The Jewel Of Medina Page 5

  We didn’t, however, miss Abu Sufyan. He made sure of that.

  We’d ridden eleven days to get to Medina, but it wasn’t far enough. The Quraysh threatened us still. For them, idol worshipping and money were as tightly intertwined an orb weaver’s web. To disrupt one, they thought, would destroy the other. So they tried to destroy our umma instead. Every week we heard about another assassin sent by Abu Sufyan to kill Muhammad. Fear filled our mouths like the Meccan dust in our new oasis home. Muhammad urged us to enjoy the moist green grass and shade here, but his worry showed in the constant click of his prayer beads through his fingers. Alone in our new home, I played with my stick-sword in the courtyard, pretending I fought off murderers, protecting our Prophet. In all the excitement, I almost forgot about the engagement announcement that my parents were too busy to make. But I didn’t forget to watch for Safwan.

  His family would have to make the hijra to Medina soon. We heard more terrible stories every day. Abu Sufyan was enraged over Muhammad’s escape. His men had begun snatching Believers in the daylight and cutting their throats in Mecca’s streets. Ali and Zayd helped hundreds flee. No Believer could remain in Mecca and hope to live.

  When Safwan arrived, would he be able to find me? The houses stood apart from one another here. The people of Medina made their living growing crops, mostly date-palm trees and barley, and raising animals. I could see more sheep and goats from my window than people. Not that I looked out my window all that often: The stink of manure blew into my room with the slightest breeze. So I played instead on the long swing my father hung for me under the sheltering date-palm tree in our courtyard. I learned to swing so high and so far, I could see over the edge of the house and into the valley below. Every time I glimpsed the rolling land and horizon, I looked for Safwan.

  Perhaps his parents had delayed their emigration because of the troubles we’d suffered here. Many of us caught a horrible fever, from the flies and mosquitoes, my mother said. My father almost died from it. I lay in bed for days, delirious. My hair snarled on my pillow in a web of tangles my ummi had to chop out with a knife. When she finished, I looked more like a son than a daughter.

  “It will grow back,” she said. I looked in the mirror and saw my boyish self, hair splayed like an open hand and eyes gleaming, and hoped she was wrong.

  When I’d fully recovered from my illness, my father invited me into the courtyard for a cup of galangal water and a “talk.” In my room, my hand jittered as I combed my hair for the event, and I had to force my breath to slow down. My parents had never made this kind of invitation to me before. I could easily imagine what they wanted to discuss.

  Please, al-Lah, oh please let them say my husband will be Safwan. Don’t let them marry me to Muhammad. I know he’s Your Messenger, but he’s an old man—and I want to ride free with the Bedouins.

  But al-Lah didn’t hear my prayer. As I sat across from my beaming parents and sipped the delicate spicy water, their words clashed with my desires like metal bars against the whirring wings of a bird.

  Muhammad, they said, was to be my husband. It had all been arranged on the day I began my purdah.

  I set down my drink so violently it sloshed over the lip of the bowl. “But what about Safwan?”

  My mother hmphed. “That boy? He will never be more than a foot soldier in the umma’s army. But you, my daughter, will be married to the Supreme Commander.”

  “Yaa A’isha, Muhammad is very fond of you,” my father said. “We have planned a wedding for next week.”

  Next week? The wings in my chest flapped wildly. My parents’ faces seemed to spin before me. “But I’m not a woman yet,” I squeaked. Our tradition was to wait until a girl’s menarche occurred before wedding her to a man.

  “That is what I said.” My mother turned sharp eyes on my father. “But your father wants to have the ceremony now, before Ali marries the Prophet’s daughter Fatima.”

  “Ali thinks we are in a contest for Muhammad’s love,” abi said, shrugging. “I only want to make certain Muhammad does not forget which of us is his closest Companion.”

  As they spoke, the wings in that cage drowned out their voices, beating harder and harder like the slap of the fat Hamal against his frail young wife. In only one week, I would lie under Muhammad while he pinned me down with his body, imprisoning me, hurting me. Would he hear my cries of pain? Or would he only pound into me harder and faster, as Hamal had done to Fazia-turned-Jamila?

  “A’isha. Yaa A’isha!” My mother’s shout startled me out of my terrible vision. I stared at her, wondering how she could let this happen. Was she my mother, with a woman’s heart and a woman’s knowledge of the marriage bed?

  “What is wrong with you?” ummi said, narrowing her eyes. “Those do not look like tears of happiness.”

  “I—,” I hesitated, fearing her tongue as sharp as any sword. But then I thought again of marrying Muhammad and sharing his bed, and my mother’s fury seemed less forbidding. “I want to marry Safwan,” I said in a tiny voice.

  My father wrinkled his forehead and stroked his beard, as if puzzling out a problem. My mother, on the other hand, exploded in a high, harsh laugh.

  “Did you think your father invited you out here to ask what you want?” she said, piercing me with her eyes. “You foolish girl. When are you ever going to learn?”

  Marriage was a charging horse, bearing down on me fast. My days in my parents’ home, always excruciatingly slow, now sped past in a blur of tears. I forgot my vow to become a warrior, but dreamt instead of Safwan’s rescue. Disappointment tinged each sunrise as I awakened to another day of dread. My mother tried to cheer me by showing me the wedding gown she’d bought for me—Red and white silk, A’isha, all the way from Yemen!— but I burst into sobs at the sight of it, making her tsk with annoyance. Tears filled my mouth, my nose, my stomach, churning with the food I managed to choke down and bringing it back up again.

  All around me the household bustled in preparation for the wedding while I hid in my room, waiting for a miracle. My mother came to my bedroom curtain every day, hissing that Muhammad was here and wanted to see me, but I sat silent, with my back to her. She is suddenly shy since we told her the news, I heard her say to him. In truth, the idea of seeing Muhammad made my stomach lurch like the hump of a moving camel, and I knew if he looked on my face he would see my revulsion. I couldn’t help the way I felt, but I didn’t want to cause him pain. Muhammad had always been kind to me.

  What would marriage to him be like? Would he forbid me to play with my dolls and toy horses, as Qutailah had done to Asma when she’d begun her menarche? You are a woman now, with no time for childishness. Would he change my name? Would he lock me away as Umar did his wives and daughters? I couldn’t be his hatun, since he already had a first-wife in Sawdah; I’d be the durra, the parrot, serving her every whim. Would Sawdah make me her slave, giving me the basest of chores? My head ached more with each question, as if my worries were fists pounding against my skull.

  The day I’d dreaded arrived all too soon. Ummi swept into my room and flung open the curtains, spilling the sun’s harsh light like water over my face.

  “This is one day you will not be hiding in your room,” she said. “Arise and dress yourself, A’isha. The wedding guests will arrive in one hour.”

  I lay in bed for as long as I could, until the need to relieve myself at last tugged me upward like an insistent hand. I pulled on a clean chemise and skirt and tramped barefoot into the courtyard, barely feeling the cool grass under my feet. In a few hours, the sun would blast us with its fiery breath, and Muhammad would take me home with him to recline in our marriage bed. My breath came in short gasps at the thought, as though he were already lying on top of me, and I ran in circles around the yard until all I could hear was the thrum of my pulse in my ears and all I could feel was the pounding of my feet on the ground.

  When the guests began arriving, my mother called me indoors to greet them. The smell of roasting meat drifted in fro
m the cooking pit beside our house, but for once my mouth did not water with anticipation. Ummi smiled to see my skin all glowing and pink from running.

  “I knew you would be excited when the Great Day arrived,” she said.

  I said nothing, not to her; not to Umm Ayman, Sawdah’s friend and Zayd’s wife, who crinkled her old face at me and told me how fortunate I was; not to Muhammad’s daughter Fatima, who hissed that I’d never replace her mother in Muhammad’s heart; not to his hatun, Sawdah, who pinched my cheek and said what a good time we’d have together as sister-wives. And, when all the women had gathered in our living room and I found myself forgotten, I sneaked outside to play—for the first time in years—with the children filling the courtyard.

  Children—lots of children! My body felt as light as air as I bounded out to join them: cousins, children of my parents’ friends, little girls, older girls, girls I’d never seen before and girls who often came to play with me, and, praise al-Lah! boys, rambunctious, boisterous, gleeful boys, boys with big ears like jug handles, boys with voices that cracked, boys who chased each other with stick-swords and captured girls as their hostages, making the girls shriek with delight. Children kicked a goat’s-bladder ball across the grass, shouting and squealing. They pushed each other daringly high on the swing, then leapt into the air to land on the ground. They pushed and tugged and growled at one another on the teeter-totter, struggling for the seat at the very top.

  Within moments I’d not only joined them but I stood at the pinnacle, ruling the seesaw like a queen. Nadida clambered up toward me, and I waved my stick-sword, thinking she would try to push me off.

  Then she said “Safwan,” and I stopped.

  “He arrived in Medina last night,” she said.

  I almost fell off the teeter-totter. Boys circled below me like upside-down vultures, touching my bare feet with their sticks. I kicked them away with a mighty roar. Was Safwan here now?

  I snarled and pushed Nadida to the ground, showing off for a Safwan who might or might not be watching. When my ummi came out to call me indoors, I growled at her, too.

  “Can’t you see I’m playing?” The children around me gasped, thinking I’d be whipped—but I wasn’t worried. Since Muhammad had asked my parents to “be gentle” with me, they’d treated me like a princess.

  Now, though, my mother’s eyes glittered, as hard and black as onyx.

  “A’isha, this is no time for games. He waits for you inside. Everyone waits!” She grasped my ankle and yanked me to the soft dirt. My playmates cheered and screamed.

  “Go to your husband!” Nadida cried, carried away as usual. “He waits for you in bed.”

  My mother gasped, glaring at her, and yanked me to my feet. Stomping toward the harim she dragged me behind her, nearly pulling my arm from its socket.

  “Look at you,” she scolded as she jerked me along, to a cacophony of hoots from my delighted playmates. “Breaking your purdah, risking our good name, and rolling in the dirt on your wedding day. Are you the daughter of Abu Bakr, or a wild animal?”

  Inside the house, the smell of cardamom sweetened the air from the majlis, where my father sat with the men and drank fragrant coffee. I craned my neck as we passed, searching for Safwan. I tried to dig in my heels as ummi pulled me along, but my feet only bumped along the stone-and-clay floor.

  In the living room the women fanned themselves with date-palm fronds and smiled as ummi pulled me past them to the walled-in area behind the house where our family bathed. A large pot of water steamed over a bed of black coals, which gave off an acrid odor. Asma dipped a rag into the pot and began to scrub my face.

  “Soiled and spoiled,” she said. Her eyes danced under heavy eyebrows. “Some wife you are going to make.”

  My mother raised my shirt over my head, ignoring my protests. I felt my face flame to be so exposed, and I covered my budding breasts with my arms, which made Asma laugh.

  “You won’t keep those date-seeds hidden much longer,” she teased.

  “Starting tonight, you’ll have to share them with your husband.” She winked at me. “Just hope he doesn’t nibble too hard.”

  I felt a creeping over my skin as if I’d rolled in a nest of scorpions, and I shivered even as my sister poured hot water over my back.

  “Do not be a fool, Asma,” snapped my mother. “This is only the marriage, not the consummation. A’isha has not begun her blood flow yet.”

  No consummation! I didn’t know what the word meant, but it had something to do with blood. I pressed my hands harder against my chest so my heart wouldn’t burst through.

  “Why marry her to him now, when she is so young?” Asma said.

  “Blame your father, not me,” ummi said, and poured a cup of water over my head. “This rivalry with Ali has affected his reason.”

  “But whoever heard of a nine-year-old getting married?”

  “That is what I asked Abu Bakr.” My mother hurled the cup into the pot, splashing water over the edge and onto the hard-packed dirt, where it scattered like marbles. “But you know how he is. Stubborn, like his youngest daughter.” She gave me a pointed look, then continued her conversation with my sister.

  “‘These are new times,’ your father said. ‘We have a new home in a new city, with a new God. Why should tradition still rule when it comes to marriage?’ As for me, I prefer to wait. But your father makes the decisions and I obey. Tradition still rules in that respect, it seems.”

  From a camel’s-hair bag she pulled out my wedding gown and held it up to me. Once again, I nearly burst into tears at the sight of it. But then I reminded myself to pretend I was happy. That way, everyone would be caught off guard when I and Safwan ran away.

  “This is too large for you,” ummi said. She slipped the gown over my head, covering my eyes and binding my arms while I fantasized about escape. “We did not expect a wedding so soon.”

  The silk felt cool and soft against my skin, like water. The neck of the gown scooped slightly, baring the hollow pressed like a thumbprint into my throat. The white sleeves rippled loose at the shoulders, then tapered to encircle my wrists like a father’s hand. For a moment, I felt beautiful—until my mother offered me my reflection in a piece of polished brass and I noted my hair’s garish color, like a flag, and the muddy green tint of my eyes. Why couldn’t I have lovely dark features like the beauties the poets wrote about?

  I asked for a scarf or wrapper, but my mother shook her head. “The Prophet loves your red hair. You know that.”

  Another devil-wind began deep in my stomach, then whirled wider and higher until I thought it would consume me completely. By al-Lah, it was already beginning! The marriage hadn’t even happened yet, and already Muhammad—or, at least, the idea of him—was determining how I should dress.

  I saw my dreams of freedom fade like the light from my grandmother’s eyes as she’d lain on her deathbed. Dizziness staggered me. This was not my life! I, A’isha, was supposed to wield a sword and race camels in the desert. Instead I was about to march under my ummi’s glaring eye to a life of servitude with a shaykh—an old man—and the toothless, grinning Sawdah as my only companions.

  But the promise of a rescue brightened my mood like a shimmering oasis on the desert horizon. By the time Sawdah poked her jowly face into the room and announced that “he” was ready, I’d talked a smile onto my lips. My mother must have noticed the change because she squeezed my shoulder in a rare sign of affection.

  “Such pride you bring to our family today,” she said in a choked voice. I turned away from her, ready to bolt, but she stopped me with a hand on my arm.

  “Walk slowly, with your head high, for everyone will be watching,” my mother said. “A bride carries herself with dignity.”

  But how, with legs that trembled as if they had no bones? I wobbled as I walked, my legs growing heavier with each step and my pulse thudding in my ears, into the dim harim, the women’s living area, where women rattled tambourines and lamp flames flung dancing shad
ows on the walls. Raha floated like a cloud to me, her eyes shining, and handed me a fragrant bouquet of lavender.

  “Be strong, Little Red,” she whispered as she pressed her cheek to mine. “Al-Lah will reward you for it.” Then she turned to the other women and lifted her hands into the air. “Our A’isha, exalted above all women!” she cried.

  Ululations filled the room like the warbles of a thousand and one birds. Shining, smiling faces swirled before me like colors through a prism. Sawdah, grinning and showing her black teeth and blacker holes where teeth used to be, strew rose petals at my feet. Their fragrance softened the faint unctuous tinge of burning lamp oil before getting lost among the perfumes the women wore. Muhammad’s daughters from his marriage to Khadija, who had died years ago, stood in a cluster and watched the procession: Ruqayyah, pale as the belly of a pigeon and smiling wanly; Umm Kulthum, broad-waisted and robust; and bland, bowl-faced Fatima, whose polite smile didn’t reach her eyes. Where was Safwan’s mother? I glanced past the faces before me, into the corners, into the hallway beyond. Hadn’t she made the journey from Mecca with her son?

  “Keep going,” my mother whispered. “To mine and your father’s bedroom. The Prophet waits for you there.”

  I stepped into the dark hallway, my legs still shaking. No one had to tell me to walk slowly now. My pulse charged my legs with blood, urging them to run—but in the opposite direction. Just beyond the curtain to my parents’ bedroom, I could hear the laughter and shouts of men. Men! I had been cut off from them for so many years—and now I was going to have to walk into a room full of them.

  One by one Muhammad’s daughters disappeared through the curtain, then the neighbors, still ululating and rattling their tambourines, followed by Sawdah with her rose petals. Next it was my turn. I stopped, staring at the saffron silk curtain, which had once been my mother’s wedding gown. Where is Safwan?