The Jewel Of Medina Read online

  “Ahlan, Fazia,” I said, giving her name back to her. She raised her head to look at me with a smile that had reached her eyes.

  My mother said a hasty farewell then yanked me home, panting as if I were as large and heavy as Hamal. With those fierce strong fingers she clamped my hand in hers so tightly I thought my bones would break. I’d be whipped for sure, but I wasn’t thinking about that. Instead, I replayed the images I had just seen, of Hamal on top of the frail girl. That would be me someday—but not, thank al-Lah, with a man so much older than I. The girl must have been in pain, judging from the way she’d been crying out and clutching so helplessly at Hamal’s back. No man or woman would ever hold that kind of power over me. Except, for now, my mother.

  Inside the house, ummi let go of my throbbing hand and I massaged it, but I refused to wince in front of her.

  “What were you doing under that window?” she said.

  “Sitting in the shade.”

  “Sitting in the shade.” She folded her arms. “On a rock that just happened to be under Hamal ibn Affan’s bedroom window? And how did that rock get there? Hamal said it was not there yesterday.”

  I opened my eyes as wide as they would go. “Maybe he never noticed it before.”

  “You were spying!” she cried. “And you brought Safwan along to spy with you.” Her glare was pointed, as though it were she, and not Qutailah, who had warned me away from Safwan. As though she hadn’t scoffed at her sister-wife’s Evil-Eye superstitions. The known is better than the unknown, my mother would say, and send me off to play with him.

  “We were sitting, that’s all. We didn’t know they were in there.”

  “Enough!” She raised her hand high above me. “I should beat those lies out of you right now.” Her fire-red hair seemed to flame about her head.

  Unflinching, I waited for the blow. How proud Safwan would be to see me face my doom without any sign of fear! When he left Mecca to join the Bedouins, I’d be ready to go with him.

  Instead of striking me, though, ummi’s hand lowered slowly down to smooth the hair back from my forehead. I searched her eyes: What would she do to me? Her lips twitched at the corners, holding something back.

  “I almost forgot the reason I came to find you today,” she said. “You are to remain indoors, A’isha. It is forbidden for boys or men to see you unless they are relatives.”

  “Stay inside?” I frowned. “But I and Safwan are going to the market to see the caravan from Abyssinia.”

  “You won’t be going to the market anymore, or going anywhere else without me or your father,” she said in the clipped voice she used for rule making. “Starting today, you are in purdah.”

  “Purdah?” I felt all my senses sharpen. “That’s for Asma, not me.”

  “It is for you, too, from now on.”

  “What?” I gaped at her like a fish pulled from the water, trying to breathe. “For how long?”

  “Until your husband says otherwise.”

  “My husband?” For the first time in my life, I raised my voice to my mother. I knew she’d beat me for my shrill, whining tone, but I also knew I had to convince her to change her mind now, before she pressed her lips together and refused to speak—a sign that her mind was set and that no argument would change it.

  “Safwan wouldn’t want you to hide me away,” I begged. “Go ask him, ummi. He’ll tell you.”

  “Safwan has nothing to do with this,” my mother said. From the courtyard came Qutailah’s call: “Yaa durra! Parrot! Where is my meal?”

  Ummi’s sigh scraped like a blade on a stone as she turned away from me. “When you marry, daughter, make certain you are the first-wife in your household. Make certain you control your destiny, or it will control you.”

  The pounding of my heart, like the hooves of panicked horses, sent me running to her, dizzy with the need to stop this imprisonment before it started. In purdah I wouldn’t be allowed to step outside my parents’ house until my wedding day. I’d be stuck in this cold, dreary tomb until the day my blood flow started, six years away or maybe even longer, with no Safwan to play with, no boys at all, just the silly girls who came with their mothers to visit.

  “It’s not fair to lock me up!” I threw my arms around my mother’s waist and held on as she tried to move away. “You’re punishing me, aren’t you? I embarrassed you at Hamal’s house, and now you want to take revenge.”

  “Let me go!”

  “Not until you change your mind. I want to go outside, ummi.” I tightened my grip, holding on to the notion that this was just a cruel joke—and fearing that if I let her go, I might crumple to the floor.

  Years of hauling water and making bread had made my tiny mother an amazingly strong woman. She reached behind her and gripped my forearms so tightly I thought she would snap them in two. Yet I clung to her until she pried me loose, then pushed me backward onto the floor.

  “You will do as I say, unless you want to be whipped,” she snapped. “This confinement is not a punishment.”

  Sprawled at her feet, I looked up into her flushed face and realized she wasn’t going to change her mind. I felt as though hands were closing around my throat, squeezing tears from my eyes, making me gasp for breath.

  “I don’t want to stay inside!” I wailed. “I’ll die in this stuffy old cave.”

  “Al-Lah has blessed this family today.” My mother’s voice was as hard and cold as the stones under my bottom. “But a girl’s honor can easily be stolen. If you lose it, you might as well be dead.”

  Qutailah called for her again, this time in a sharper tone. “By al-Lah, you will be shoveling out the toilet if I have to ask for my meal again!” My ummi turned and walked with brisk steps—and slumped shoulders—to the courtyard entrance.

  “When I marry Safwan, we’re going to run away to the desert!” I cried after her. “You’ll never see me again. You’ll be sorry then!”

  She stopped and turned to give me a long, last look. “Do not think you know what al-Lah has planned for you, A’isha.” She pressed her lips together, turned away from me again, and walked out of the house.

  I scrambled to my feet and ran after her, but stopped at the arched passageway to the courtyard. Outside, our ghaza’a tree drooped its lacy leaves as if in sorrow. Beneath it, my grim-lipped mother served a heaping portion of barley to Qutailah, who scolded her for cooking it too long.

  “After all these years, have you still not learned how to cook, Umm Ruman?” she said with a sneer. “A toothless infant could eat this soggy mush. Did I ask you to make baby food?”

  The women visiting Qutailah began to snicker, but my mother kept ladling the barley, her eyes lowered although I could see her face redden. I felt my cheeks stiffen where my tears had dried. I crouched, ready to race into the courtyard and defend my ummi, but I knew it would only make things worse for her—and for me. Instead I ran to my bedroom, where I flung my toys against the walls and screamed and punched my bed with my fists.

  Buried alive in this house for the rest of my days.

  I’d known it would happen someday, but not when I was six. Only a very few girls were engaged at birth, as I had been, but they were never confined until they began their monthly bleeding. To begin purdah at my age was unheard of.

  Someday, I and Safwan would ride far away from Mecca and all its foolish traditions. We had already taken the blood-oath, had pricked our fingers and smeared them together and sworn to leave the city behind, once we were married, and become Bedouins in the wild. Nothing could break that vow. If they tried to lock me away forever, I would escape. With the Bedouins, I’d be free to live my life the way I wanted, to run and yell and fight in battles and make my own choices. Because, in the desert, it didn’t matter whether you were a woman or a man. In the desert, there were no walls. Control your destiny, or it will control you.

  With those thoughts, my hands clutching my pillow, my body as rigid and straight as an arrow, I fell out of my unhappy world and into deep, thrilling dreams
of riding on horseback with the wind in my hair and a sword in my hand, free at last.

  SHIFTING SANDS

  MECCA, 622

  NINE YEARS OLD

  Glimpses of his face and bright shards of his laughter kept Safwan alive for me over the years. From behind my bedroom curtain I watched him scamper, strong and free, over rocks and sand, chasing his friends with stick-sword brandishing, curdling wild Bedouin yells in his exuberant throat. I peeked through the cloth like a shy moon veiled by clouds, longing to be seen yet fearing it. My parents had drummed the dangers into my very bones until I dreaded the gaze of any man not in my family. One illicit glance, it seemed, could pierce the veil of my virginity. So I watched life outside go on without me as though I had died, shrouded by my curtain.

  Restless, I learned every stone in the floor, every crack in every wall of our Meccan home during my years in purdah. Fortunately, our house was large—but plain, not showy on the outside like some of the newer homes Mecca’s fat merchants were building. And it was comfortably cool, thanks to the thick stone walls and dearth of windows in all the rooms except mine, which I’d chosen for the light, and the kitchen, which needed the extra ventilation. As in most homes, ours separated the harim, the women’s quarters, from that of the men, which included my father’s majlis, a rectangular room whose walls were hung with tapestries of red and gold and whose floor was plump with cushions. The harim consisted of the women’s bedrooms, the kitchen and sitting area, a store room, and, outside, a private bath enclosed by high stone walls. A spacious courtyard separated the men’s and women’s living areas; this held a few thorn trees for shade, from which hung swings for my friends and me to play on, and a see-saw of acacia wood. The harim was connected to the front of the house, which included the living room and a stairway leading to a balcony where my father sat most nights with his wives. Date-palm fronds criss-crossed the ceilings throughout, letting in fresh air but blocking out most of the heat. How I longed to climb the walls and wiggle through, then fly up and away!

  “Why so sad, donkey-face?” my father would ask. I’d sigh loudly and droop my head, hoping for his embrace. He might pull me down into his lap and tickle my chin, making me giggle, coaxing laughter into that house whose windowless walls blocked out the sun I craved. I breathed in my father with my eyes closed, smelled his deliciousness, honey and garlic with a hint of sweet cardamom. I pressed my face into his beard, gray and wiry as a shaykh’s on a face as smooth as a young man’s. My pleasure, however, was always short-lived. In a moment he would nudge me away, telling me he had work to do.

  In truth, abi’s support for his friend Muhammad brought him as much grief and worry as delight during those years. Not everyone in Mecca believed Muhammad was a prophet, or that there was only one God. The city’s merchants, in particular those of the ruling Qurayshi tribe—Muhammad’s tribe, and my abi’s—scorned his beautiful, poetic revelations from al-Lah. He is only a djinni-possessed kahin, they’d scoff, likening him to the hooded “oracles” who wandered through the public market spouting gibberish.

  Yet Muhammad’s words weren’t nonsense. His qur’an, or recitations, not only proclaimed the oneness of al-Lah, but revealed the other gods in the Ka’ba, Mecca’s holy shrine, to be false. They were only chunks of wood or stone, he contended, angering the merchants who depended upon those idols to bring worshippers—and their gold—into the city. Quraysh’s leaders, including Muhammad’s cousin Abu Sufyan, vowed to stop him any way they could.

  Yet who would dare to harm him as long as the mighty Mu’tim was his protector? The Qurayshi merchants jeered when Muhammad recited his verses and struck him with a sheep’s uterus when he prayed in public, but their fear of his protector was too great for them to do him harm. It was unfortunate, abi said, that Mu’tim couldn’t spread his tent of protection over all the Believers.

  My father’s protector kept him from harm, also, but only barely. Abi’s clan, the Taym, had turned its back on him, as he realized one day when Abu Sufyan and a friend of his tied my father and my cousin Talha back to back and left them in the desert to broil. When the Bedouin chief Ibn Dughumma discovered them there, he took them to his tent and slathered their burnt skin with khatmi, then offered himself as my father’s protector. Quraysh agreed to respect the arrangement, but only if my father stopped reciting the qur’an and praying in public. The merchants were afraid of the sweet, tearful expression on my father’s face when he prayed: That face will seduce our wives into following Muhammad! My father built a mosque beside our house, which became a gathering place for Believers—irritating Quraysh even more.

  Meanwhile, my days in purdah stretched and thinned, past into present into future, like a slow-moving caravan whose beginning and end had disappeared from sight. During the day I listlessly kneaded bread dough, spun wool, and wove cloth, dreaming of the time I would be free, unbridled by purdah or my neighbors’ tongues. I loathed the women’s chores, dull and repetitive, and lived for the evenings I would spend with my abi.

  We’d sit together for hours, I and abi. At first, he taught me the Prophet’s recitations, which I lovingly memorized, each word as sweet as honey on my lips. He read to me the poetry of the jahiliyya, the time of ignorance before islam was revealed to Muhammad, and when I begged for more verses he taught me how to read them for myself. Noting the pallor in my skin, he chose a horse from his stable for me—a sleek, night-black mare that I named Scimitar—and took me riding in the desert on cool evenings. These were the nights I cherished most in all my years in my parents’ home: the quickening of my pulse as we galloped over the soft red earth; the ripple of the horse’s flank under my hand; the rush of the fresh breeze over my skin and through my hair.

  I lived for the nights, but the days offered one highlight, also: the visits to our home by the Prophet of al-Lah. In the early years, especially, Muhammad came every day to pray in the mosque, then to sit in my father’s majlis and sip coffee and discuss the day’s affairs. Afterwards, he’d present me with a toy hidden in his robe and laugh and tease while I tried to find it, then he’d sit on the floor with me to play. I never wondered why he was allowed to do so when no other man was permitted even to look at me. Muhammad had been a part of my life since I’d been born, and it seemed natural to clash toy horses with his and scream, “Die, Bedouin cur!”

  But in my ninth year, a series of events changed the way I viewed Muhammad.

  He arrived in our doorway one morning with a face as unsettled and dark as a storm cloud. He murmured something to my mother. She cried, “By al-Lah!” and sagged against the door like a deflated ball. I ran to her side, my heart nearly bursting to see her so upset, but she waved me back. I turned to Muhammad for an explanation, but he was striding toward the majlis with my father—followed, in the next instant, by me.

  “Mu’tim is dead,” Muhammad said as I listened outside the door. “He was found in his bed with his throat slit. Some are blaming Abu Sufyan.”

  “I would not be surprised if Abu Sufyan had arranged it,” my father said. “Mu’tim has prevented him from assassinating you more than once, I have heard.”

  “Mu’tim protected me from death,” Muhammad said in a strange, choked voice, “but in doing so he lost his own life. Yaa Abu Bakr, this cannot continue. We must leave Mecca before any others die on my behalf.”

  I gasped and pressed my palms to my hot cheeks. Leave Mecca? How could we? No man ever moved away from his tribe, and women did so only to marry. Our ancestors had settled this land. Our families were all related to one another. Yes, Safwan and I had plotted to run away and join the Bedouins, but that was different: We’d be moving for adventure, not out of shame. We could always return. But those of us who ran from Quraysh now would never be allowed in Mecca again, except as slaves.

  For days I walked with trembling steps as if the earth shook under my feet. We must leave Mecca, I kept hearing Muhammad say, and I’d feel my heart flutter as if it might run away from me and hide, refusing to let me leave Na
dida, my cousins, Safwan, and the market and the mountains I loved. My father was as tense as I. As he visited with Muhammad one day, I entered the majlis to pour their coffee and, distracted by their talk, spilled some of the hot liquid on my father’s arm. He raised a hand to strike me, but, to my amazement, Muhammad grabbed his arm to stop him. “Be gentle with her, friend,” he said. “For my sake.”

  A look passed between them as I watched, stunned by what I’d just witnessed. For a man to interfere in another’s home life was unheard of. Men had fought and killed each other over these very acts. But my father was nodding, as if Muhammad had every right.

  “Forgive me,” abi said—to Muhammad, not me.

  Later, as he was leaving, Muhammad patted my cheek in farewell. “After today, A’isha, you will not need to worry about being treated harshly again.” His golden eyes softened, like honey in the sun. “That much, at least, I can do for you now.”

  Later, in my room, I pondered Muhammad’s words. How audacious of him to tell my father how to discipline me, as if I belonged to him!

  Maybe I do.

  The thought hit me like a slap, making me sit up straight and sending all worries about leaving Mecca flying from my mind. Was I—could I be—I could barely bring myself even to form the thought—might I be engaged to Muhammad instead of Safwan?

  Do not think you know what al-Lah has planned for you. I remembered my ummi’s words, spoken on that dreadful day I’d started purdah, when I’d told her that Safwan and I would be fleeing to the desert once we were married. I’d shrugged her warning away, knowing that, as Safwan’s wife, I’d never have to take orders from anyone but him. Even al-Lah couldn’t change that, for it was written in our laws and traditions like the etchings of the wind in the rocks of Mount Hira.