Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam (5 page)

He looked down at Asma, his loyal daughter, who had chosen him and his faith even over her own mother, and squeezed her tiny hand. She was strong, stronger than he would have been in her position. He had torn their family apart with his decision to follow Muhammad, and she had never complained. Abu Bakr had always been close to his own parents, and he had found it beyond comprehension how his young friend Muhammad had endured the horrific loss of his beloved mother, Amina, when he was only six years old. Abu Bakr’s heart was heavy with the knowledge that he had orphaned Asma once already by renouncing Qutaila. And now, with Umm Ruman’s impending death, the child would be doubly motherless.

He looked around the antechamber where they waited for the screams to abruptly end and the midwife to emerge with her dreaded tidings. It was well furnished, as befitted a prosperous merchant of Quraysh. Thick rugs imported from Persia covered the marble floors. The stone walls were whitewashed and held many trophies and trinkets from his travels on the caravan routes. Silver plates from Syria, their tiles swirling in intricate geometric designs, lined one wall, while another was covered in an assortment of swords and daggers from Byzantium, their hilts embedded with precious emeralds and rubies. The arched windows were covered in thick curtains made from Abyssinian cotton. Couches covered in rich silk brocade had entertained many nobles from Mecca and beyond in the years past, although now that Abu Bakr’s true beliefs were known, he was likely to have few such visitors in the future.

Abu Bakr was by every account a wealthy man, but he would readily trade all the gold in his coffers for a miracle tonight.

Perhaps sensing his thoughts, Talha touched his shoulder.

“Let us pray the
Fatiha
. Perhaps it will be of help,” the boy said softly.

Abu Bakr looked at the sensitive young man and then at his brave little daughter, and nodded.

The three believers stood in a circle, their hands upraised to heaven in humble supplication, and recited in unison the Seven Oft-Repeated Verses that the believers read daily in their prayers:

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds

The Merciful, the Compassionate

King of the Day of Judgment

You alone do we worship, and Your aid alone do we seek.

Show us the Straight Path

The path of those who incur Your favor

Not the path of those who earn Your wrath

Nor of those who go astray.

Abu Bakr, Talha, and Asma recited the prayer out loud, their voices melding in lyrical unison. They repeated it again, and a third time. Perhaps it was Abu Bakr’s imagination, but each time he recited the sacred verses, the cries from the adjoining room seemed to lessen in intensity.

Again and again they repeated the holy words. And then, at the seventh recitation, a silence fell over the house, a quiet so sudden and so complete that Abu Bakr’s heart chilled. Umm Ruman was dead.

Tears welled in his eyes, and his heart started pounding. She was his strength, his soul. How could he live without her? He realized that Asma was now crying openly, but he found he could not move to comfort her.

Talha moved to take the weeping child out of the room, to leave Abu Bakr to the privacy of his grief.

And then they heard it. A strange, impossible, glorious sound.

The cry of a baby.

Abu Bakr raised his head and stared at the door to the birthing chamber. There was silence again. Had he imagined it? And then the child wailed louder and he felt a burst of light illuminate his heart, like the sun emerging from behind the empty blackness of an eclipse.

Talha looked up at him in wonder. And Asma laughed, clapping her hands with the unfettered delight that only a child can know.

Abu Bakr felt his legs go weak, and he grabbed hold of an intricately carved chair made from Iraqi cypress. And then he stumbled forward and threw tradition to the wind. He flung open the door to the forbidden chamber and rushed inside.

Umm Ruman was still seated on the sharply angled birthing chair, her tunic covered in blood and the fluids of childbirth. Her face was sickly pale, but her eyes were open and alert. And she breathed deeply, like a woman trapped at the bottom of a well longing for air. She was alive!

Abu Bakr looked at her in wonder and she smiled weakly. He would remember that smile in years to come, when the storm clouds that had been gathering would be unleashed and the armies of men and the devil would seek to destroy the believers. It would give him strength and hope and power to battle on in the cause of God and His Messenger. For in a cruel world where the only certainty was death, their way was the way of life.

The child’s cries turned his head and Abu Bakr looked at the midwife, who had just finished washing the baby and had wrapped it in a green swaddling cloth. Amal’s face was haggard and she looked as if she herself had endured the pangs of childbirth. She looked up at him and nodded a greeting, the lines of her mouth too tired to form into a smile.

“I give you glad tidings of a girl,” she said weakly. Abu Bakr saw the strain in her face and worried that she barely had the strength to hold the precious baby. He moved to take the child into his arms, and the midwife did not protest.

Abu Bakr took hold of the tiny child as Talha and Asma tentatively entered the birthing chamber. He looked down at the wrinkled face and ran a finger across the girl’s cheeks, pink like a rose blossom. His daughter had a healthy brush of hair, a fiery red that glittered like copper in the pale torchlight. As Abu Bakr held his child, he realized that she was a true miracle—the first child to be born into the new religion. He wanted his first words to her to impart the truth he had come to believe with all his heart. He bent down carefully and whispered into the infant’s ears the formula of faith:
There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God
.

The child opened her eyes for the first time at the sound of his words. Abu Bakr caught his breath. She had eyes unlike any he had ever seen before. Golden, like those of a lion, they seemed to glow with their own fire.

He felt rather than saw Asma step up behind him, and he turned to her.

“Come, see your sister,” he said to his daughter, who looked down nervously at the little girl. Asma hesitated and then bent down to kiss the baby on its forehead. Abu Bakr turned to Umm Ruman, who weakly reached out to him. He moved to show their daughter to his wife, when the midwife made a cry of alarm.

“Manat protect us! The tidings are ill!” Amal squawked unexpectedly.

Abu Bakr looked over to see the midwife staring out of a small window facing east. Her eyes were wide, and she was slapping her head furiously in the ancient gesture of grief and terror.

“What’s the matter?” Abu Bakr asked sharply.

“The baby…she is born under a dark star,” Amal said. She pointed out the window to a constellation that was rising on the eastern horizon. It was a swirling cluster of lights, with the ominous red star Antares pulsating in its center.

Al-Akrab. The Scorpion. To the pagan Arabs, the stars of the zodiac were gods in their own right, beings that ruled men’s affairs from the heavens and set their destinies at birth. And al-Akrab was the lord of death.

Before Abu Bakr could react, Amal rushed to his side, her eyes wide with fear.

“The child…cast it into the desert…bury it under stones before it can wreak its havoc!” she said, her voice frantic, her leathery face contorted with a kind of madness.

Abu Bakr felt his fury rise. He pushed Amal away from him forcefully.

“Get away from my daughter!” he said with terrifying ferocity. A mild and restrained man by nature, his anger was a rare and terrible thing to behold. Even Asma shrank back at the sudden rage in his voice.

Talha quickly moved forward and put a steady hand on the agitated midwife. “Do not utter your blasphemies in this house, which God has blessed.”

But Amal ignored the boy.

“She is a curse…wherever she will go, chaos and death will follow her,” Amal said, her eyes brimming with the intensity of her superstitious belief. “Slay her now, before the wrath of the gods is kindled!”

Abu Bakr held the baby closer to his heart, which was pounding with anger.

“I will slay your gods instead, and the wrath of the One will be kindled against your lies for all time!” Abu Bakr’s voice boomed with such power and authority that Amal was struck speechless.

He turned to Talha, his eyes burning with righteous indignation.

“Pay this midwife what she is due, and then let her not darken my doorstep again,” he said.

Talha pulled the trembling woman away and led her out of the birthing chamber. She bowed her head and did not struggle with him, nor did she make any move to take the gold dirham that he offered her. He finally pushed it into her hand and closed her fingers around it.

As Talha pushed Amal out the door, she looked up at him with her dark eyes, which now shone with the frenzy that he had seen among the
kahina
s, the medicine women of the desert whom the foolish people consulted for their oracles.

“The child will lead you to your death someday,” Amal said softly.

Alas, poor Talha, how I wish he had but listened to her portent!

But he only looked at her with contempt.

“If that is the will of Allah, I will happily embrace it.”

His confident response surprised the woman, who suddenly looked confused and lost. Who were these strange people who ignored the ancient traditions of the gods and put their trust in a God that no one could see or hear or touch? She turned and gazed out across the stone settlements of Mecca as if seeing the city for the first time. Amal looked up at the stars for an answer but found none.

“The child is the beginning of the end,” she whispered. “It is all ending. Everything. And I cannot see what will take its place.”

Talha looked at the strange woman and shook his head.

“The Truth,” he said simply, before closing the door on the midwife.

Talha returned to find Abu Bakr leaning close to Umm Ruman, who now held the swaddled baby in her arms. The drama of the midwife appeared to be forgotten amid the family’s joy at her safe delivery.

He went up to his kinsman and smiled.

“The madwoman is gone,” he said.

Abu Bakr looked up at him and shook his head.

“She was not mad,” he said softly. “This little girl
will
bring death.”

Talha was stunned by these words.

“I don’t understand” was all he could say.

Abu Bakr stroked his newborn daughter’s soft cheek gently.

“She will bring death to ignorance, which will allow the light of knowledge to be born,” he said simply.

Abu Bakr took the girl from Umm Ruman and held her close.

“In a world of idolatry, she is the first to be born a believer,” he said softly. “She has already conquered death and has brought life.” He gazed into the child’s golden eyes, which were alert and seemed to exhibit an ancient intelligence.

“I will name her Aisha,” Abu Bakr said.

A name that Talha knew in the old language meant “She Lives.”

M
y first real memory is the day I witnessed death.

Ever since that day, I have been blessed—and cursed—with perfect memory. I can recall words said forty years ago as if they had been uttered this morning. The scent of a moment is forever impressed on my heart, as if I live outside time, and every moment of my life is now. The Messenger, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, used to say that I was chosen for that reason. That his words and deeds would be remembered for all time through me, the one he loved the most.

But there is a darkness behind every gift, like the veil of night that remains hidden behind the sun, waiting patiently for its moment to cast the world in gloom. My gift of memory is like that. For even as I can remember every moment of joy, every instant of laughter in my life, I can also remember the pain with absolute clarity. There are those who say time heals all wounds, but that is not so for me. Every wound I have suffered, I relive with terrifying precision, as if the knife, once embedded in my heart, leaves behind a shard of crystal sharpness ready to cut me again should I turn my thoughts in its direction.

It is that perfect memory that has made me the most prized recounter of
hadith,
the tales of the Prophet’s life and teaching to be recorded for future generations of believers.

And it is that perfect memory that brought war upon my people and splintered our nation forever.

But every memory, even one as pristine as my own, must begin in earnest one day. Mine begins the day of the great Pilgrimage. My father had decided that I was old enough to attend the annual ritual, where tribes from all over Arabia descended on the arid valley of Mecca to worship at the House of God.

I ran shoeless out of the house when Abu Bakr called, and my father sternly sent me back, telling me that I could not accompany him unless I wore the tiny blue sandals he had bought from Yemeni traders earlier that summer. I pouted and stamped my feet, but Abu Bakr simply raised his eyebrows and refused to open the gate until I hung my head and sullenly went back inside in search of them.

I hunted through the house, trying to remember where I had thrown them in one of my tantrums earlier that morning. I searched in my small bedroom, beneath the tiny cot with its knotted rope fibers supporting the soft Egyptian cotton mattress. I looked through the mountain of dolls and toys that were piled in a corner, throwing the little wooden and rag figures everywhere and making a mess that my mother would assuredly chide me for later that day. But that inevitable reckoning did not concern me, a young girl who only cared for the moment. The future, as every child knows, is little more than make-believe. All that ever exists, all that ever matters, is now.

Frowning, I ran out of her bedchamber and looked in the main sitting room, underneath the emerald brocaded couches from Persia that were among the few luxuries that still remained inside our home. My mother told me that our house used to be filled with beautiful and expensive furnishings in the Days of Ignorance but that Abu Bakr had sold most of his worldly goods since I was born, dedicating his wealth to the spread of the Truth. I always wondered why spreading the Truth should be expensive, since it was obvious and free to all, but when I asked Umm Ruman once, my mother gave me the stern glance that was her practiced response to my litany of impertinent queries.

Looking around in frustration, I suddenly saw a hint of blue in a corner. I ran over, my crimson hair flying behind me. There they were! My Yemeni sandals were tucked behind an intricate vase that my mother said was made in a faraway city called Damascus. I paused to admire the swirling floral designs in carnelian, citrine, and olive that circled the ivory vase in crisscrossing patterns.

Umm Ruman had taught me the names of the different blooms depicted on the vase—hyacinths, jasmine and lotus—flowers that grew in faraway cities with mysterious names like Aksum, Babylon, and Persepolis. I loved flowers, but so few grew in the hot desert sun. I had yelped with delight a month before when I had found a small
abal
bush growing in a gulley just outside the perimeter of the holy precinct, at the base of the sacred hill of Safa. I had plucked its red, lantern-shaped blooms, which I had seen the older girls use to rouge their cheeks, but its thorns had torn into my tiny palm and I had run home crying.

My mother had gently removed the needles from my hand and salved the little wounds with dried sap from the thornbushes that grew in our courtyard. After drying my tears, Umm Ruman had gently chided me for wandering so far away from home. From now on, I was to play only within sight of their house. Mecca was a dangerous city for little girls…especially girls whose families supported the heretic Prophet in its midst.

I remembered her words as I grabbed the sandals and slipped them on. They were pretty enough, with little white stars woven though the tiny blue throngs, but I didn’t like them. Although other girls were obsessed with shoes, spending hours in silly talk about the merits of various designs, the newest fashions arriving on caravans from north and south, I found shoes to be an irritant. Instead, I loved the tingly feeling of the warm sand on my bare feet, even the tiny pricks caused by the pebbles that littered the streets of the ancient city. Shoes made me feel restricted and caged, like one of the goats my father had kept in a pen behind the old stone house in preparation for the sacrifice at the apex of the Pilgrimage.

I ran back to my father, who was still waiting by the gate. Seeing the look of mild irritation on his face at the delay, I quickly kicked up my feet and showed off the little shoes, and then danced an excited jig around him, until his stern face broke into an exasperated smile. I always knew how to melt Abu Bakr’s serious mood. I was too full of life to allow others the luxury of gloom.

My father took my hand and together we walked through the dusty streets of Mecca. Smoke rose from the chimneys of hundreds of small stone cottages and mud-brick huts, clustered together in expanding concentric circles around the central plaza known as
Al-Haram
—the Sanctuary. As we walked toward the heart of the city I saw children racing through the streets, chasing one another or a variety of animals—goats, lambs, and a few wayward chickens—that had escaped their pens.

I also saw dozens of beggars, mainly women and bastard children who had been abandoned by their fathers. They held out their hands, their pathetic cries for compassion largely ignored. My father handed an old woman a gold dirham. Her eyes went wide in shock at his generosity, for she had come to expect little more than a copper piece accompanied by a grudging look. We were suddenly surrounded by what appeared to be every beggar in town, their hands reaching out for this source of bounty. I was frightened by this excited crowd of young and old, dressed in rags and smelling worse than the rabid dogs that prowled the streets at night. But Abu Bakr was patient with them, handing to each a single gold coin from his leather purse until he had nothing left.

They followed him through the streets, pleading for more, but my father simply smiled and shook his head.

“I will be back tomorrow with more,
insha-Allah,
” he said, using the phrase “if God wills” that was a signature of the Muslims. The Messenger had taught us that we should say
insha-Allah
whenever we spoke of the future, even if referring to events only an hour away. It kept man humble and forced him to acknowledge that he was not solely the master of his destiny.

My father managed to slip away from the more persistent and aggressive of the beggars, pulling me into a side alley and taking a circuitous route to the Sanctuary. We were now in the oldest section of the city, whose buildings were said to have stood for hundreds of years, since the earliest tribes had settled the valley. The ancient houses looked like grand towers to me, but in truth most were ramshackle constructions of wood and stone, few rising higher than a second story. I could see people standing on rooftop terraces, their eyes on the horizon as the steady stream of Bedouin pilgrims emerged from the dead hills in search of Mecca’s gods—and its life-giving wells. My eyes went wide as I watched the strangers ride by, their camels covered in colorful mats of wool and leather, their faces cracked and blackened by years of harsh work under the unforgiving sun.

My father sensed I was dawdling and he pulled forward with a gentle tug until we had cleared the narrow stone alleys and stepped onto the red sand that marked the boundaries of the Sanctuary. The plaza was spread open in a wide circle and my eyes immediately fell on the Kaaba, the grand temple that was the heart of Mecca and all of Arabia. Shaped like a majestic cube, it towered forty feet above the ground and was the tallest building in the settlement. The granite walls were covered in a variety of rich curtains of wool, cotton, even silk—crimson, emerald, and sky blue—that were brought by tribes from every corner of Arabia to mark their Pilgrimage to the sacred house.

As we approached the Kaaba, I saw my father frown. The plaza was covered with a bewildering collection of idols, stone and wood icons that represented the various gods of the desert tribes. There were 360 in all, one for each day of the year. Some were elegantly fashioned, chiseled in marble to an almost lifelike representation of a man or an animal—lions, wolves, and jackals seemed particularly popular. But others were little more than misshapen clumps of rock that required much imagination before any semblance of recognizable form could be imputed to them.

My eyes fell on two large rocks that looked vaguely like a man and woman entwined in the act of love. My friends had giggled and told me that they were once two romantics named Isaf and Naila who had consummated their lust in the Kaaba and had been turned to stone for defiling the Sanctuary. I was not sure why these two sinners who had been punished for their indiscretion should now be worshiped as gods, but they were apparently quite popular, and many young men and women bowed before them and tied tiny strings in the nooks and crannies, praying for the deities to win them the heart of their beloved, or at least bring ill fortune to their rivals in the game of love.

“Barbarism,” my father uttered under his breath. He grimaced at the sight of middle-aged women kneeling before a red-flecked rock shaped like a pregnant woman with bulbous breasts and hips. This was Uzza, one of three “daughters of Allah” who were worshiped by the pagans. She was said to be the goddess of fertility, and her favor was much sought after by those who wished to conceive. The women, their eyes brimming with hope and despair, tore open their tunics and rubbed their naked breasts against the cold stone, pleading in loud wails for Uzza to reverse the course of time, to begin their cycles again so that they could bear the children that had been denied them.

I was fascinated by these strange rituals, but my father pulled me away and led me toward the Kaaba. A crowd of hundreds of pilgrims was steadily circumambulating the House of God, moving like the stars around the earth, circling seven times while praising Allah, the Creator of the Universe. The pilgrims were dressed in a variety of robes reflecting their wealth and social power, with the tribal chiefs wrapped in silk and endowed with glittering jewels commanding the right to walk closest to the temple, while others encircled at the outskirts in filthy rags—and a few even danced around the Kaaba naked.

“Don’t look at them,” my father warned sternly as my eyes fell on these hairy nude men, their organs hanging like the sagging genitals of a dog in the open. I giggled, but a stern look from Abu Bakr forced me to hide my amusement. We walked around the holy house at a steady pace, while my father prayed aloud for the mercy of God on his wayward and ignorant people.

When we finished the sacred rite, my father, who was now drenched in sweat from the noon sun, led me away from the Kaaba and guided me to a blue pavilion at the outskirts of the Sanctuary. Under the merciful shade of the tent was the well of Zamzam, which had provided the city with a steady supply of water since the days of the first settlers. Its miraculous existence in the middle of an otherwise dead wilderness had made Mecca a necessary stop for all trading caravans that traveled between the fertile lands of Yemen to the south and Syria to the north.

This strategic location and life-giving water supply had brought much prosperity to the city’s traders—but not for most others. For the merchants of Mecca believed in only one rule—the survival of the strong. Those who were smart enough to take advantage of the opportunities provided by trade deserved to lord their wealth over others. Those too weak to do so best hurry up and die, freeing up the resources they left behind for those who were more worthy. It was this heartless mind-set that the Messenger of God had challenged, and his calls for economic justice and redistribution of Mecca’s wealth were a direct threat to the philosophy of the city’s ruling class.

As we joined the line of thirsty pilgrims eager for a drink of the sacred water, I saw a newly arrived caravan of Bedouin pilgrims approach the Sanctuary. Their leader, his face scarred and his beard dyed red, disembarked from a gray camel and helped the others of his clan climb off their horses and mules. Their faces had the dark complexions and high cheekbones of the men of Yemen, and I realized even at my tender age that they must have traveled at least twenty days in the harsh desert to attend the Pilgrimage. Their faces were covered in coarse sand that was turning into mud under rivers of perspiration.

As I watched them, I saw a tall man dressed in rich silk robes approach them, a blue turban on his head. Abu Sufyan was not the king of Mecca, but he certainly acted like it. He walked with a royal flourish, his hands held wide in welcome of the new arrivals. Beside him I saw a short boy of about fifteen years of age with a hooked nose and unblinking black eyes that made him look like a hawk. Muawiya, Abu Sufyan’s son, was more reserved than his expressive father and looked over the newcomers with shrewd appraisal. I sensed that he was calculating their wealth and value to Meccan trade even as his father embraced the Bedouin leader as if he were a long-lost relative.