The Jewel Of Medina Read online

  “As the sun rose, I found shade under a grove of date-palm trees,” I said. “I lay down, keeping cool. Then I must have slept, because the next thing I remember is Safwan’s hand on my shoulder.”

  Umar grunted. “Did you hear that, Prophet? Safwan ibn al-Mu’attal is now touching your wife. We all know where that leads.”

  “Why didn’t you both ride home right away?” Ali barked.

  “Something happened to me.” This part was also true. “I felt a sharp cramp, like a knife in my stomach.” Muhammad’s eyes seemed to soften—a good sign, meaning he must believe me at least a little.

  “I couldn’t travel, not while I was doubled over with pain. So Safwan pitched his tent for me to rest in, out of the sun.”

  Ali guffawed. “And where was Safwan while you were lying in his tent?” I ignored him, wanting only to finish this interrogation and go to sleep.

  “I retched for hours. Safwan tried to help me. He gave me water and fanned me with a date-palm frond. Finally he became frightened, and we came back for help.” I didn’t tell how he’d nearly made me scream with his hand wringing. Al-Lah is punishing us, he’d moaned, over and over again. Along with the water, I began to spit up bile and remorse. Take me to Medina, I said sourly. Before al-Lah kills us both.

  When I finished my tale, Ali was scowling. “This is not the full story,” he said. “Why was Safwan lagging so far behind the caravan? Was it because he knew you would be waiting for him under the date palms?”

  “I asked Safwan to remain behind,” Muhammad said. “To watch for the return of the Mustaliq to their camp.”

  “She has been flirting with him for years!”

  I snorted, as if his words amused me instead of chilling my blood. He spoke the truth—but who else knew?

  “Where is your proof, Ali?” I said, meeting his angry gaze for a moment, then dropping it for fear he’d see the panic in my eyes. “A single pointing finger makes an insignificant mark.”

  Then, with Muhammad’s help, I lay down on my bed and turned my back to them all: the ever-suspicious Umar; Ali, so eager to think the worst of me; and my husband, who could quiet an angry mob with a raised hand but who had allowed these men to slander me. Why had I returned? I closed my eyes and dreamt, again, of escape. This time, though, I knew it was only a dream. There would be no escaping my fate. At best, al-Lah willing, I might shape my destiny—but I couldn’t run from it. This much I had learned from my mistakes these past few days.

  I slept lightly, tossed by fever and regret, until whispers whipped about my head like stinging sand, jolting me back to consciousness. Muhammad and Ali were sitting on the cushions near my bed, arguing—about me.

  “I cannot believe A’isha would do such a thing,” Muhammad said. His voice was a broken shell, fragile and jagged. “I have loved her since she sprang from her mother’s womb. I have played dolls with her and her friends. I have drunk from the same bowl with her.”

  “She is fourteen years old,” Ali said, his voice rising. “Not a little girl anymore, although she is many years younger than you. Safwan is much closer to her age.”

  “Shh, Ali! Do not disturb A’isha’s rest.”

  “Then let us find a more suitable place to talk.” I heard the rustle of cloth. Don’t go, I wanted to beg, but I was too weak. So I moaned, instead. Muhammad laid his hand on my forehead.

  “Her skin is hot,” he said. “I cannot leave her alone.”

  “Then I must speak here.”

  “Please, cousin. I value your counsel.”

  I held my breath, dreading Ali’s next words. What kind of punishment would he suggest for me and Safwan? A whipping? Banishment from the umma? Death?

  “Divorce her,” Ali said.

  “No!” I sat up, ready to throw my arms around my husband’s neck and hold on with all my strength. Muhammad stroked my damp brow, his smile shifting like a shadow under a changing sun.

  “Don’t leave me,” I said, forgetting about Ali, the last person I would have wanted to hear me beg.

  “I am not leaving you, habibati. But I have decided to send you to your parents’ house for a while. Abu Bakr and Umm Ruman will nurse you back to health, al-Lah willing, away from all these wagging tongues.”

  “Don’t divorce me.” Weeks later, as I waited in my parents’ house for Muhammad’s verdict, I’d wince to recall how I’d clung to his hand and cried in front of Ali: “I love you, habibi.”

  I meant those words as I’d never meant them before. I’d learned much during those hours in the desert with Safwan. Safwan, who’d promised one thing and delivered another, the same as when we were children.

  “I love you, too, my sweet.” But his voice sounded far away, and his eyes looked troubled. I lay down and clutched his hand as though it were a doll, then drifted slowly back toward sleep.

  As I slipped away again I heard Ali’s voice, urgent and low.

  “Think of the umma, how delicate its weave,” he said. “A scandal like this could tear it apart. You must act now, cousin. Send her back to Abu Bakr for good.”

  “Divorce my A’isha?” Muhammad’s laugh sounded nervous and faint. “I would rather cut out my own heart.”

  “She’s tainted,” Ali said—increasing my hatred for him with each word. “You must put her away from you before this scandal marks you, also. Many men in this town would love to see you fall.”

  Muhammad slowly pulled his hand from my grasp, leaving me to drift alone on my sea of fears.

  “Can’t you see it?” Ali pressed. “I know you can. Then why do you look so worried? Wives are easily acquired. You will find another child-bride.”

  Centuries later, scandal still haunts my name. But those who scorned me, who called me “al-zaniya” and “fahisha,” they didn’t know me. They never knew the truth—about me, about Muhammad, about how I saved his life and he saved mine. About how I saved all their lives. If they knew, would they have mocked me then?

  Of course, they know now. Where we are now, all truth is known. But it still eludes your world. Where you are, men still want to hide the women away. You, in the now, they cover with shrouds or with lies about being inferior. We, in the past, they erase from their stories of Muhammad, or alter with false tales that burn our ears and the backs of our eyes. Where you are, mothers chastise their daughters with a single name. “You A’isha!” they cry, and the girls turn away in shame. We cannot escape our destinies, even in death. But we can claim them, and give them shape.

  The girls turn away because they don’t know the truth: That Muhammad wanted to give us freedom, but that the other men took it away. That none of us is ever alive until we can shape our own destinies. Until we can choose.

  So many misunderstandings. Here where we are, we cup the truth in our hands like water, trying to contain it, watching it slip away. Truth is too slippery to hold. It must be passed on, or it slides like rain into the earth, to disappear.

  Before it disappears, I will pass my story on to you. My truth. My struggle. And then, who knows what will happen? Al-lah willing, my name will regain its meaning. No longer, then, a word synonymous with treachery and shame. Al-Lah willing, when my story is known, my name will evoke once more that most precious of possessions. Which I claimed for myself and for which I fought until, at last, I won it from the Prophet of God—not only for myself, but for all my sisters also.

  My name: “A’isha.” Its meaning: “life.” May it be so again, and forevermore.

  BEDOUINS IN THE WILD

  MECCA, 619

  SIX YEARS old

  It was my last day of freedom. Yet it began like one thousand and one days before it: the wink of the sun and my cry of alarm, late again, the spring from my bed and the flight through the windowless rooms of my father’s house, my wooden play-sword in my hand, my bare feet slapping the cool stone floor, I’m late I’m late I’m late.

  Oil lamps flickered dimly against the walls, their feeble light a poor substitute for the sun I loved. As I passed the cookin
g room the tangy fermented smell of barley mush made me gag. Faster, faster. The Prophet would be here soon. If he saw me, he would want to play, and I would miss Safwan.

  Yet I should have known my mother would find me: She was more vigilant than the Evil Eye. “Where do you think you are going?” she cried as I hit the solid wall she made standing in my path with her hands on her hips.

  I would have reeled back, caught my breath, and run around her but she seized me with hands made strong from years of bread making. Her fingers gripped my shoulders like the talons of a hawk. She ran her gaze like rough hands over my sleep-tossed hair, my sand-colored shift marked like a map of yesterday’s play: Roundish smudges where I’d knelt in the dirt, hiding from Bedouin enemies. A rip in the sleeve from my struggle against my captors, Safwan and our friend Nadida. Red flecks of pomegranate juice from yesterday’s meal. Streaks of gray from the giant rock Safwan and I had quietly rolled beneath the bedroom window of our neighbor Hamal, Mecca’s newest bridegroom.

  My mother said, “You are filthy. You will not leave the house like that.”

  “Please, ummi, I’m late!” I said, but she called for my sister.

  “No child of mine is going anywhere looking like a wild animal,” she said. “Go change into clean clothes and meet Asma in the courtyard. She will need to tame that tangled mane of yours today, while I fetch water to wash the Queen of Sheba’s hair.”

  She was talking about her sister-wife, Qutailah. My father’s hatun, the “Great Lady,” or first-wife, Qutailah assigned all the tasks in the harim. Tall, dark-skinned, and increasingly plump, Qutailah envied my mother’s fair skin and wild rays of red hair and feared her fiery temper, so she reminded her always who was first in the household by calling my mother durra, or “parrot,” the name for second-wife. And she assigned my ummi the jobs usually given to servants, such as lugging huge skins of water from Mecca’s well. It was a humiliating task, for the well of Zamzam was in the center of town and everyone could see my mother huffing home with the sloshing skins slung on a pole across her small shoulders. Facing this chore always put ummi in a bad mood. This wasn’t the time to argue with her.

  “Hearing and obeying,” I said, but when ummi disappeared into the darkness I slipped into the kitchen. Our neighbor Raha sat in a shady corner fanning herself with a date-palm leaf. She dimpled when she saw me and pulled from her sack a pomegranate as shiny and red as her cheeks.

  “No, you have to give me a kiss first,” she teased when I tried to snatch the fruit from her hand. I settled in her lap for just a moment, long enough to press my face to hers and breathe in the lavender she wore tucked in her braided hair. She rubbed the tips of our noses together, making me giggle, making me forget my hurry until Asma walked in. I tore the pomegranate in half, heedless of seeds falling in wet plops on the floor as I raced out the door, dodging my sister’s grasping hands.

  “Yaa A’isha, where are you going?” I heard Asma call, as if she didn’t know. She and Qutailah, who was her mother, were always scolding me about my “obsession” with Safwan. He will only cause you trouble. Playing with your future husband will invite the Evil Eye.

  Away I ran, ignoring my sister’s shouts, waving my pretend sword and kicking up soft hot sand as I passed the jumble of tall terrace-roofed houses of dark stone with their arched doorways and sun-bleached palm-frond roofs, homes crowded together and watching me like gossiping, gaptoothed old men. Beyond them, Mecca’s caravan of rock-strewn mountains pulled in their shadows under the relentless eye of the sun.

  I found Safwan huddled with Nadida inside her play tent, whispering.

  “Marhaba, lovebirds,” I said. Nadida’s long, narrow face blushed a deep red. I started to laugh, but Safwan leaped up and pulled me into the tent.

  “Hush!” he rasped. “Do you want them to hear us?” He nodded toward the bridegroom Hamal’s window and, beneath it, the rock that we’d rolled there last night.

  “They’re in there now,” Nadida said. “You should see her. She’s the same age as me, and married to that old goat.” She touched the small red figure dangling from a string around her neck. “May Hubal protect me from that fate.” Her parents still worshipped idols in those days, not the real God as I and Safwan did.

  Safwan placed a finger to his lips and tugged at one of his big ears, listening. A sharp, keening cry, like the wails of Medina’s mourning women, made me shiver. Then we heard a man’s growl, and his laugh as rough as scraped skin.

  “By al-Lah, is he killing her?” I said.

  Safwan and Nadida snickered. “She probably wishes she were dead,” Nadida said.

  Safwan moved to the tent entrance and beckoned me to follow him. Crouching, we tiptoed over to the great rock. Safwan lifted his foot to climb it and a loud groan from inside shook me to my senses: That Hamal was a giant. If he caught us peeking in his window, he could crush us both with one hand. I tugged at Safwan’s sleeve, but he pulled himself up and peered over the edge of the window, then smirked at me.

  “Come on,” he whispered. “Don’t be a baby.” He reached out a hand to boost me up, but I scampered to the top of that rock like a lizard, ignoring my pounding heart, which I was certain Hamal would hear. As my eyes adjusted to the shadowy light inside, I could see only scattered clothing at first, strewn across the floor, then trays of half-eaten food and dirty dishes and a water-pipe tipped over on its side. The odors of barley and decaying meat and rotting apple mingled with the damp smell of sweat.

  A low, steady grunting pulled my gaze to the bed. A trickle of sweat crawled down Hamal’s broad, naked back as he lifted his body off the bed then slammed it down again and again. I stared at his behind, as big as my goat’s-bladder ball and covered with hair, as it clenched and relaxed with each thrust. Beneath him, skinny arms and legs stuck out like the limbs of a scarab beetle under a sandal, flailing and clutching at him. A girl’s voice seemed to sob, and her heels pounded against his hips. I gasped and grabbed Safwan’s arm: He was killing her!

  But when I looked at Safwan he was grinning, and as Hamal’s voice grew louder and his body-slams faster, Safwan pulled me down beneath the window. Hidden from their view we heard Hamal shout, “Hi! Hi! Hi!” like a hyena. I covered my mouth with my hand and stared at Safwan, but he was snickering. I pretended to laugh, also, not wanting him to see my horror, while the image of the girl’s squashed body under that hairy beast replayed itself in my mind.

  I leaned against the house, trying to keep my breath even, praying Safwan couldn’t hear the churn of my stomach. Someday I’d marry him—and we would do that? His smile was fierce; his eyes seemed to mock me as if he were having the same thoughts. But, unlike me, he seemed to relish the idea. Of course, he would be the one who crushed, while I’d be the poor girl underneath, sobbing and flailing my arms and legs. “That’s marriage, A’isha,” he whispered, making me want to run away. I thought of my mother: No wonder she frowned so much.

  And then, as though I’d conjured her, my ummi came flying around the corner, her dark robe flapping like the wings of an agitated crow.

  “What are you doing here?” she yelled. Shouts from inside the room made her glance up at the window, and she shrieked as if she’d been burned. I looked over at Safwan, but his place on the rock was empty. He’d vanished like a djinni, leaving me alone to face my mother’s wild shrieks and slaps. Not only had I disobeyed her by leaving home without cleaning up, but she’d caught me outside Hamal ibn Affan’s bedroom window with bewilderment and fear groping like hands across my face.

  I smiled at her—the very image of innocence, I hoped. Her face looked pulled apart and pinched back together, like scraps of bread dough.

  Then Hamal filled the window. I felt his knuckle rap my crown and I shrieked, then scampered down from the rock and ran toward ummi. A part of me wanted to hide in her skirts from him—but I knew better than to place myself within my mother’s grasp. Once she got hold of me, she wouldn’t let go until she’d left the imprint of her hand on my chee
ks and backside.

  “One thousand apologies, Umm Ruman,” Hamal said, tucking his hair behind an ear. He’d pulled on a faded blue robe and tied it about his broad girth. His face was very mottled and beaded with wetness. “I thought I had closed this curtain.”

  “I am certain you did.” My mother eyed me. “But someone else opened it.”

  “No,” I said, “it was already open.”

  Ai! What had I just said? Now they knew I had been watching. I wished the noontime heat would make me faint, or that I could disappear like Safwan in a blink. Hamal’s great roar made me leap to my mother’s skirts, more afraid of him than of her.

  “If you are going to spy, little girl, you had better learn how to lie,” he said with a scowl. My mother apologized, but he told her not to worry: He had children of his own. “I married off my girls as soon as their monthly bleeding started. It is the only way to avoid trouble.”

  Had I come to see his new bride? he asked me. Her beauty was the talk of Mecca. “Yaa Jamila,” he said, without turning around. Her real name was Fazia, meaning “victorious,” but Hamal had changed it, he told us, so no one could say, “Hamal’s wife is victorious.” A pale, frail-looking girl appeared in the window next to Hamal. She clutched a bed sheet to her chest and kept her eyes lowered. With swollen lips she shyly smiled to reveal large front teeth that stuck out, and her nose was so big it covered half her face. A real beauty! A part of me wanted to laugh, but the other part noticed the shadows under her eyes and the trembling of her hand as it held the sheet.

  She really was just a girl, not even as old as my sister, and married to a man my father’s age. She looked so timid and afraid that I wanted to reach out and stroke her forehead, the way Asma sometimes did to me when I’d had a nightmare. But this was no nightmare: For Fazia-turned-Jamila, this was a woman’s life, to be endured with downcast eyes and nary a whimper of complaint. Not for me, I vowed. If any man ever tried to hurt me, I’d fight back. And when I had something to say, I wouldn’t say it with my head down, as if I were ashamed. If my husband didn’t like it, he could divorce me and I wouldn’t care. I’d rather be a lone lioness, roaring and free, than a caged bird without even a name to call my own.