The Jewel Of Medina Page 7

  Uthman’s voice shook as he repeated the news. “How can we defeat so many men, when we have so few?”

  “With Ali on your side?” I heard the swish of Ali’s blade. “Do not fear, old man. I and Hamza will kill them all.”

  Umar grunted in response. No one else spoke for a long moment. Then I heard my father speak words as calming as a cool breeze.

  “Yaa Muhammad, I am grateful to have Ali on my side, and also Hamza. But most of all, I am glad that al-Lah fights on our behalf. I agree with Ali. Let us go to meet Abu Sufyan and show him whose god is to be feared.”

  The day our tiny army left Medina, Qutailah clung to my father, weeping, while my mother stood stolidly beside him, not blinking or speaking a word. Asma, also, cried until her eyes looked like raw meat, but I grasped abi’s beard and kissed his cheek and told him I would pray for his safe return. I stood at my window and watched, my heart a brimming vessel, as he mounted his horse and rode away, the picture of valor in his chain-mail vest and leather helmet and shield. How I longed for the day I could go along to provide water on the battlefield, as women did in those times! I’d bring my sword and join the fight at the first opportunity.

  In only a few days, our scouts returned to Medina with the news: The umma’s army had won the battle at Badr! Not only that, but they had slaughtered so many Qurayshi men that the Red Sea’s color had deepened with their blood.

  Inside our house, Qutailah and my mother actually hugged each other, and Asma and I danced in the courtyard, giddy with laughter. Outside, the men who had not gone to Badr filled the streets with shouts as jubilant as if they had played a part in the victory. We ululated with pride for our army and in thanksgiving to al-Lah. Some shed tears over their Qurayshi kin who had died in the battle, but not me. I rejoiced to be free from the fear Abu Sufyan had caused us for so long. After such a defeat, he would surely leave us alone from now on.

  A few months later, when my blood began to flow, I felt light enough to dance again. At last Muhammad would come for me, and I’d be able to leave this tomb! Yet as my mother washed my legs and fastened a cloth between them, I stared without blinking to force the water to my eyes. According to custom, I was supposed to cry when I left my parents’ home.

  “By al-Lah, what are you sniffling about?” my mother said, waving her hands as if to sweep away my tears. “You are a woman now, A’isha. You should be rejoicing, not acting like a child.”

  Yet, what woman played with toys? My wooden horses still gave me hours of pleasure. My soft dolls and cloth animals knew all my secrets. But ummi shook her head when she saw me pulling them off my bedroom shelves and placing them in a goatskin bag.

  “Leave those here,” she said. “You will be busy at the mosque. Muhammad does not keep slaves or hire servants. Sawdah does the work, and you will help her.” I shrugged and continued packing my dolls, but she snatched the bag out of my hand. “No daughter of Abu Bakr’s will enter her bridal chamber with arms full of toys! You are the Prophet’s wife—not his daughter.”

  When I had finished packing, she turned to leave the room. I grabbed my favorite doll, Layla, from my bed and stuffed her inside my robe. Then I followed my ummi into the living room, where Muhammad greeted me with a smile as warm and bright as the sun. He looked much younger than his fifty-five years that day, standing in my parents’ cool, whitewashed room with legs apart and his hands planted on his hips. His white tunic and skirt hung loose over his compact body, and his dark curls sprang, unruly, from beneath his white turban.

  His eyes like honey flowed sweet glances over my face and body, lingering appreciation over my red-and-white striped wedding gown as though he’d never seen it before.

  “Today,” he said, “I am the most fortunate man in all Hijaz.”

  “Today and every day, from now on,” I flirted back.

  “Yes, very fortunate,” he said, nodding, “to be married to such a modest young woman.”

  “If it’s modesty you treasure, you should have married al-Qaswa. I have never heard that camel brag about anything.”

  Muhammad’s laugh was like a lion’s roar. My father laughed, too, and even my mother, whose eyes seemed to dance like candlelight whenever she looked at Muhammad. “You see what you are contending with, Prophet,” she said. “I hope you will not change your mind.”

  “And forgo the opportunity to wake up laughing every morning?” Muhammad said.

  The image of us in bed together flashed like a bolt of lightning through my mind, and I heard nothing else anyone said. I don’t remember whether my mother kissed me good-bye or cried a single tear; I don’t know what my father murmured as he pressed into my hand a leather pouch containing five silver dirhams. All I could think about was that old, hairy-bottomed Hamal astride his small young wife. Fazia-turned-Jamila had been only a year or two older that day than I was now.

  Red tinged the morning sky as Muhammad and I rode together on al-Qaswa, his pure white camel, away from my parents’ house and across the meadow separating us from the city proper. Clouds shifted uneasily before the sun. Palm fronds waved as if welcoming us. Purple lavender flecked the pale, scrubby grass, scenting the breeze. Sheep billowed past, bleating like crying babies. I gripped the bridle in my hands and wondered if I would ever visit my father’s house again.

  Then we were in the shit-stinking city. I never saw more flies anywhere than in Medina in those days. They feasted on the manure that sheep, goats, and dogs dropped in the streets, then came to sip from the corners of our eyes. I forgot, for a moment, about the marriage bed as I flailed my arms to shoo them away.

  “The flies love whatever is sweet,” Muhammad teased. “See how they are leaving me alone?”

  Their attack subsided as we neared the mosque. I blinked and beheld the city for the first time since I’d entered it two years ago. Straight-backed women walked to and from the pond where water was collected, balancing clay jugs or laundry baskets on their heads. Men in coarse, pale clothing led donkeys with their carts past rude houses of dried mud and grass. Al-Qaswa stopped, halted by a tall, thin man with a wandering eye and a shorter man with a long, drooping mustache. Both of them bowed to Muhammad and ogled me. I pulled my wrapper about my neck.

  “Yaa Muhammad, is your young bride ripe at last?” the shorter man said with a dirty grin. “I hope you will not scream too loudly tonight, little girl. It would be cruel to torment those of us who sleep alone.”

  My face filled with heat. Behind me, Muhammad’s body stiffened.

  “Do you sleep by yourself? You poor, lonely man,” I said, and wrinkled my nose. “But, by al-Lah, from the smell of you I can guess why.” The man’s face reddened as the people around him—including his tall friend—filled the street with laughter.

  “Well spoken, Little Red,” Muhammad said as we continued our ride. “Those are Ibn Ubayy’s men. A few more embarrassments like that one, and they may learn their manners.”

  “I’ve never known an ass to learn anything,” I said.

  He laughed and squeezed my arm. “I’m going to have to practice my retorts to keep up with you.” But he didn’t remark on the wedding night, or what it held for me. I recalled the whisperings of Asma, who was married now and lived with her husband. Hands like scorpions scuttling across your skin, she’d breathed in my ear last night as she brushed my hair. And then—the sting of his tail between your legs!

  My jaw dropped when Muhammad pointed out the mosque. This hovel was the home of God’s Messenger? I had expected a palace, not this low, squat building of mud bricks. It didn’t even have a door! Al-Qaswa kneeled at the entryway and Muhammad stepped down from her hump, then helped me to the ground. A man with a black face as shiny as his bald head stood before us: Bilal. He, too, wore a white tunic and skirt, but with a necklace of pale shells and dark bone plus pieces of ivory in his ears. This was the man whose voice I had heard gonging from atop the mosque five times a day, summoning the Believers to prayer: Al-Lahu akbar! Even at a normal volume, his voice seem
ed to chime. His smile was generous, full of teeth as white as bleached bones. His kind gaze calmed my churning stomach. If he was imagining my upcoming night with Muhammad—as everyone else seemed to be—he did not reveal it.

  Muhammad held my hand and led me into the mosque, a large, plain, oblong room colored in varying shades of brown from the floor strewn with pebbles and sand to the dried mud walls. Date-palm fronds slanted across the ceiling, forming a loosely woven roof that allowed the sun to filter through in tiny pinpoints, as though it were raining light. In each stream of diaphanous gold, fine dust swirled as he walked me around with his arm about my shoulder, pointing out the date-palm trunks he and his helpers had cut with long knives and placed through the room as columns to support the roof—“a design of my own devising.”

  He boosted me up to stand on a tree stump so large it could hold my entire family. Here was where he led the Friday afternoon prayer services. He cupped his hands to catch the water trickling from the sacred spout on the room’s north end, then offered me a drink. As I sipped, he told how he and Umar had built the spout from copper tubes to extend through the wall from a nearby well, bringing in water for cleansing the hands and feet before worship. I marveled at the humble contrast this building made to my parents’ home, and decided to talk to Sawdah about adding furniture and colorful cushions to this dreary room.

  We walked through another arched doorway on the east side of the mosque and into the courtyard, a large, circular area tufted with long strands of gray-green grass and shaded by a variety of trees: scrubby acacias; a date-palm rising as if to touch the heavens, its leaves shooting outward from its crown like the rays of a green sun; ghaza’a trees with their feather-leafed branches bending as if in prayer. A hut of unbaked brick huddled on the north side of the courtyard, next to a huge tent covered with long camel’s hair, which served as insulation against the heat. Muhammad led me around the corner of the mosque where, outside the northern wall, a well-trodden path led to a stone well and, beside it, a garden flourished in glittering display: pomegranate trees bearing orange, bell-shaped blossoms; elegant lime trees; indigo plants flowering the deepest blue; lacy flax plants not yet in flower. This was his daughter Fatima’s garden, Muhammad told me. She still tended it daily, but being married to Ali now she had outgrown the swing hanging from a thorn-tree.

  “I hope to see you enjoying it, Little Red,” he said. I slanted my eyes at him. Wasn’t I also a married woman?

  Back in the courtyard, Muhammad pointed to the little hut I’d pitied and told me it belonged to Sawdah. If I needed anything and Muhammad was busy, I could usually find her there or in the cooking tent.

  “She took care of my daughters after their mother died, and I am certain she will take good care of you.” Again, I nearly protested. Did he think I was a child? Did I want him to? I stilled my tongue.

  Inside the tent, a black kettle of barley bubbled over an enormous fire pit, and discs of bread puffed on flat stones. A flap in the tent sucked the smoke upward into the tender morning air, but the tent retained the smells of bread and grain and burning coal. Openings at either end of the long, wide tent and a main entrance in the center of the west wall, facing the mosque, provided the only other natural light, but oil lamps hanging from carved date-palm stands illuminated the room so that it was nearly as bright as the outdoors. The fire pit, a large, deep bowl lined with rocks along the long eastern wall, served as the room’s centerpiece. At the south end, under one flap, a small boy squatted on his heels and played with toy soldiers on a faded red carpet. Behind him, marbles, dolls, shells, and colorful sticks told me this was a play area for the household’s children—most of whom, as Muhammad had said, were grown. The north end of the tent held a second carpet, also faded to a bare blush, scattered with plump tan and brown pillows. This was where Sawdah and I would dine during the hottest part of the day, sheltered from the sun and insulated from the heat.

  Directly across from the pit, beside the main entrance, large wooden boxes held more knives plus bowls and plates of fired clay, red and gray, brown and dark green, many of them chipped. These boxes sat on the floor, next to a large slab of white marble streaked with gray, where food was prepared. On it sat a great gray mortar and a pestle as big as a club, a basket of pale ground barley, and a bowl of clarified butter. A tall wooden barrel beside this food-preparation area held dates and the sticky-sweet nectar they seeped, used as a sweetener or, best of all, mixed with water for a refreshing drink.

  Near the fire pit a red-faced Sawdah squatted beside a stone slab, grinding barley with a rock. Muhammad greeted her with a smile. She lifted a hand to the windowsill and, with a grunt, hoisted herself up to stand. She waddled across the room wearing a grin riddled with gaps on her broad, round face, and folded me into her body in a doughy embrace. Her musky, unperfumed odor took my breath away.

  “Tut, what a tiny thing!” she said. “I had better get busy cooking. You need some padding on those hips!” She nudged me with her elbow. “A man needs something to hold on to, as you will find out soon enough.”

  A telltale heat crept up my neck to my cheeks. By al-Lah, was the bedroom all anyone could think about today? I lowered my eyes so she couldn’t see my irritation.

  “Yaa Sawdah, see how red my bride’s face has become!” Muhammad chided her gently. “You embarrass us both.”

  But she only laughed and hugged me again, then turned to embrace Muhammad. She called her son from her previous marriage to meet us—just six years old, the pudgy-cheeked Abdal already showed signs of inheriting his mother’s shape—then nudged us toward the courtyard, saying she needed to finish preparing the daily meal.

  “Go! Enjoy these days and nights alone together,” she said. “They are the most memorable times for any bride.” Her eyes danced. “Savor them, A’isha. You will be working with me in the cooking tent soon enough.”

  Days and nights. Alone together. What would I and Muhammad do? Many things, according to Asma. Unspeakable things. When she bleeds, she’s ready to breed. Me, bear a child? I could not imagine revealing my body to any man. Close your eyes and it will be over quickly. Muhammad led me across the courtyard to another, newer hut, attached to the mosque and fronted with a small, plain door of green wood.

  “This is where you will live, and where I will sleep on my nights with you,” he said. My wedding gown dragged like chains around my feet as he led me into the mosque to wash our hands at the spout. The water trickled cool across my trembling fingers, calming my clamoring heart.

  “Let us ask al-Lah to bless our marriage,” he said. He reached for a pair of date-fiber mats leaning against the wall and unrolled them to face south, toward Mecca. Together we performed two raka’at, bowing at the waist, then lowering ourselves to our knees and pressing our foreheads to the ground.

  “Oh God, nurture my love and affection for her and nurture hers for me,” Muhammad prayed as we bowed and prostrated ourselves. “Inspire us with love for each other.”

  Give me courage, I prayed. And please don’t let it hurt too much.

  We rolled up our mats and replaced them. He took my hand and led me outside again. Dizziness muddled my vision as if I had sunstroke. At the door of my hut, we stopped. Muhammad stepped behind me and placed his hands over my eyes.

  I stifled a cry and clung to my doll, which was still hidden beneath my robe. I felt his body radiating heat just inches away.

  “Enter, and let us express our love,” he said.

  I walked with faltering steps into the hut. The dirt floor crunched beneath my sandals. The dark smell of mud mingled with the sweet aroma of straw. Muhammad pulled his hands away from my face, and I opened my eyes.

  “By al-Lah!” I cried. “Have you brought me to Paradise?”

  Wooden soldiers, an entire army of them, filled the shelves and windowsills of my bedroom, as well as miniature horses with real horsehair manes, two girl dolls with dark hair and a boy doll wearing a turban, a rope for skipping, a ball—and, leaning beneath
a window, a real sword with a curved blade and a hammered brass handle, small and light enough for me to lift easily.

  “No more fighting with sticks,” Muhammad said. “I will teach you how to use the real thing.”

  I tucked my doll inside my shirt, then slashed the blade through the air. “Now?”

  He laughed and shook his head. His eyes glinted as he stepped toward me.

  He said: “I had another game in mind for today.”

  The sword fell from my hand and thudded on the earthen floor.

  I held my breath as he reached his fingers toward me. I watched his eyes change, as if catching flame, and I waited for the scuttling hands, the stinging tail. This was the beginning of something new, something terrible. Soon I would be lying on my bed beneath him, squashed like a scarab beetle, flailing and sobbing while he slammed himself against me. He would not want to hurt me, but how could he help it? It’s always painful the first time. Just close your eyes and pray he will finish soon.

  “Wait,” I said. My voice shook. I grabbed my doll, Layla, and thrust her in front of me. My hands trembled, making my doll quiver, also.

  “Yaa Muhammad, what do you want to play?” Layla said, shaking her hair at him. “Hide and seek? Horses and soldiers? Or maybe you want to push us on the swing.”

  His eyes gazed deeply into mine. “This is a solemn occasion, A’isha. The time for children’s games is later.”

  He took a few steps closer, and reached out one hand to tug my wrapper away from my head. It slipped over my shoulders and onto the floor with a whoosh.

  “Such lovely red hair, like liquid fire,” he murmured. I closed my eyes and tried to savor the caress of his fingers against my cheek, the slide of his palm across my scalp, but all I could think about was the next piece of clothing to fall.

  He kissed the crown of my head. He slid his fingers down my arm. He pulled gently at my robe until it slipped off my shoulders and slumped, also, to the floor. I wanted to cover my bare arms with my hair, or with my hands, but I clutched my doll instead and prayed he would finish with me soon. His fingers lightly swirled the skin on my arms, causing chill-bumps. Even in the sultry air of this small, stuffy room, I felt cold.