Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (29 page)

I
rested my thighs on our lambskin mattress as the Messenger placed his head in my lap, as he often did when he was having difficulty relaxing after a long day. I ran my fingers through his mass of black curls that had begun to gray in a few patches. He looked up at me with a familiar twinkle in his eye and I sensed that he wanted me. The Messenger had been so exhausted in recent weeks that we rarely made love. The crushing burden of his daily life as prophet and statesman had made him too tired to meet even his personal needs as a man. Every minute of his waking hours was spent either teaching, judging disputes, enforcing new laws that God revealed in the Qur’an, or leading raids against Meccan caravans. The Messenger would come home tired and fall asleep in my arms almost instantly.

I missed our nights of intimacy, the powerful warmth of his body entwined with mine. And I longed to give him a son. We had been married now for almost three years and my courses had continued unabated. I prayed every night for the Lord to quicken my womb, but my supplications had remained unanswered.

I moved to blow out the single candle that adorned the room, as my husband was exceedingly modest and shared intimacies only under the cover of darkness. And then I heard a furious hammering at the door and Umar’s booming voice calling out for the Messenger. My husband sighed, and I could sense his desire cooling. At that moment, I wanted to grab Umar by the beard and slap him, but instead I went to a corner, sullenly covering my hair as the Prophet opened the door and let the raving giant in.

“O Messenger of God, the honor of my house has been sullied!” he said dramatically.

“What is wrong?” The Messenger’s tone was polite but tired.

Umar noticed me sitting in a corner, glaring at him. He suddenly appeared uncomfortable and looked down at his huge feet without speaking further.

My husband turned to me with a sympathetic grin.

“Aisha, please leave us.”

I nodded glumly and stepped outside into the courtyard. The Messenger closed the door behind me. Unable to suppress the curiosity that is both my gift and my curse, I pressed my ear to the door, made of thin palm wood, and listened in to his conversation with one of his most trusted advisers.

“As you know, my daughter Hafsa is a widow,” Umar said, speaking rapidly. “I approached Uthman ibn Affan with an honorable offer to marry her. And he refused!”

I smiled. Of course Uthman had refused. Hafsa was a beautiful girl, but her temper was as volatile as her father’s and no man who valued peace of mind would take her.

“Uthman is still grieving for Ruqayya,” the Messenger said diplomatically. “Do not take it to heart.”

He did not mention what he had said to me in private, of his intention of marrying one of his younger daughters, Umm Kulthum, to Uthman. That bit of news might not go over well with Umar.

“Be that as it may, and yet I suffered a second indignity,” Umar rambled on. “I went to Abu Bakr and offered him Hafsa’s hand and he, too, refused! I thought he was my best friend, but he has left me in shame.”

I tried hard not to giggle. The idea of my elderly father marrying this twenty-year-old firebrand was beyond comical. His heart would give out on the wedding night, not from Hafsa’s passion but from her ceaseless nagging.

“Abu Bakr loves Umm Ruman very deeply. He could not share his heart with another.” My husband, as always, knew exactly the right words to say.

“Be that as it may, and yet I am ruined!” Umar said, panic filling his voice. “Even now the gossips are spreading vile stories in Medina. The rumor that Hafsa has been refused by the greatest men of Islam because she is ill-tempered and mean! How could they say such a preposterous thing?”

I trembled with laughter and had to bite my hand to keep from revealing my eavesdropping presence.

“It is best to ignore the slanders of misguided folk,” the Messenger said mildly. “Allah will bring them to account. Gossips and backbiters will eat the flesh of their dead brothers on Judgment Day.”

It was a vivid image, but one that did not appease Umar.

“I cannot wait until Judgment Day, O Messenger of God! My daughter’s honor has been soiled today! No man will marry her once they learn that Uthman and Abu Bakr have rejected her!”

“Have faith, Umar.” I could hear the exhaustion entering the Messenger’s voice as his efforts to mollify Umar only made him more agitated.

“I have faith in God, but not in the fickle cruelty of men,” Umar said, his voice trembling. “In the days before Islam, I would have challenged Uthman and Abu Bakr to a duel. But now they are my brothers and I will not shed their blood. So I have no choice.”

“No choice?” Now I could hear alarm in Muhammad’s tone.

“I must leave Medina and take Hafsa with me,” Umar explained. “I must go where she can escape the shame and rebuild her life.”

Umar paused a moment and then I could hear new excitement entering his voice.

“O Messenger of God, deputize me so that I may serve as your envoy to the disbelievers! To Syria or Persia. Send me to share the Word of God in these foreign lands!”

I could hear my husband clap Umar on the shoulder in support.

“A day shall come when you will go to these lands, Umar, but not as an envoy.
Insha-Allah,
you will enter them as a conqueror.”

If the Messenger had meant these grand tidings to lift Umar’s soul, his efforts were unsuccessful.

“Then what am I to do? I cannot stay in Medina as long as my family’s honor is stained.”

There was a long silence and I finally felt the humor of the situation vanishing, replaced with a troubling problem for the community. Umar was a powerful leader who was feared and respected by both friend and enemy alike. If he left the oasis, it would create a power vacuum that would encourage our enemies to make aggressive moves against Medina. I knew that my husband was thinking of a solution to put Umar’s mind off his daughter’s marital difficulty and keep him focused on protecting the nascent city-state.

“Now I must reveal to you the truth,” the Messenger said at long last. “Do not judge Uthman or Abu Bakr harshly. They were acting on my orders.”

This was unexpected. I leaned closer to hear better and almost pushed the door open.

“I don’t understand.” Umar’s voice was both confused and hurt.

“When you approached Uthman with the proposal, he came to me and I told him to say no. As did Abu Bakr.”

Umar was clearly shocked at this revelation.

“O Messenger of God, why?”

I was eager to hear the answer myself. My husband’s natural statesmanship was at work here, and I was always fascinated by his ability to make wise decisions that benefited everyone.

“It is because Hafsa is special. She has been chosen for a higher purpose.”

Suddenly I didn’t like where this was going.

I heard Umar rise to his feet, his powerful legs creaking like the hinges of a giant fortress gate.

“Are you saying…?”

All at once my heart was racing and I wanted to run back inside and prevent my husband from finishing this conversation. But my legs were frozen to the spot.

“Yes. It is my desire to marry Hafsa and make her a Mother of the Believers. If her father will permit it.”

The blood drained from my face. I was suddenly dizzy and I could taste bile in my throat.

“Allah be praised!” Umar shouted wildly. “I would give you my daughter and anything else that you asked!

I could hear the rustle of robes as Umar gave the Messenger an embrace that would have crushed a lesser man. The two spoke more words, but I did care to listen further.

My heart pounded with jealousy. The Messenger loved me! How could he marry another woman, even as a political maneuver? Suddenly I had a vision of my beloved Muhammad entwined in passion with the beautiful Hafsa, and I felt rage burning inside my soul.

I turned and ran out of the courtyard to my mother’s house, where I spent the rest of the night crying in her arms.

I
watched tight-lipped as a group of workers built another small stone apartment just north of my cell in the Masjid courtyard. They were working quickly, as the Prophet’s marriage to Hafsa was set for a week from that day, and they wanted to be finished in time for the mud cement to dry. No one wanted to be responsible for the Messenger of God spending his wedding night in a room that smelled like a tar pit after a flash flood.

I looked at that room and saw again an image of my husband in the arms of another woman and I could feel icy claws closing in on my throat. And then, as if she had read my thoughts, the proud Hafsa stepped inside the courtyard, taking off her dainty thong slippers and storming over to inspect her new home.

I stepped into the shadows of my doorway and hoped she didn’t see me. The last thing I wanted to do was exchange pleasantries with this pretty girl with the curly black hair who would soon be sharing the Messenger’s bed.

As it turned out, she was so focused on her own concerns that she was unlikely to have noticed me had I stood in front of her naked. Her eyes went wide when she saw the state of disarray around her future home, and she immediately began to berate the poor builders.

“What shoddy workmanship is this!” Hafsa shouted in a husky voice that sounded remarkably like her father’s. “No, I don’t want a window looking to the back wall! I am to be a Mother of the Believers! My window must face the courtyard!”

The harried workers endured her foot-stomping harangue with weary obsequiousness. Hafsa was not as tall as Umar, but she had broad, mannish shoulders that made her unmistakably his child. Her eyes were light brown, as was her unblemished skin. She had ample curves and wide hips and I felt a flash of terror as I realized that her body was better suited than my own thin frame for carrying a child. If she bore the Prophet a son before I did, then she would likely become his primary consort and my hold over his heart might become as brittle as a rusted lock that shatters under the heavy wind.

“Do not fear, Aisha,” a soft voice beside me intoned. “You will always be his favorite.”

It was my elderly sister-wife, Sawda, who had read my eyes with the wisdom of a woman who remembers the follies of youth. I smiled at her gratefully, but an ungenerous thought flashed across my mind. Her face was wrinkled and her breasts sagging, and her courses had long since dried up. It was easy for her to speak so confidently, since she shared the Messenger’s bed without passion and could never provide him a child. If Muhammad’s heart turned to Hafsa, it would make no difference to Sawda’s status in the household.

It was a nasty thought, cruel and mean-spirited, and I tried (without complete success) to banish it from my mind.

“What kind of wood is this?” Hafsa shouted, and my thoughts fled under the force of her cry. I looked up to see that she was yelling at the foreman of the workers, a burly man who was almost as tall as her father. “Do you want the roof to fall down on the Messenger when he is in bed?”

The heavily muscled foreman looked as if he wanted to say something unkind to this twenty-year-old girl who was acting like the queen of Arabia. But he bit his lip and restrained himself. At that moment, the Messenger entered the courtyard and the foreman gave him a pleading glance for intervention.

My husband walked up beside Hafsa. I saw him take a deep breath as if he were girding himself for battle. But before he could calm his bride-to-be, his eyes fell on me, standing in the threshold of my tiny room, and he smiled warmly. My heart felt as if it would burst, and I had to stop myself from running into his arms, telling him that I was the only one who could ever truly give him happiness. But something in the way his eyes lit up told me that I didn’t need to. That he already knew.

T
HE MESSENGER WAS MARRIED
to Hafsa in a grand ceremony to which all the leaders of Medina were invited, including the Jewish chieftains, who sent presents of gold and spices but did not attend in person.

Watching the Messenger unite with Hafsa in front of a gathering of honored nobles, the bride dressed in a silk gown of scarlet, I felt a new pang of sadness. A sense of my own smallness came to me. My own wedding had been an exceedingly modest affair and I felt as if I had been cheated out of the pomp and circumstance that was being showered upon the daughter of Umar.

I murmured a complaint to my mother, who gave me a sharp look of reproach.

“This is a political marriage meant to keep Umar happy and the Muslims united,” Umm Ruman said in a hurried whisper. “But your wedding was ordained by God and reflected the Messenger’s heart, not his needs as a leader. Be grateful.”

Of course she was right. But at that moment I didn’t care. I got up and stormed off in indignation. I exited the colorful pavilion that had been erected in the marketplace, past a line of beggars who had come seeking alms from the Messenger on this momentous occasion. I hugged my scarf closer to my chest, hoping that it would warm the chill I felt despite the dry heat of the night.

I strode out of the bazaar, walking without purpose or direction. And then I stopped in my tracks as my eyes fell on a young woman leaning against a crumbling wall, staring quietly at the stars.

It was the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen her inside the pavilion with her sisters, Zaynab and Umm Kulthum, and wondered why she was not with her father celebrating his marriage. And then I thought that the fact that she was two years older than her father’s new bride, Hafsa, and yet had no suitors, must have weighed heavily on her.

Fatima seemed lost in a dream and did not react to the approach of my footsteps. I should have turned away and left her to her thoughts, but I felt drawn to her that night for reasons I could not voice. Fatima had always been so ethereal that she seemed like a spirit more than a creature of flesh and blood, and there was something about her that unnerved me. And yet she was my husband’s favorite child, and perhaps I felt a connection to her because I was his favorite wife—a status that I fervently hoped to retain after the Messenger spent the night with his new bride. Along with being older and possessing a more mature body, Hafsa had already been married once and was presumably experienced in the arts of love. My stomach curled at that thought and I forced it out of my heart as I slid in beside Fatima.

The girl looked at me with a ghostly smile, and then turned her attention back to the stars. The Milky Way ran like a vast caravan route through the heavens, and I saw that her attention was focused on the constellation of the
al-Jabbar,
the Giant, that hung low in the night sky. I stared up at the three stars that formed his belt and caught from the corner of my eye a glimmer of the tiny lights that formed his scabbard. But whenever I looked directly at them, they vanished, like djinn in the desert.

The silence between us grew uncomfortable and I groped for something that might spark a conversation.

“So…do you still think you’ll never marry?” I winced even as I said these words, but it was too late to take them back.

Fatima looked at me and I saw her black eyes suddenly focus as if she recognized me for the first time.

“No. I will actually be married soon,
insha-Allah
.”

This was news to me.

“You have chosen someone, then?” I tried unsuccessfully to keep the disbelief out of my voice.

Fatima shrugged and looked back up at the stars.

“No. He was chosen for me.”

Now, this was definitely surprising. My heart sank at the thought that the Messenger had not shared his plans for his beloved daughter with me. I wondered if he had told Sawda. Or worse, Hafsa.

“By your father?” I asked, my voice sounding squeaky like a mouse.

“No. By God.”

And with those strange words, the mysterious girl smiled sadly and gazed back up to the heavens. I looked down at my hands and pondered her words for a moment. When I turned to ask her what she meant, the hair on my neck stood up. The street was empty. Fatima had vanished.