feet above the sand dunes. I had trekked through the hills around Mecca, but never a mountain this steep and definitely not in the dead of night. As I watched Asma trudging beside me without complaint, the sack of provisions hefted onto her thin shoulders, I wondered how she could have made this difficult journey for the past three nights. I had volunteered to come those times, of course, but my mother had forbidden it. But last night, Asma had returned, looking even more exhausted than usual, her hands scraped and bloody from navigating the sharp rocks, and announced that the Messenger had summoned me. I was so excited at the thought that I was to be included in the Great Secret and would be able to join my father in his hiding place that I jumped up and down and clapped.

I was not clapping now and was deeply regretting my earlier enthusiasm. My hands burned from the bite of the rope that secured the bundle hefted over my back. There were dried meats inside the cloth, carefully wrapped in lambskin, as well as several water skins made of sturdy camel hair that would provide just enough hydration for the torturous journey north.

As I climbed up a slippery rock, the moon disappeared behind a cloud and I tripped. Suddenly the rope slid from my hand, shredding the delicate skin of my palm. I cried out as a sensation of fire surged up my hand. And then I saw with horror my bundle of supplies break open against a boulder, the precious provisions scattering over the side into darkness. Without thinking, I jumped down from my perch and tried to grab hold of the package before it vanished over the mountainside.

And then I felt the earth slipping from my grasp and I was falling, tumbling down the side of the mountain to a grave blanketed in darkness…

“Aisha!” I could hear Asma’s horrified scream as I fell and it seemed so distant. I wondered in a strange, detached way if death would be painful or if the girl betrothed to the Messenger of God would be allowed a reprieve, like easing gently into slumber as the earth reached up to reclaim one of its wayward children.

“Hold on!” Asma’s voice sounded clearer and nearby, and for a second I wondered whether she had jumped after me. And then the moon emerged from the clouds and I realized that I was clinging to a thistle bush, its ragged thorns digging into my hands, but I felt no pain. I was still in a dreamlike state of disbelief, which vanished at once as I looked down to the jagged teeth of boulders that circled the mountain’s base, thousands of feet below.

At that moment, I felt the terrible sting of needles in my hand and my heart exploded in a burst of desperate fire. Somehow I managed to cling to the thistles, and then I felt sturdy hands pulling me up and away from the precipice and I collapsed onto hard stone, which had never felt so wonderful under my feet. I looked up in gratitude at Asma’s face, but my sister’s mouth was hard and her eyes cold. I realized later that she was doing her best to hold back terror, but I was hurt in that moment to see the angry jut of her chin.

“Are you mad?” she said, pointing to the wreckage of supplies that I had risked my life to salvage. In the bitter moonlight I could see that most of the provisions were scattered within easy reach. Apparently I was the only thing that had gone over the edge in the ruckus.

“I was just trying to help!” I said, but I felt suddenly very stupid and small.

Asma sniffed haughtily.

“You won’t get into Paradise by killing yourself.”

There are many nights when I wished I had gone over the edge that night and fallen like a rag doll onto the rocks below. There are countless others who no doubt have wished the same. And yet it was not the will of God. I still had a role to play in the history of our faith, and I hope that some of my contributions were of value to our people, despite all the pain and death that I would unleash in the years to come.

Asma got up and brushed the black dust off her hands. She tore a strip of cloth from her tunic and wrapped it around my bleeding hands before turning to gather the dropped supplies. She moved around carefully, testing the ground with each step, as she collected the provisions.

I saw her frown, her forehead crinkling as she looked at the water skins and the various packages of food. Her eyes fell to the torn rope that I had used to bind my bundle and she sighed.

“I can’t carry all of this without a rope.”

My eyes flew instinctively to her long blue pantaloons.

“Use your girdle,” I said after a moment’s hesitation.

Asma threw me a sharp glance and I felt my cheeks flush. But then she proceeded to untie the strip of rope that held her pants up and tore it in half. Taking the loose section of her girdle, she tied the supplies together and then pinned her pantaloons to her blouse with a pretty pink brooch that her sweetheart, Zubayr, had given her.

Throwing me a nod that meant “Let’s move,” my sister took hold of both my bundle and her own and trudged up the mountainside. Her pantaloons sagged and looked in danger of falling down, and she cursed as she was forced to adjust them regularly as we climbed the rocks to the summit.

Despite everything we had just gone through (or perhaps because of it), I could not restrain my sisterly compulsion to tease. When Asma’s pantaloons slipped down past her rear, she tried with some effort to cover herself again. She scowled to see me grinning.

“Don’t just stand there, help me!” she barked.

“If Zubayr was here I’m sure he’d help,” I said with a wink.

Asma gave me a withering look but I could see the flush of color on her face at the thought. She pulled her pants over her exposed buttocks and clambered up the mountain with what little dignity she could preserve.

We finally made it to the ledge near the peak. A conical rock face soared twenty feet above us, and I watched as Asma scoured its base for the cave opening. She stopped, looking confused.

“I thought you knew where it was,” I asked. Suddenly I wondered whether this was even the right mountain, and not one of the sister peaks that surrounded Thawr. The thought of climbing another five thousand feet in the dark was beyond daunting.

“I do,” Asma replied unconvincingly. “It should be right down there.”

Asma climbed down into a rocky crevice and stood before the entrance of what appeared to be a small cave, just large enough for a man to enter if he bent down and ducked.

But it was clearly not the right opening. The entrance was covered with a heavy spider web, and a small nest stood at its base. Two rock doves awakened by the sound of our approach flew off in terror.

There was no way that any man could be inside there. The web would have been torn by anyone climbing in and the nest overturned.

“That can’t be right,” I said.

Asma leaned forward, confused. She peered at the web…when a hand suddenly emerged from inside the cave and pushed it aside!

I don’t know who screamed louder, my sister or I. The cries of shock echoed from the mountaintop and shook the very stones around us. Had the searchers from Quraysh been in the vicinity, we would have easily been discovered.

And then I watched in utter surprise as my father emerged from inside the cave, beaming.

“What took you girls so long?” he asked.

We stared at him as if he were a ghost in the night. And then we raced each other to his arms, still strong despite his age.

The Messenger of God emerged from the cave, his eyes on me, and I felt my face grow warm. I had rarely seen him since we had been betrothed, and I felt a new bashfulness in his presence.

Abu Bakr kissed me on the forehead and hugged Asma. And then he glanced down, his eyebrows rising at the sight of her sagging pantaloons.

“What’s wrong with your clothes?” he asked, a little scandalized.

“Don’t ask,” she said through gritted teeth.

Asma handed my father the bundle of supplies, and his eyes went wide when he saw that part of it was tied together with a piece of her girdle.

There was a moment of silence. And then I was shocked to hear the Messenger laugh. He threw his head back, his mouth wide in amusement. The Prophet often smiled, but I had rarely seen him give in to humor so enthusiastically. His laugh was throaty and infectious and soon we were all giggling with him.

The Messenger finally regained his composure and then looked at both of us with twinkling eyes.

“Welcome, daughters of Abu Bakr,” he said, as if inviting us inside a grand palace rather than a rocky hole in the earth. “On this momentous night, when Islam itself has been given a new life, you have been reborn. And as such, I shall give you all new names.”

The Prophet turned to my father.

“God himself has chosen this name for you, Abu Bakr–
As-Siddiq—
and it has been revealed in the Qur’an,” he said warmly. “Henceforth, you will also be known as The Second in the Cave.”

I saw tears well into my father’s eyes. In later years, he would tell me that his greatest honor was to have spent those days at the Messenger’s side in the cave, such that even the Lord of the Worlds had recognized him as Muhammad’s only companion when their lives were truly at stake.

The Messenger then turned to Asma and took the bundle that was tied by her girdle. I saw an amused smile playing on his lips.

“And you, Asma, shall be forever called She of Two Girdles,” he said, and I saw my sister blush with shyness at the Prophet’s attention.

I have always been cursed with impatience, and in those days I had the impetuousness of youth as well. I stamped my foot at being left out of the naming ceremony.

“And me?” I asked fearlessly, ignoring the pained look on my father’s face.

The Messenger leaned down next to me and stroked my cheeks, which were red from exertion and cold.

“And you will be my
Humayra
—the Little Red-Faced One.”

I heard Asma laugh and I gave her a stare that would have melted steel. The Messenger laughed again, and everyone joined in, including eventually myself.

When the laughter died, I finally asked a serious question that had been haunting me since that night at Aqaba.

“Are we really leaving our homes behind?”

The smile faded from the Messenger’s face and I saw ineffable sadness take its place. He turned to look out past the summit into the valley of Mecca, the city’s lights twinkling like stars thousands of feet below. In the moonlight, I thought I saw the sheen of tears on his cheeks.

My father put a gentle hand on my shoulder and turned me away, giving the Messenger a private moment of grief at the loss of the city he loved. A city that had rejected him and forced him into exile.

“We will have new homes soon, little one,” Abu Bakr said to me reassuringly. And then he raised his head and looked northeast, past the fires of Mecca, into a horizon that was covered in clouds, glittering turquoise with the first hint of dawn.