The Jewel Of Medina Read online

  Umar eyed my sword dangling on my belt, and held out his hand for it. “We will not have children fighting on the battlefield, especially females.”

  Give up my sword? I’d have rather handed him my arm. But the men around us were watching. Defying one of Muhammad’s commanders would be an ill-omened start for the battle. So I pulled my child’s sword from its sheath and handed it to Umar, then trudged up the hill to the tents.

  Hafsa came over to join me. Since our fight I’d worked hard to gain her forgiveness, and she finally seemed to be warming to me.

  “Did you think my father was going to let you join the battle? He didn’t want any women here.”

  “He’s afraid I’ll outfight him,” I grumbled.

  The Qurayshi army spread like a swarm of locusts over the sand, dwarfing us. The drum of my pulse filled my ears, and sweat trickled down my back. By al-Lah, how would our puny army escape annihilation? In the front and center of their force stood Abu Sufyan, fat as ever, moistening his lips with his thick tongue and showing his yellow teeth in a grin. Bile rose in my throat and I glanced wildly around for a sword to replace the one Umar had taken away. Please, al-Lah, give me the chance to kill him today.

  On Abu Sufyan’s right a young fighter threw hostile glares over a beard that reached almost to his navel. On his left, Khalid ibn al-Walid, the famous Qurayshi fighter, sat astride a dark horse, his back as straight as a standard and the scar on his cheek livid.

  Abu Sufyan stepped forward and raised his hands to silence his troops. Gradually, the din of their murmurs and clanking armor faded. Our army stood in perfect formation, not even twitching an eye.

  “Men of Medina!” Abu Sufyan called. “Members of the Aws and Khazraj tribes. We have no quarrel with you. You are not the ones who raid our caravans and steal our gold and silver. You are not the ones trying to destroy our city by demeaning our gods. We have come to fight Muhammad, son of Abdallah ibn al-Muttalib, and the men of Mecca who follow him.

  “You see the size of our army. We have many Bedouin fighters with us, bloodthirsty warriors. You have a puny handful of ragtag soldiers without armor or horses. Is this man Muhammad worth losing your lives for? Because we will kill you all, if that is what it takes to reach him. Yaa Khazraj, go home! Go home, Aws! It is not your blood—”

  Before he could finish his speech, the ansari, or “Helpers,” as we called the Aws and Khazraj, began to shout back at him.

  “We will never leave our Prophet!” some cried.

  “Long live Muhammad, Messenger of al-Lah!” others said. Pride swelled my chest. Sawdah, who had joined Hafsa and me, sniffled and wiped a tear from her cheek.

  “Al-Lah bless the Helpers,” she said. “They love us more than our own relatives do.”

  The fight began, and we raced onto the field, tying our bandage-cloths about our waists and toting water skins. At first we stood idle, for our warriors proved impenetrable, clustered on the field as they had at Badr, keeping the Qurayshi army from bursting through to the mountain. The Qurayshi hurled themselves at us in great waves, but our unity was a cliff they couldn’t scale. We women cheered as they fell back again and again—with fewer numbers each time. We had good reason to exult: If Quraysh succeeded in destroying our army here, they’d push on to Medina and kill the men who remained, then make slaves of us women and children. Their goal was to rid Hijaz of Muhammad, the umma, and islam. Our goal was to survive. And so far, it looked as though we might prevail.

  On the sidelines, Abu Sufyan’s shrewd-eyed wife Hind rattled her tambourine and urged her side to keep fighting. She and three or four other women wearing silk and lace—a mark of their high status in Mecca—ululated and sang: If you advance we hug you, spread soft rugs beneath you. If you retreat we leave you, never more to love you.

  The pounding of drums joined the rattle and song—or so it seemed at first. Then we realized the noise we heard was the Qurayshi cavalry. Warriors on horseback thundered up, intending to trample our men. I clutched Hafsa’s arm, my every muscle tensed, my eyes bulging with fright. They were coming directly toward us, and, unlike the infantry, their horses wouldn’t distinguish between warriors and nurses as they ran us down. The whiz of arrows over our heads made us duck and I shrieked, trembling, as I waited to be struck from behind or crushed by hooves. But our archers on the pass above us hurled their arrows across impossibly long distances to pierce the eyes of the Qurayshi horses. The riders tumbled down with their screaming animals. Relief flooded our limbs and we cried and laughed and called out thanks to al-Lah. Soon the corpses of Qurayshi, Bedouins, and beasts littered the sand, filling the air with the smell of blood, and the Qurayshi army was running away across the desert, abandoning their camels. I jumped around, hugging Hafsa and Sawdah and weeping with joy. Praise be to al-Lah! We had won.

  Cheers filled the battlefield. Our men raised their swords and ran after the Meccans, cocky, laughing and calling out insults. When they reached the Qurayshi camels, though, they abandoned the chase and began stripping the animals of their goods. They tore open saddlebags and spilled rice on the ground. They broke the necks off wine bottles and guzzled the contents. They seized daggers and swords and stuffed their mouths with fruit and dried meat. And then, with exuberant shouts, the archers spilled down from the pass to share in the booty.

  “Watch your backs!” I shouted, waving my hands in the air. “What are you doing, you greedy fools?” My elation turned to panic and I began to scream Muhammad’s name, but he was nowhere in sight.

  The Qurayshi army had not retreated. The clamor of hoof beats shook the earth behind me and with a flailing pulse I watched Khalid ibn al-Walid lead his cavalry around the back of the mountain and up to the abandoned pass. I and Hafsa yelled until our throats were raw, but no one on the battlefield could hear us—and then the Qurayshi had outflanked our men. Our fighters turned with full mouths to see the Meccan troops rushing down Mount Uhud like an avalanche, headed directly toward them. Before they could lift their swords they were falling, spilling wine and blood on the desert floor. Clutching my bag of salves I ran toward them, not letting myself think of the arrows raining to the ground about me. My heart skittered as I dodged the angry-eyed men raising daggers and swords, knowing they would not harm me purposefully but also knowing that, in the rage of war, accidents could happen.

  In less than the time it takes to tell the tale, the stars had realigned themselves. Victorious only a moment earlier, every Muslim on the field now battled for his life. While bandaging the head wound of my groaning neighbor Hamal, I saw the mighty general Hamza fall, and heard the delighted scream of Hind, whose father and brother he had killed at Badr. Crossing the field in search of Hafsa, I saw Muhammad’s milk-brother, Abdallah, stumble to his knees with an arrow in his shoulder. His wife Umm Salama ran past us and caught him in her arms—and then we were all running, looking for our loved ones, our husbands and brothers and sons, with prayers in our hearts. I scanned the field for Muhammad. Oh please let him be alive. I saw Safwan slashing his way through a tangle of Qurayshi, his sword work sloppy, impulsive and angry. Muhammad had taught me to ignore emotions when I fought. Think only, and cast aside your feelings, he would say.

  But where was Muhammad? His horse ran untethered, its eyes rolling, away from the carnage. I ran to Abdallah, who had been fighting alongside him. His wife, Umm Salama was tearing her gown and tying the cloth around his gushing arm.

  “We were fighting below the pass when Quraysh attacked,” he said. “They threw rocks and slung arrows at us, aiming at Muhammad. I would have battled on, but the arrow paralyzed my arm. Talha sent me to the well for water. Then I grew dizzy.”

  My heart clamoring, I ran across the empty sands to the well in the shadow of the great, foreboding Uhud. There the skinny, pointy-nosed Hind, who had forsworn her tambourine, held the water pail in her hands and refused it to our women.

  “You prevented kept our men from quenching their thirsts at Badr, but now we are in control,” she said with
a cackle. Her narrow face and cunning eyes reminded me of a jackal’s. I wished for my sword, then: I would have loved to cut off her hands.

  “Hand me that bucket,” I snarled, “or I’ll take it from you.”

  Her laugh was like a shriek, high-pitched and harsh. “You are Muhammad’s little whore, are you not?” she said. “I don’t know why you are in a hurry. Your husband is dead.”

  “Liar!” I lunged forward and grabbed the bucket, then slammed it into her with all my might. The force knocked her to the ground, where she gasped for air. The women of the umma crowded around me, ladling water into their skins. After I’d filled mine, I lifted the bucket to drop it back into the hole. But as Hind’s cronies aided her to her feet, I turned the pail on its side and jerked it toward her, splashing the remaining water in her face and on her clothes. The women around me laughed, and we scurried back toward the field to help our men.

  “Laugh while you can!” Hind shrieked after us. “Soon Quraysh will be howling with laughter as we devour the livers of your pitiful fighters—including your precious Prophet!”

  Panic gripped me with cold hands as I careened about the field, looking for Muhammad. Was he truly dead? Yet, if he had been killed, wouldn’t we hear the Qurayshi shouting in victory? As if in response, the jubilant cries of our enemies echoed off the rocks. On the field, the Meccans cheered and raised their flag, and seized one another’s beards.

  “It is done!” Abu Sufyan bellowed from atop the pass. “Muhammad is dead! Praise Hubal! We have vanquished the traitors forever!”

  The shouts of the Qurayshi pounded like fists against my ears, but I refused to listen. He couldn’t be dead! Al-Lah wouldn’t let it happen. Ali was protecting him, and also my cousin Talha. Please, al-Lah, guard him from harm. Holding the water skin in my hands, I ran, dodging men and rocks and wiry brush clinging to the dry hills. Crying Muhammad’s name, seeking him in the roil of dust and flailing horses’ hooves. Imagining him broken and bleeding on the ground. Gagging at the metallic stench of hot blood, the acrid odor of vomit, the tang of shit. I wiped my tears with the backs of my hands so I could see. One of the ansari motioned to me for water—before a dagger pierced his throat. His eyes bulged, and blood bubbled from his mouth. I watched, paralyzed, as he fell. I looked up to see his attacker running toward me, grinning. He was a Bedouin, judging from his long headdress, with a nose as big as a fist. I grabbed the dead man’s sword and raised it, snarling—and the Bedouin retreated.

  I climbed the hill and scanned the writhe and thrust of bodies, alert for Muhammad’s profile, his double chain-mail suit, the gleam of his helmet. A horse reared next to me but, alerted by God, I ducked my head and narrowly missed the splitting of my scalp by sharp hooves. I climbed, and spotted Ali’s double-bladed sword flashing in the sun. For once in my life, I thrilled to see him. Muhammad could not be far away.

  Then I spotted him on the ground, at Ali’s feet. Blood spattered his face, and his eyes were closed. I cried out, but no one heard me. Qurayshi attackers flung themselves with growls and snarls against the group defending Muhammad: Ali, Talha, Umar, my father, and—I caught my breath—Umm ‘Umara, an ansari woman I knew from the public baths, running her sword through the belly of one attacker and yanking it free to fling blood into the eyes of the man behind him. Her dark hair flew; her eyes blazed; her mouth was a rictus of ferocity. My heart sang at the sight of her, fearsome and snarling and covered in dirt and blood, as glorious a sight as I’d ever seen.

  Emboldened by her courage, I thrust myself through the melee, unnoticed by the fighters, glad for once to be small, needing to reach Muhammad. As much as I longed to be in Umm ‘Umara’s place someday, my thoughts were for him only at that moment. I dropped to his side and ripped a strip of cloth from my robe, wet it with the water in my water skin, and, with trembling hands, dabbed the blood from his face.

  “Open your eyes,” I begged. “Look at me, habib. Please be alive! Yaa alLah, let him live, I beg you!”

  Muhammad lay still. His eyes remained shut. I heard a cry and looked up to see Talha drop his sword, clutching his hand, and fall into the pit our men had built to trap Qurayshi fighters. I wanted to leap up and help him, but how could I leave Muhammad? I crouched beside my husband with my sword drawn, daring anyone to approach him.

  But no one remained to fight us. Above us on the pass, Abu Sufyan announced the death of Muhammad and the victory of the Quraysh.

  “Al-Lah is dead!” he cried. “Long live Hubal! Long live Quraysh!”

  I clutched my sword. Ali waved his in the air. “Let me go and silence that loudmouth once and for all,” he said, but my father shook his head.

  “You know what the Prophet says: We fight only when we are attacked. This battle is finished.”

  I heard a moan, and looked down to see Muhammad’s eyes slowly open. Relief washed over me like a rain-soaked breeze.

  “Praise al-Lah, he lives!” I called.

  My face was the first sight he saw, my hand the first he squeezed. “My angel of mercy,” he said. “Am I in Paradise?”

  I laughed through my tears. “You won’t get away from us that easily,” I said. “Al-Lah still has work for you to do.”

  He raised his fingers to feel the bandage I had wrapped around his head, and, wincing, touched the links of chain-mail embedded in his cheek.

  “Yaa Prophet, please allow me to remove those,” an ansari man said. “I promise you will not feel pain.”

  He lowered his mouth to Muhammad’s cheek and began to suck. Soon he had pulled out first one of the rings, then the second.

  “He has tasted your blood, cousin.” Ali glared at the Helper.

  Muhammad smiled. “So he has,” he said. “Yaa Ubaydah, you have guaranteed yourself a place in heaven. No one who has tasted the Prophet’s blood can be touched by Hell-fire.”

  “Some people will do anything to get close to him,” Ali grumbled as we all headed down the mountain. “I could have removed those rings with my fingers.”

  The ansari man heard him and frowned. “Don’t listen to him,” I said. “Ali hates to see Muhammad favor anyone besides him.”

  “Why are you here, A’isha?” Ali said. “Didn’t Umar tell you to remain at the camp?”

  “She does not obey her own husband,” Umar said. “Why would she listen to me?”

  Safwan caught up to us then. “Yaa A’isha, I saw you frighten off that Bedouin,” he said. “I was ready to save you.”

  I didn’t return his gaze, but heat flooded my face. What if Umar or Ali noticed the familiar way he looked at me?

  “I can save myself,” I said, keeping my eyes lowered.

  Ululations pierced the air like daggers. On the battlefield below us, a bedraggled Hind stood amid the steaming carnage, her eyes bulging as if they might burst from their sockets, her graying hair frizzing about her head, her deep-blue robe—the color of mourning—billowing outward as she thrust her arms upward. One hand clutched something dark.

  “Yaa Muhammad, we’ve now repaid you for the battle of Badr!” she screeched. “Your uncle Hamza, the so-called ‘Lion of al-Lah,’ murderer of my father and my brother, is dead!” We watched as she lowered the dark thing, purple and dripping, to her lips.

  “By al-Lah, is she possessed by a djinni? What is she doing?” I whispered.

  “Hind vowed to eat Hamza’s liver in revenge for Badr.” Muhammad’s voice was calm, but his eyes filled with tears for his beloved uncle. “Apparently she has not forgotten that promise.”

  As she bit into the wiggling liver, I fought the urge to retch. Then, when she doubled over and vomited into the dust I had to look away, fearing I might do the same.

  “Let me kill her.” Ali pulled his sword out of his sheath. “Al-Lah would rejoice to send her to Hell.”

  “Put away your sword, Ali. Do you never tire of fighting? The battle has ended.” Muhammad spoke in a pale, weak voice. “If al-Lah wants Hind to die, He will kill her Himself.”

  TO MAKE A MAN
WILD

  MEDINA, APRIL 625

  The journey from Uhud to Medina isn’t a long one—only half a day by caravan—but our return home in defeat seemed to drag like the tail of a whipped dog through the sand. The deaths of sixty-five men weighted our steps and our tongues, stifling our talk.

  We’d buried the fallen warriors at the base of Uhud the night before—while I sneaked glances at the glorious Umm ‘Umara, noting her simple dress, the strong, sure way she carried herself, her long stride. Muhammad had declared the dead to be heroes, martyrs for islam who would find great rewards in Paradise. Yet the ceremony was anything but jubilant. We knew many had died ingloriously, the victims of greed and wine and impulsive behavior. Muhammad’s response to the battle at Uhud was to forbid his followers to drink wine. Mine was to examine my own behavior, particularly where Safwan was concerned.

  Ever since the incident in the market, Ali had been watching me closely, looking for some way to discredit me in Muhammad’s eyes. In that way, he might step into my father’s place as chief Companion to the Prophet of God.

  As a married woman—and a prominent one—I was extremely vulnerable to gossip, especially concerning Safwan. Talking with another man even in the most casual way could cause speculation about me. “Why does she not walk away?” people would say. “A woman’s lowered eyes and murmured responses only encourage a man.”

  I returned to the mosque with a vow in my heart: I’d forget about Safwan, who was nothing to me now, and focus on Muhammad, my husband and friend. After this defeat, he’d need me now more than ever.

  But when Muhammad married again just a couple of days later, I found it hard to worry about him or anyone else but myself.

  Zainab bint Khuzainah was no great beauty, but she was no donkey, either. She possessed some promising features: hair the color of burnt honey, a deep dimple in her chin, and a complexion as clear as the first light of day, although as pale and fragile-looking as an egg. As Hafsa and I agreed, she could have been quite lovely—with a little effort.