The Sword Of Medina Read online

  Hearing my hiss, Asma leapt up and greeted me at the back door while Abdallah threw his arms around my knees. She beckoned me inside, then kissed my cheeks as I stepped into Ali’s home. Looking around me, I felt my first twinges of compassion for the man I detested above all others.

  His was a dark, barren house, more like a dwelling for hyenas than for humans. The kitchen, where I’d entered, offered one small window in a cramped room of mud brick whose walls needed whitewashing. A yeasty baby-smell tanged the air. A few tattered pillows of camel’s hide lay on the dirt floor, which had no rug but only a crude woven mat of straw near the flat stone in one corner for grinding barley. There was no oven; Ali’s wife, Fatima, baked her bread at the mosque. Often she and Ali would eat their daily meal with us there, Fatima joining the harim of sister-wives to gaze like a smitten puppy at Umm Salama and laugh wickedly when Zaynab insulted me. Fatima had always been jealous of Muhammad’s love for me. How many times had I wondered why she didn’t dine at home? Now, eyeing the squalid conditions here, I understood. We sister-wives lived ascetic lives, for Muhammad had always given all his possessions to the poor, but at least we had color and cheer—and windows—in our home.

  We in the harim had time for weaving and dyeing cloth, and sewing cushions and curtains. There were eleven of us wives and concubines and only a few children, now adults, from previous marriages. Fatima, on the other hand, had three babies to care for. To feed her boys and infant girl, she worked as a laundress, a grueling job that stooped her back and left her hands red and raw. Where would she have found the time or energy for decorating? Ali had been so busy these past years fighting Quraysh and trying to sabotage my marriage that he probably didn’t even notice the squalor.

  As I embraced my sister and her sweet, hind-eyed little boy, a gurgling sound tugged at my ear. I peered in the dim lamplight and discovered Fatima in the shadows, sitting on the floor and shaking with sobs, uttering abi, abi. Mourning for Muhammad. She’d been his favorite daughter, the youngest of four and the very likeness, some said, of her mother, Khadija, Muhammad’s only wife for twenty-five years. Fatima’s baby girl, Zaynab, slept on the floor beside her. Her little boys, Ali al-Hassan and al-Hussein, patted her hair and back but she pushed them away. Once again, I felt the urge to abandon myself to grief—but my brother-in-law crashed into the room just then, drying my gathering tears with the force of his bluster.

  When he saw me, his eyes widened and his nostrils flared.

  “Praise al-Lah, my prayers are answered!” Al-Zubayr clamped his hand around my hair and dragged me into an adjoining room. My sister’s shrieks, my shouts of outrage, Fatima’s sobs, and her baby’s cries filled the room. Anyone listening would have thought we’d hired the most dramatic wailing women in Hijaz.

  Pain like one thousand and one needle pricks shot through my scalp each time al-Zubayr yanked my hair, stinging my eyes and making me too distraught to remember the dagger I’d sheathed under my left arm. Asma ran after us and leaped onto her husband’s back. “Let my sister go,” she cried, pummeling his back and arms. He released his hold on me and flung Asma to the floor, then kicked her in the stomach. As she doubled over, gasping for breath, I lunged toward al-Zubayr with a snarl, just as a sword whipped the air. I stopped mid-lunge to face a stern Ali.

  “One should not interfere between a husband and his wife, yaa A’isha,” he said. “As you told me many times during your marriage to Muhammad.”

  “How dare you speak Muhammad’s name with the dirt from his illegitimate grave still under your fingernails?” I spat into his face. My spittle landed in his beard and stuck there.

  With the back of his free hand, he wiped away my insult. “By al-Lah, it is not I who blasphemes the Prophet’s memory, but your father. By seizing the khalifa, Abu Bakr mocks everything Muhammad achieved, and all he would have wanted.”

  “My father seized nothing.” I lifted my chin. “He was chosen by the people.”

  “By the elites,” al-Zubayr said. He lunged for me again but I whirled out of his reach.

  “Al-Zubayr speaks the truth.” For the first time I noticed al-Abbas, who sat behind me on a ragged cushion and cleaned his teeth with a miswak stick. He shook his head, sighing as if I were some poor, ignorant girl who needed to have the simplest of concepts explained. “The people never had a choice of khalifa. Abu Bakr and his rich Qurayshi friends snatched up the position before Muhammad’s body had yet cooled. Ali was not even consulted.”

  “The people love Abu Bakr.” I blinked back tears at the mention of Muhammad’s body. He is dead. “They chose abi fairly and freely.”

  “Abu Bakr stole the khalifa in the night, like a thief!” al-Zubayr shouted through the window to the men outside. “And now, until he relinquishes his post and agrees to a fair election, his daughters will remain here. Yaa Talha! I have your beloved A’isha. Do you remember her? The girl you once wanted to marry? You will not see her again until Abu Bakr resigns.”

  His bragging didn’t frighten me. As I knelt beside Asma, I looked up at al-Zubayr and saw not a fearsome warrior, as he had proved himself so many times, but a majnun, a crazed man. There was an emptiness in his eyes. I reminded myself to think only, and cast aside your feelings, as Muhammad had urged during my sword-fighting lessons. Al-Zubayr was not as clever as I. I had barely slept for three days, yet I still held the advantage.

  “Yaa al-Zubayr, would you hide from Umar? That is most surprising.” I smirked, stoking his rage.

  “Al-Zubayr hides from no one!” he yelled, turning his head toward the window to be heard by Umar, Talha, and the rest. We could hear them talking again about setting fire to Ali’s house.

  “Making them burn you out would be an ignominious end to this rebellion,” I said. “If I were you, I’d rush outside and run my sword through Umar’s fat belly. He’s one of those ‘elites’ you hate so much, isn’t he?”

  “Be quiet,” Ali said to me. “Al-Zubayr, do not listen to her.”

  Al-Zubayr glared at me. “I will not fall for your trickery.”

  I shrugged. “Believe me, I wouldn’t shed a tear if Umar met his end today.” I’ve never cared for men who beat their wives, I could have added.

  The baby’s cries turned to screams. Al-Zubayr jerked his glance to Fatima, who was sobbing too hard to notice. Ali sheathed his sword and strode over to the child, then scooped it into his arms. I turned back to al-Zubayr.

  “You’re going to look quite foolish if you cower in here much longer,” I said.

  “Al-Zubayr does not care what you think,” al-Abbas said. He tossed his miswak stick onto the floor.

  “If you wanted a fight, though, you’d be disappointed,” I said with a shrug. “None of those men has a weapon.”

  He cut his eyes at me. “No weapons? How can that be?”

  “My father forbade it.” I helped my sister to stand and, as she moved back into the kitchen, gave Ali a pointed look. “He wanted to make sure Ali didn’t suffer any harm. Since Muhammad loved him so much.”

  Ali’s expression softened. But al-Abbas snorted and said, “Abu Bakr is no idiot. He knows better than to gain Ali’s allegiance at sword-point.”

  Al-Zubayr laughed. “You speak the truth, uncle. He will never gain my allegiance, either. As for the sword’s point, let his messengers feel its sting!”

  He threw open the door to his house and stepped over the threshold. Standing so close to him, I could have easily pulled out my dagger and knocked the sword from his hand. But I knew my father’s admonition against weapons applied to me, also—and besides, I saw a better way. With a lift of my foot I tripped al-Zubayr, sending him and his sword clattering to the ground. In the next instant Umar stepped forward from the crowd, holding his whip aloft. With one flick he lashed it around al-Zubayr’s neck and yanked him to his knees.

  As Umar and his cohorts jostled al-Zubayr to the mosque, I went back inside and helped my sister and Abdallah walk back to their home. I settled her on her bed and gave a kiss to the
child, who lay curled up beside her. He’d watched from the corner as his raging father attacked his mother. I caressed his brow and told him not to fret over what he’d seen, but to remember it.

  “That way, you’ll keep from ever harming the woman you love,” I said.

  The afternoon sun nearly struck me down with its own battering fist as I headed home, my muscles aching with fatigue and my head throbbing. Soon I’d be in the privacy of my room, but one more obstacle stood in my way. When I arrived at my hut in the mosque courtyard, Talha awaited outside my green door.

  “Invite me in,” he said in a low voice. “We have urgent matters to discuss.”

  I felt myself droop like a plant in need of water, but I opened my door to him. Once we were inside, he gazed at me so intensely I felt my cheeks burn. How glad I was that my wrapper still hid my face! I pulled it more tightly and lowered my eyes to my bed, wishing he would leave so I could lie down.

  “Yaa A’isha, what courage you exhibited today,” he said. “Al-Zubayr would have attacked me or Umar with his sword. We might have been wounded or killed. I owe you a great debt—perhaps even my life.”

  I sighed and shook my head. Talha was exaggerating, as always. Life had never been exciting enough for him. That trait, more than his feelings for me, had once made him brag that, when Muhammad died, he would marry me. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm had sparked gossip in the umma, which caused Muhammad to declare that none of his wives could remarry. Because of that our futures now held loneliness and, with no husbands to provide for us, poverty, until we joined Muhammad in Paradise.

  Of course, with my husband’s body freshly buried in my room, I cared little about male companionship. Maybe that’s why Talha’s burning looks made me want to bury myself in the floor, also.

  “I saw plenty of daggers and swords in the crowd around you and Umar,” I said. “You were never in danger.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said, “but islam faces a great threat.” He stepped closer to me and placed his hands on my shoulders. How many times had he performed this gesture while giving me cousinly lectures? But now, with Muhammad’s body lying under my feet, Talha’s touch seemed wrong.

  “Yaa Little Red, listen to me.” Hearing Muhammad’s nickname for me brought tears to my eyes again. “If Ali gains the khalifa, there won’t be any future for you in islam, or for your father. In truth, Abu Bakr’s entire clan—all of us—will lose everything, including our wealth and status. We can’t let that happen, A’isha. Our family would suffer for generations.”

  Talha spoke the truth: Once a clan lost its status, getting it back was nearly impossible. But his words might as well have been the wind in my ears. After nursing Muhammad as he died, witnessing his secret burial, and seeing the umma so soon begin to tear itself apart, I felt numb to Talha’s concerns.

  I turned away, out of his reach.

  “I don’t know why you’re telling me this. I’m a woman, remember?” Seeing my sister get kicked like a dog by one of the umma’s top warriors—and seeing Ali do nothing to help her—told me this new islam offered little for women.

  “You’re a woman with a lot of influence.” Talha stepped around to look me in the eyes again. “As Mother of the Believers and daughter of the khalifa, you have more power than most men, A’isha. You can protect our family’s interests, if you desire.”

  But did I desire to play a part in these struggles? At the moment, the answer was “no.” I wanted only to sleep and, when I awoke, resume my life of caring for the poor in the tent city, playing with my nephew Abdallah, cooking and gossiping with my sister-wives, and loving my husband.

  But Muhammad was gone now. Everything was different.

  I promised to think about Talha’s words. Then I let him out and, at last, began to undress. As I untied my dagger’s sheath from under my arm, my glance fell on the sword, lying on a shelf, that Muhammad had given me. My thoughts returned to his dying words: Use it well in the jihad to come.

  “Yaa Muhammad,” I said aloud, lying on the floor and pressing my body against his grave. “Here’s another thing that’s changed since your departure: I don’t want to fight this battle, or any other. For the first time in my life, all I want is peace.”

  Ali

  A’isha bint Abi Bakr was not a woman I would have chosen for myself, not with that fox-colored hair, not with that impertinent mouth. As I stood in the mosque with my sweet, humble wife and compared her to A’isha, I was reminded that Abu Bakr’s youngest daughter had entered the world with the illusion that she was a queen, thanks to her doting father. And Muhammad, so wise in all other respects, had encouraged her erroneous belief.

  When she had snapped her fingers, Muhammad had run to her side. When she defied him, he laughed. On the few occasions when she aroused his ire, she had only to flutter her eyelashes and he became as a man under a spell. By al-Lah! How I hated to see the Prophet of al-Lah display such weakness for a woman, especially one who valued herself so highly. I cringed doubly to stand in supplication to her now, as she sat beside Abu Bakr, the pretender to the khalifa, who held my family’s fate in his hands and who listened to his daughter’s every word as if they were gold dinars falling from her lips.

  That her father suffered from the same malady as Muhammad was never more apparent than on the day my wife, Fatima, the epitome of womanhood, approached Abu Bakr in the mosque for her share of the property Muhammad had left behind. The income from even a tiny piece of his date-palm plantations would have provided us with so much that we needed: a wet-nurse for our little girl, Zaynab; a decent bed for us; a goat to supply our family with milk.

  Anyone possessing a heart would have been moved by my poor wife’s plea, uttered at that tyrant’s feet while he perched like a monarch on the date-palm stump, profaning the place where a man so much better than he had exuded the very essence of al-Lah. Fatima entreated him with a voice as weak as the mewling of a newborn kitten, for in truth she was gravely ill with the fever that had struck her father down. We had told no one of her illness, for my wife was loath to see pity clouding the eyes of others. She had already endured solicitous comments and doleful glances too frequently, having lost her mother, two of her sisters, and her father.

  “Abi would have wanted us to have this small inheritance,” she said to Abu Bakr, keeping her eyes lowered modestly, as befitted a woman in her position. She did so in part because she did not wish her fever to be discovered, but I believed, watching her, that no one could fail to notice her trembling hands or her pale, perspiring brow.

  Yet Abu Bakr was the foremost expert at seeing only what he desired to behold. I did not glimpse even the slightest turning down of his mouth at the sight of my poor Fatima begging him for what was rightfully hers—not even as he rejected her plea.

  “Fatima, there is no doubt that your father loved you,” he said in a voice like date syrup, a voice so thick that I thought—hoped—he might choke. “You were the favorite of all his daughters. Tell me, yaa A’isha. You knew the Prophet more intimately than anyone. Do I speak the truth?”

  How I wanted to erase his smug smile with a single swipe of my blade! My muscles twitched to do so, for his self-satisfied air had inspired my dislike from the day of our first meeting. I was but a child then, with a child’s perception, but I knew when Muhammad introduced us that Abu Bakr loved himself above all others, even more than he loved Muhammad, for whom, al-Lah willing, I would have given my life not once, but many times over.

  On this day, Abu Bakr’s love for himself and for his daughter was quite apparent. As A’isha nodded to confirm Muhammad’s good opinion of Fatima, that goat-bearded pretender glowed as if his haughty daughter were a mirror reflecting the brightest of flames. Bile rose in my throat as my trusting wife stood with bowed head and the slightest of smiles upon her lips, certain that her request was about to be granted. But her expression withered like rose petals under the desert sun when Abu Bakr spoke again.

  “My dear Fatima,” he said, “I know you believ
e that Muhammad would have bequeathed you all of Hijaz, if it belonged to him. But let us examine the way things truly were, child. The Prophet gave you little while he lived, preferring to aid the poor. Do I speak the truth?”

  Fatima could not bring herself to respond, so pitifully was she biting her lower lip in an effort not to humiliate herself further by shedding tears. I clenched my jaw, commanding myself not to speak, for she had asked that I remain beside her in silence while she presented her petition. Your longstanding enmity with Abu Bakr may harm our cause, she had said.

  In truth, Fatima had not wanted me to accompany her today, but I had insisted on doing so. I was wary of the treatment she might receive from this man who had deceived so many with his seemingly benign charm that he was known as al-Siddiq, “The Truthful.” It was a name that he proved, with his next words, to be erroneous.

  “Fatima, I was present during your father’s final hours of life,” he said, tugging at the beard he had dyed red—to match his daughter’s hair, no doubt. “And I distinctly heard him say, ‘We do not have heirs. Whatever we leave is alms.’”

  How my blood raged at this lie! In truth, I nearly bounded across the mosque floor to rip that sickly-sweet smile from his face, but Fatima stretched out her arm and halted me as effectively as if she wielded a sword.

  “Forgive me, Abu Bakr,” she said in a voice that shook like a leaf in the wind, “but truly you are mistaken. My father would not have said this.”

  “I assure you, he did,” that liar said through those smiling lips.

  “Perhaps, then, he was speaking of the dinars and dirhams he left in the treasury.”