The Jewel Of Medina Read online

  “By al-Lah, hasn’t she ever heard of rouge? Or kohl?” Hafsa said as we watched the wedding guests greeting Muhammad and his bride, who was better known as Umm al-Masakin, the “Mother of the Poor.”

  “Those little rabbit-eyes of hers really need help,” Hafsa went on. “And look at that wedding gown! She must have borrowed it from one of her tent-dwellers.”

  Indeed, Umm al-Masakin’s gown was a drab and shabby garment. Yet her smile was as warm and rich as gold. When she turned it on Muhammad, he beamed back at her with eyes full of wonder, as if he couldn’t believe he had captured such a prize. I felt my blood simmer. Wasn’t that the look he’d given Hafsa before she’d almost taken his love—and my position—away from me?

  But Umm al-Masakin was as far from Hafsa as anyone could be. Instead of looking down her nose at me as Hafsa had done on her wedding day, she greeted me as lovingly as if we’d known each other all our lives. Looking into her eyes, I saw sincerity. I didn’t see beauty, which made me wonder: What had inspired Muhammad to marry her? Yes, she was another Badr widow, but as I’d already pointed out, there were plenty of those.

  “It is my duty to care for her, and also to help her care for the poor,” Muhammad had told me last night. But I’d seen no duty today in that lust-bitten gaze of his.

  That look haunted me for the next three days, as I waited for Muhammad to emerge from his seclusion with her.

  “She could have had seven nights, but she wanted only three,” Sawdah told us. “She said she could not let the poor tent folks go without her for so long.”

  “I hear she gives enormous sacks of barley and dates to those tent people every week,” Hafsa said.

  “While we in the mosque waste away,” I said. “It’s been difficult enough for us already, with Muhammad sending off all his booty from the raids. Now that she’s here, what’s going to happen to the small amounts of grain and fruit he puts aside for us?”

  “No one can touch those,” Sawdah said. “I hide them away. In a secret place.” She gave Hafsa and me a long look, waiting for us to ask her where she kept them. Neither of us said anything, so she finally burst out, “In the Prophet’s attic apartment. Bilal climbs the tree to get another bag for me whenever I run out.”

  Hafsa nudged me with her elbow as she and I headed to our huts to prepare for Muhammad’s visit. “Take my advice: Don’t tell Sawdah anything you don’t want the whole umma to know,” she said. “That woman is such a tale-teller, she can’t even keep her own secrets.”

  I barely heard her words. I was still haunted by the desire in Muhammad’s eyes as he’d gazed at the Mother of the Poor on his marriage day. Even with her so-so looks and lack of style, could Umm al-Masakin steal Muhammad’s love from me?

  Yet what was I willing to do to keep Muhammad’s favor? Umm al-Masakin was a widow. The marriage bed would be familiar to her, while the very thought of the scorpion’s tail still made me tremble. Hafsa reassured me when I told her about my fears—after she’d gotten over her shock at learning that our marriage wasn’t consummated.

  “The pain only lasts for an instant before turning to pleasure,” she said. “And Muhammad would not be rough with you.”

  Pain or not, I determined to do whatever was necessary to turn his attentions back to me. When his ardor for Hafsa had faded, as Sawdah had predicted it would, he’d plunged into his preparations first for the battle at Uhud and then for the wedding. Now, during this lull in marriages and military action, was the best time for me to win Muhammad’s heart again. Now—tonight—was the time to shrug off my fears and become a real wife to him, the way my mother was to my father, inspiring in abi a love that made him look at ummi as if she carried a precious treasure in the folds of her dress. I’d begun seeing affection in Muhammad’s eyes again since the battle at Uhud, where I had run to his side when he’d needed me. Tonight, with the help of my sister and my sister-wife, I hoped to light the fire of love in his heart.

  In my room, I bathed myself thoroughly and rubbed my skin with dried lavender blossoms. To lighten my complexion, I smoothed a lotion made with gypsum on my face, and I lined my eyelids with collyrium, using a lavender stem to spread the dark paste. Somehow I managed to keep my hands steady although I trembled inside. I slipped on my red-and-white-striped gown and brushed my hair until it threw sparks. I lit candles and incense to give my room a soft, romantic atmosphere. Then I picked up my tambourine and practiced the dance my sister had taught me. It’s a dance to make a man wild, she’d said with a sly smile.

  The jingle of the tambourine bells must have prevented my hearing his knock. I spun across the floor, my hands clapping the instrument high over my head and sliding my bare feet across the hard-packed earth, when I glimpsed him standing in the room, smiling. I rattled my tambourine and tossed my hair. I teased him with my eyes, the way I’d seen Hafsa do. I danced up to him and whisked his turban from his head. As I whirled it to the windowsill, I recited verses from a love poem.

  As I moved in the soft light, I sneaked glances at him, hoping to see the fire that had sparked his eyes that first day I’d come to the mosque. I spun over to him, untying the belt of my gown with trembling fingers, but when I looked into his eyes I saw only bemusement.

  “Yaa husband,” I said. Feeling vulnerable, I reached out so he could see the elaborate henna patterns Hafsa had painted on my hands and forearms, and gestured for him to step farther inside my room. “What do you think of my dance? I’ve been practicing it just for you.”

  “It is very nice,” he said. His tone was warm, like a hug. “I did not know you were a dancer. I am beginning to think you can do anything.”

  “That’s right.” I slipped my arms around his waist. I tilted my face upward to gaze into his eyes.

  “I can do anything you want, habib. Anything you desire.” I pressed my chest against him, but he looked down at me with furrowed brows. Before he could speak, though, someone pounded on my door.

  With a sigh of frustration I yanked it open. Umar stormed past as though he hadn’t seen me. My spirits drooped, and also my body, like an early spring flower wilted by a nighttime frost. The distress in Umar’s eyes told me my evening of love with Muhammad would have to wait.

  “Yaa Prophet, forgive me for intruding,” he said as he and Muhammad greeted each other in the traditional manner—grasping each other’s right hands, placing their left hands on each other’s shoulders, and kissing each other’s cheeks. “Something terrible is happening, and I thought you would want to know right away.”

  “He may forgive you, but I don’t,” I said, only half-joking. Umar flung a glance at me as if I were a dog begging for treats, then began to pace the room, pulling his beard with frantic hands and glancing at me as if deciding whether it were safe to speak in front of me. I moved to a cushion in the corner and folded my hands in my lap, lowering my gaze so he couldn’t see how I longed for him to leave. Yet I also hungered to hear his news.

  At last he turned to Muhammad, ignoring me. “Ibn Ubayy has gone too far. I have come from the market, where I heard him laughing with his friends at a slanderous poem about you!”

  Muhammad’s face pinkened. He was especially sensitive to the verses of the public poets. Poets could destroy a man with a single turn of phrase. It had happened to Ibn Ubayy, when Muhammad arrived in Medina. Here, cried the old shaykh Hassan ibn Thabit, is the man sent to unite our divided city. In the span of a few breaths, thanks to some well-placed words, people’s allegiances changed. They’d lined the street to cheer for the Prophet of God on his spotless white camel and pushed Ibn Ubayy to the back of the crowd.

  Umar’s news was disturbing—but I scowled at him. Why couldn’t his “urgent business” have waited for another time? The excitement Muhammad had felt at my dance was gone, obscured by Umar’s warnings. Get out! I wanted to scream. But to do so would upset Muhammad even more, so I fumed silently.

  “Prophet, this poet is saying you caused the defeat at Uhud,” Umar said. “I heard his vers
es myself. He said you were the first to loot the Qurayshi camels. He said your greed cost the umma a great victory, and lost many lives.”

  The vein on Muhammad’s brow was throbbing. “Who is telling these lies?” he growled. He seized Umar’s beard with both hands. “Who is it, Umar? I will have him silenced for good.”

  “Ibn Ubayy is paying him,” Umar said. “Ibn Ubayy is the one you need to silence. Let me take care of him for you, Prophet. You will be avenged by nightfall.”

  Muhammad dropped his hands. “You know we cannot kill Ibn Ubayy. He would gain more followers dead than alive.”

  “He has already deceived quite a few into joining him. The leaders of the Nadr clan have reneged on their treaty with us and pledged their allegiance to him, instead. Some of the Bedouin tribes are supporting Ibn Ubayy, also. They want to make him the ruler of Medina.”

  Muhammad chuckled and said he’d like to see whom the Bedouins favored next week. “They shift their loyalties as the wind changes direction,” he said. But after Umar had left us alone again, he slumped on a cushion near me and brooded over what he’d heard.

  “Why worry?” I patted his hand. “You don’t want to be ruler of Medina, anyway, do you? Let them crown Ibn Ubayy king. If he gets what he wants, maybe he’ll leave us alone.”

  Muhammad frowned harder than ever. I stared at him. The Muhammad I knew lived for Paradise, and the rewards that waited there. Since when had he concerned himself with earthly power? “You don’t agree,” I said.

  “When we first arrived in Medina, I did not think about ruling anyone.” He grimaced. “I was embarrassed by Hassan ibn Thabit’s poem praising me. It was not my intention, then, to take anything from Ibn Ubayy. But things have changed, A’isha.”

  His fingers, which had held mine so softly, now clenched my hand. His eyes turned as fierce as a lion’s. “If we give up our power, Quraysh will devour us,” he said. “The umma will scatter like sands in the wind. The name of al-Lah, which we now shout from the rooftops, will become a whimper.”

  And Muhammad would lose everything he had fought for all these years. The realization sent a rush of sympathy sweeping over me, and I blinked back the tears of disappointment forming in the corners of my eyes. There would be no consummation tonight. Instead, Muhammad needed my consolation.

  “Enemies are nothing new to you,” I said, stroking his fingers with my own. “But you also have more followers than ever—even among the Bedouins! One lost battle means nothing. People soon forget.” He frowned and shook his head, gazing far away. I moved my hand to his cheek, pulling his eyes to meet mine. His tortured expression filled me with tenderness. “All you have to do is raid a few Qurayshi caravans, and everyone will exclaim, How fierce is Muhammad’s army!”

  Softness spread like warm cream through his eyes, smoothing his face, melting his features into a look of pure love. Love! The husband I’d worked so hard to regain was mine once more. I felt a soaring in my breast, lifting me to my feet, and I twirled over to my screen. Perhaps I could remove some of his sadness. I knew how it felt to have enemies. Thanks to Ali, I knew the helplessness and sorrow of being mocked and lied about, and the fear of losing everything that means anything.

  Behind the screen, I slipped off my gown. Under it I wore a dancer’s costume Asma had loaned to me, a form-fitting skirt and a gauzy short blouse over a chemise, red, to inflame his passions, my sister had said. I emerged in a frenzied display of music and dance, shaking my body like a flower in the wind and darting my eyes away from him, then back to his troubled face, feeling my heart fill to brimming with sympathy. He watched me with a vague smile, but his eyes never locked with mine. He wandered in his thoughts like a man lost in the trees.

  I finished my dance with a bow. As I dipped down, I lifted my hand to stroke his cheek and gave him a soft smile.

  “What will worrying change, my love?” I said, and knelt before him. “Place it in al-Lah’s hands, and trust Him to solve your problem. In the meantime, there is here, and now, and there is us, alone together for the first time in many nights.”

  To my delight his smile widened, and his eyes seemed to spark to life.

  “Yaa A’isha, you speak truly,” he said. “We have each other, do we not? And that was a wonderful dance. Let me thank you properly, habibati.”

  It was what I had wanted, yet I trembled as he pulled me into his lap.

  “You have given me my answer, Little Red,” he said, caressing my hair with his fingers. I shivered with pleasure and leaned my body against his.

  “I do have more followers than ever—and friends, too,” he murmured.

  “My marriage to Umm al-Masakin has been very fortunate in that respect. Her father is a Bedouin chief, did you know that? His tribe will come to our aid whenever we ask.”

  Heat stung my cheeks as though I’d been slapped. How could Muhammad speak of his new wife with me sitting in his lap? Torn between the urge to leap up and run from him and my desire to consummate our marriage, I lost control of my tongue.

  “So that’s why you married that dull little dough-face,” I blurted, forgetting to fight with my wits instead of my feelings, as he’d taught me. “I wondered how you could be attracted to someone so …” His face clouded, but it was too late for me to stop. “Unremarkable.”

  “Your jealousy is very unbecoming, A’isha,” he said, his body stiffening. “I cannot understand it, given my attentions to you. Umm al-Masakin is quite remarkable. You can learn much from her.”

  “I would like her better if you hadn’t married her,” I said, blinking rapidly to hold back my tears. A frown covered his face, but I ignored it. Had he considered my feelings before taking another wife?

  “Umm al-Masakin’s husband was killed at Badr, and there is no one to care for her.” Muhammad raised his voice slightly. “Without my help she would have starved, and so would the tent people she has provisioned since coming to Medina.”

  “While you’re busy taking care of her, who will take care of me?” I said. His wince was barely visible but I, ever vigilant to his moods, noticed it as if he’d scowled in disgust.

  I lowered my eyes, ashamed. What a selfish thing to say—and stupid, also, if I wanted him to stop thinking of me as a child. Would I ever learn to think before I spoke, to hold my feelings on my tongue? Now my chance to win Muhammad’s heart was lost. Tears welled up in my eyes again, but this time I couldn’t stop them from spilling onto my cheeks. “Please forget I said that,” I said.

  “Now you are the one who needs cheering, habibati.” Muhammad held up an arm, dangling the sleeve of his robe before me. I understood: We had played this game for years. “Look inside,” he said. “There is something for you in there.”

  My pulse leaped. I’d seen the Mother of the Poor’s lovely new necklace of rubies—“for virtue,” Muhammad had said. Sawdah owned a necklace from him, also, one made of shells from the Red Sea, but she preferred to keep it in her room. “Wearing it might attract the Evil Eye,” she’d said.

  I wiped my tears and slipped my hand inside his sleeve. I felt for smooth stones or beads—and, in one last effort at seduction, I caressed the tender skin on the inside of his arm. I wanted to make him sigh with pleasure, but he chuckled instead.

  “Keep looking,” he said. My fingers closed around something hard. I pulled it out to see an exquisite horse carved from ebony wood, muscular and lifelike, with a real leather saddle.

  “It is Scimitar, your mount,” Muhammad said. “My son Zayd carved it for you, and Sawdah made the saddle. It is for your collection, Little Red.”

  I turned it over in my hands. It was, indeed, a work of beauty. Yet it was a child’s toy. For all my efforts today, I was still Muhammad’s child bride. Probably he expected me to bury this horse in his beard, or make it whinny, then invite him to play. And, in truth, a part of me wanted to. But another part of me wanted to carry his gift to the cooking tent and hurl it into the fire.

  “I think Scimitar would like to meet her new com
panions,” Muhammad said. “May I retrieve your other horses?”

  I stared at the toy in my hands, wondering what to say. Muhammad placed a finger on my cheek. “Are these tears? Forgive me, Little Red. I have offended you with my gift.”

  Regret rilled through the lines in his forehead, at the corners of his eyes, deepening them. Warmth filled my body like light from a soft-burning lamp. How could I complain to Muhammad about anything? So many worries plagued him already.

  “I—I love your gift,” I managed to choke. “It’s very beautiful. These are tears of joy!” I forced a smile. “Yaa Muhammad, what are you waiting for? Gather the other horses, and let’s play.”

  MOTHER OF THE POOR

  MEDINA, A FEW DAYS LATER

  I’d tried pleading, sulking, and cajoling, but Muhammad had insisted: Not only must I walk to the tent city with his timid bride, but I’d also have to spend the morning there with her. You will learn what it means to be truly poor, and you will gain respect for your new sister-wife, he’d said.

  Umm al-Masakin’s face shone when we told her the news. “What an honor,” she gushed. An honor! By al-Lah, was I the angel Gabriel? But then she turned and bowed to me, warming me to her.

  Muhammad might consider me a child, as our ill-fated evening of “romance” had shown, but that didn’t have to be my downfall, I’d realized. Lying in his arms that night as he drank deep draughts of sleep, I’d blinked against the dark and my tears and asked al-Lah why I had to fight for all I wanted. Yet as I listed my opponents, I saw that they weren’t so formidable. Ali was a vexation, not a danger. Umar was all bluster. Hafsa had become my ally, no longer interested in being hatun.

  Nor, apparently, was Mother of the Poor a threat to my status. I’d feel more secure once I and Muhammad had consummated our marriage, but in the meantime I could hold my ground against the new wife. She was quiet and shy—pure weakness, while I was strong. Yet Muhammad was stronger—which meant that, no matter how I resisted, I had to spend a day with Umm al-Masakin, Mother of the Poor, in the stinking, flea-infested tent city.