Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (40 page)

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 eye 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.

T
he 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.

But now she was back, come to claim the position that she had always desired and felt entitled to. She was to become the newest Mother of the Believers. Her husband, Ubaydallah, had proven feckless and weak-minded, and had abandoned Islam for the Christian faith while he stayed at the court of the Negus. Under the law of God, Ramla could not remain married to an apostate, and her divorce left her and her infant daughter, Habiba, in a precarious situation, living in a foreign land without economic support and protection.

The Messenger had heard of her predicament through the most unlikely of sources—her brother Muawiya, who had sent his friend Amr ibn al-As on a secret mission to the oasis in the aftermath of the Battle of the Trench. The Prophet had immediately agreed to take responsibility for Ramla and her child, and Muawiya himself had brought her to Medina for the wedding.

And so it was that I sat inside the spacious manor of Uthman ibn Affan, the Prophet’s gentle son-in-law, as the Messenger greeted the son and daughter of his greatest enemy. I saw many of the Companions looking at Muawiya with open distrust as he moved forward to kiss my husband’s hand. He had been a child when I last saw him and had changed greatly since then. Gone was the perpetual gloom that had followed him in youth, replaced by an energy and eagerness that was seductive.

As the grand hall was set for the wedding festivities, Uthman’s white-clad servants rushing to and fro with baskets of dates and jars of honey, Muawiya mixed easily with men who should have been his enemies. He had a natural tact and grace of movement that was disarming, and I could feel the steady heat of his gregarious charm cause the initial cloud of suspicion that hung over the room evaporate. Even Umar seemed impressed with Muawiya’s courage in coming alone to the oasis, without the retinue of bodyguards that one would expect to protect the boy who was for all intents and purposes the heir to the throne of Mecca.

As the son of Abu Sufyan, he was, of course, well aware of his potential value as a hostage, but Muawiya moved among us with the confident ease of a trusted guest rather than an open enemy. He spoke to each man as if he were an old friend rather than an adversary and even congratulated the Muslim elders on their brilliant defensive tactics that had thrown off the Meccan invasion.

I was impressed with Muawiya’s diplomatic genius. Within minutes of arriving at the oasis, he had won over many of his detractors with honeyed words and carefully calculated compliments. Watching Muawiya charm his opponents was like watching a master swordsman in action—each stroke was both beautifully executed and perfectly timed.

Ramla, for her part, had nothing to fear, for she had long earned the trust of the community, if not my own. Many had once believed that her conversion had been some kind of tactic conceived by Abu Sufyan to infiltrate the Muslim ranks. But word from Abyssinia was that she had shown commitment to the faith over the years and had proven a tactful advocate in the court of the Negus, protecting Muslim interests in the foreign land. Even I did not really doubt the sincerity of her spiritual convictions, but I hated the hungry way she looked at my husband, as if he were a prize that she had been long denied. Her bright eyes met mine and she raised an eyebrow in defiance, and I frowned. Ramla would be a true rival in the harem, one who combined beauty with a deadly sharp mind, and I knew that I would have to keep a close eye on her. And then I saw the Messenger looking at me with an amused glance as if he could read my thoughts.

My husband smiled knowingly and then turned to his young guest, who had just finished making the rounds of the Companions, healing old wounds and cementing new alliances. Muawiya turned to the Messenger and bowed his head low.

“I am honored that my sister has found such a noble match,” he said in a rich voice that was deep and masculine.

The Messenger took the youth’s hand in his and squeezed it tight.

“May this wedding be the first step in ending the long enmity between your clan and mine,” he said.

As the Prophet went to stand by his new bride, wrapped in a wedding dress of dark blue, a red-striped veil covering her dark hair, Muawiya lifted a bowl of goat’s milk in honor of the nuptials and then drank with a slow flourish.

A shadow fell over him and he looked up to see the towering form of Umar ibn al-Khattab, the man who, before his defection, had been Mecca’s greatest hope of destroying Muhammad.

“Your father must be angry that you came,” Umar said, looking closely into the eyes of the guest as if searching for any hint of deception or intrigue.

“He was livid,” Muawiya said with a broad smile filled with devilish amusement. “But I am my own man. I realize that the old ways are dying. The Quraysh must accommodate the new reality or vanish into irrelevance.”

Uthman, our kindhearted host, came up to the young man’s side and put an affectionate arm around him. Muawiya was a distant cousin of his and Uthman had always been close to the boy in his youth, before the divisions of faith had torn apart the clan of Umayya.

“You always had great foresight,” Uthman said warmly. “The river of the world is changing its course, and only the wise anticipate its new direction.”

And then I saw Ali approach. He alone among all the Companions had remained aloof, despite Muawiya’s persistent efforts to charm him.

“It is one thing to foresee the course of a river,” Ali said softly. “It is another to foresee the fate of one’s own soul.”

Silence fell over the room and I could suddenly feel the tension that had abated over the past hour reassert itself like a cold wind. Ali and Muawiya stood in the center of the room, looking at each other without speaking. Even though they were only a few feet apart, there seemed to be a divide between them that was greater than the distance between the east and the west. Between heaven and earth. Ali was from another realm, a strange bird soaring above mankind, observing but never quite participating in the world. And Muawiya was his direct opposite, a man who had mastered that world and had little interest in the ethereal dreamland that Ali called his home.

And then I saw the Messenger step between them, as if to place himself diplomatically in the path of any confrontation between these young and passionate men that would mar the wedding.

But as I saw my husband come between them, smiling graciously as he placed a hand on each man’s shoulder, I suddenly realized that there was another meaning to the scene before me. Muhammad stood between these two poles as no other man could. He was both a resident of the ethereal realms of the spirit and a master of the worldly plane, and he alone understood how to bridge the gap between these opposing realities. In the years that would come, after the Messenger had returned to his Lord, the precarious bond that he had forged between these planes would shatter, and the history of Islam would forever be a war between the soul and the flesh.

And then Muawiya turned away from Ali and the spell was broken. The Meccan prince smiled brightly at the Messenger and spoke loudly, as if intending everyone in the hall to hear his words. It was unnecessary, as there was absolute silence at that moment and his words would have carried to each corner even if they had been whispered.

“The fate of my soul I leave to the judgment of my Creator,” Muawiya said with dignity. “But this I know. Before you came, O Muhammad, none of our people ever thought about a world different from what they had experienced for centuries. A world of barbarism, cruelty, and death. But you have given them a vision that has brought them together. Forged them from warring tribes into a nation. I know of no man who could have done this without the aid of God.”

And then to everyone’s shock, Muawiya stretched out his right hand in the formal sign of allegiance, and the Prophet clasped it in his own. Muawiya knelt down and kissed the Messenger’s hand. And then he spoke the words that would change everything.

“I testify that there is no god but God, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”

The room exploded in a commotion of cries. Surprise, disbelief, and jubilation mixed together in an air of heady celebration. Abu Sufyan’s son, the heir of our greatest enemy, had embraced Islam, and in that one instant, the two forces that had torn the peninsula apart were reconciled. I felt my heart racing in excitement. Once the other tribes learned of Muawiya’s conversion, the final vestiges of support for Mecca would collapse and the war would end.

It was the thought on everyone’s mind, except perhaps for Ali, who continued to gaze down at the young man with those unreadable eyes. But Muawiya ignored his stare and kept his attention focused on the Prophet.

“If it please you, O Messenger of God, I wish to stay here and support your cause,” he said. Which was, of course, what was needed. If Muawiya settled in Medina, his superb political skills and vast network of allies would help bring order to the nascent state. With Muawiya’s crafty guidance, we would bring together the recalcitrant tribes and then wage a final battle against Mecca. We had hidden in our homes in terror so many times as the armies of Arabia came down upon us that it seemed like justice that Hind and her followers should do the same now.

And then the Messenger of God said something utterly unexpected.

“No. Return to your father and tell no one of your faith,” he said, and the rejoicing in the room stopped cold.

Muawiya’s brow wrinkled.

“I don’t understand,” he said, sharing our surprise. “I am prepared to shed the blood of my father’s men so that you may be triumphant.”

“You will prepare the way,” the Messenger said gently. “The day is coming,
insha-Allah,
when we will meet in Mecca. But there will be no bloodshed.”

Muawiya appeared confused, but he lowered his head in acceptance. I saw his cousin Uthman give the Prophet a grateful look. The destruction of Mecca’s forces would mean the annihilation of Uthman’s own clan, and the softhearted nobleman was clearly delighted that the Prophet intended to find another way to retake the city.

The room now buzzed with a flood of conversation, as Companions and their wives talked animatedly, trying to understand what the Prophet’s words meant. And then Uthman rose and clapped his hands to end the sudden tumult of conversation.

“Come, my friends, let us feast, for there is much to celebrate tonight.”