The Jewel Of Medina Read online

  I ran straight to Sawdah and stopped behind her with my arms spread, blocking her backside. “Don’t move, Sawdah,” I said. “Your skirt is pinned up in back.”

  Sawdah cried out and waved her hands across her rear, felt her bare legs. “Move out of the way!” someone yelled. “We can’t see her.” The goldsmith took a step toward me, flashing his gold tooth.

  “I dare anyone else to come near the wives of the Prophet Muhammad,” I shouted, hoping no one could hear the tremor in my voice.

  After only a few weeks’ lessons from Muhammad, I wasn’t skilled enough to fight a donkey, let alone a man. But someone had to defend Sawdah, and Ali was occupied. Besides, I could afford to be brave: No man would confront a twelve-year-old girl. Or so I thought.

  “Look, another Muslim whore who wants her skirt pinned up,” the goldsmith jeered. “Come here, darling, and I’ll do your front.” He lunged for me, his hands grasping like a scorpion’s pincers. I whipped my sword from its sheath and slashed the back of his hand with the tip of my blade. He cried out and pressed the wound to his mouth. The taste of his blood filled his eyes with hatred. He drew a dagger from his belt and raised it, popping his eyes at me.

  “Sawdah, move away!” I cried. She ran to the stone wall and pressed her back against it. I turned to face my attacker. The goldsmith advanced, grinning, but he wasn’t careful, probably because he was fighting a girl. I raised my child’s sword and lunged, using a trick Muhammad had taught me to knock his knife out of his hand. He stared at me, confused, as his blade thudded to the ground. Some of the men around him laughed, but others grabbed their blades and moved slowly toward me. I looked around for Ali, but before I could call for his help Safwan leapt into the fray with a snarl, flashing his sword.

  “Any coward can fight a girl,” he said. “Let’s see you Kaynuqah pigs best a Muslim warrior.”

  The men clashed their blades with ours, and for a few short moments everything was just the way I’d imagined: Safwan and me fighting side-by-side. I cut the arm of one man, making him fall back. Safwan took a slice off his opponent’s nose, but the man continued to attack.

  “You must leave here at once, A’isha!” he cried. “This is no place for you.”

  Still bristling from his “any coward can fight a girl” remark, I turned and knocked the dagger from his opponent’s hand.

  “Maybe it’s no place for you, Safwan,” I retorted, and took satisfaction from the way his eyes widened when he glanced over at me. But in the next instant, an arm closed around my neck and yanked me backward against a man’s hard chest, choking me as it pressed into my throat. Breath blew hot against my ear, and a bleeding hand smeared my lips.

  “Lap it up, dear,” the goldsmith snarled. “Never again will you be so close to Kaynuqah blood.”

  I jabbed him with my elbow, and brought my sword down on his leg. He let me go and I whirled around to fight, but Ali and his friends leapt into the crowd with their swords already in the air.

  “You have done more than enough, you troublemaker,” Ali snarled at me as his friend with the big ears skewered the goldsmith through the belly. I watched, shaken, as the goldsmith fell to the ground, writhing and gurgling blood.

  “We need to remove ourselves. Now!” Ali shouted.

  He ran to collect Sawdah and led her to her kneeling camel. I leapt up onto Scimitar and wiped my blade with the cloth on my saddle, but kept my sword in hand in case anyone else tried to attack.

  Sawdah wept, red-faced, as her camel stood. “I have never been so ashamed,” she said. “Those people saw everything.”

  I tried to slide my sword into its sheath, but my hand trembled so badly I missed. A man had been killed, and I could have been also, but over what? A senseless prank! My nights of mock sword-fights and pretend battles had been games—but this was life. And death. I took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Don’t worry, Sawdah,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could. “When Muhammad hears about this, he’ll make the whole Kaynuqah tribe pay—with their blood.”

  A scream curdled the thick, hot air, and I looked toward the roiling crowd of men with swords and sticks and pounding fists. Safwan was nowhere to be seen; apparently, he hadn’t forgotten how to vanish like a djinni. Ali’s friend with the big ears slumped on the ground, and a Kaynuqah man stood over him with a sword dripping red.

  Ali glared at me as he took the reins of Sawdah’s camel. “See what you have caused?”

  “I protected Sawdah while you loitered on cushions with your friends,” I said.

  “Yes, A’isha, you did,” Sawdah said. She wiped her wet cheeks and gave me the tenderest of smiles. “You risked your life for me. Thanks be to alLah for a sister-wife like you!”

  “You started a bloody fight with your eagerness to show off,” Ali said. He shook his head. “Maybe now Muhammad will listen to me and Umar. Wherever women go, trouble follows. The best place for you is at home.”

  A BAD IDEA

  THAT SAME DAY

  As I’d expected, Ali went straight to Muhammad when we returned from the market and told him all about the fight. And, as I’d expected, he portrayed himself as the valiant warrior coming to my rescue and me as the reckless child who’d caused all the trouble.

  I’d made haste, with Sawdah huffing along behind me, to approach Muhammad myself. When I arrived at the majlis, Ali was already there, boasting and thumping his chest as he described in vivid detail the death blows he and his friends had dealt to the men who’d pinned up Sawdah’s skirt. One thing he didn’t mention was how he’d shrugged off his duties at first to gossip and drink coffee.

  “I would like to hear those Kaynuqah cowards laugh at us now, cousin,” he said with a laugh of his own. “With these two blades I pierced both eyes of every man who approached me. Now their refusal to see the truth of islam has made them truly blind!”

  Listening to Ali boast, I resisted the urge to jump in with tales of my own exploits. I wasn’t proud of the bloodbath that had resulted from something as trivial as a prank. And besides, Muhammad knew I wasn’t capable of holding off experienced fighters for long, not by myself. If I told him about my part in the ugly scene, I’d have to tell about Safwan. Still in a daze from meeting him again, I was far from ready to discuss him with Muhammad.

  As I and Sawdah stepped through the doorway, Ali pointed his long finger at me.

  “Here is the one who started it all,” he said. “Yaa cousin, you should have seen her. A girl, and, worse, your wife, shouting out a challenge to the entire market! She broke her agreement with you at the first opportunity.”

  I felt my ears burn as if his lies were candle-flames licking at their edges. Yet I held my retort because I dreaded any mention of Safwan—while, at the same time, I hungered for news of him. What had happened to him? Had he been wounded in the fighting, or killed? I tried to remember seeing him in the fray after I’d mounted my horse. Of course, Safwan had always been good at vanishing.

  Fortunately, Sawdah had no such qualms about speaking.

  “Yaa Prophet, you should have seen A’isha,” she said. “A little thing like her holding off three big men! She threatened to kill them all if they didn’t leave us alone. She would have done it, too.”

  Ali folded his arms. “Truly, they would have died—of laughter. She was quite a vision, lunging around with that child’s sword you gave her. She was more dangerous to herself than to anyone else. I told you, cousin, she should be kept at home.”

  “By al-Lah, she stood up for me!” Sawdah glared at Ali. “When nobody else would.”

  Muhammad frowned at me. “I only used the disarming trick you taught me,” I said. “It was enough to slow them down, at least. And besides—” To my chagrin I felt myself blush, which made me redden more—“I wasn’t fighting alone, not the whole time.”

  “That is right, you had that boy jump in to help,” Sawdah said. “He was no better fighter than you, though.”

  “Safwan ibn al-Mu’attal,” Ali sa
id. He folded his arms and narrowed his eyes, as if he’d caught me in a lie. “What was he doing at the market, A’isha?”

  “How would I know?” I said, more sharply than I’d intended. What was Ali accusing me of? He smirked and nodded as though I’d just confirmed his suspicions.

  Safwan’s handsome face as he’d fanned me with the palm frond flashed before my mind’s eye, and I began to perspire. Ali was watching me so intently, I wondered if he could read my thoughts. Had he seen me and Safwan talking together? Had he noticed how close Safwan had stood to me, and how I hadn’t moved away?

  “Yaa A’isha, weren’t you told to summon me if there was trouble?” Ali said. “Yet you jumped in and started a fight without even calling my name.”

  Muhammad’s eyes snapped when he looked into mine, and the tiny vein between his eyes bulged—always a sign of his anger.

  “You behaved impulsively today, A’isha,” he said. “You could have been killed. Perhaps I would be wise to limit your freedom for a while, until you can restrain your actions.”

  “By al-Lah, don’t do that!” I blurted. I pressed my hand to my chest and felt a frantic thumping, like the foot of a frightened rabbit. “I promise you, nothing like this will happen again.”

  “But you have already broken a promise to me. You said if there was trouble, you would go to Ali.”

  I looked down at the floor, avoiding the disappointment in his eyes. I’d been so eager to show off with my sword, I’d forgotten my promise to call Ali. And I’d acted on impulse, as Muhammad had said.

  “I meant to keep my word to you,” I said. “But everything happened so fast, and I wanted to protect Sawdah—”

  “A’isha is quick-spirited,” Sawdah said.

  “She did not mean any harm.”

  “She needs a firm hand,” Ali said. “Sawdah’s care has always been lenient. Of course, cousin, your daughters were all well-behaved.” His eyes gleamed like daggers at me. “If you do not wish to restrict your child bride, perhaps your bride-to-be will do it for you. Hafsa bint Umar could be a true hatun, the Great Lady of your harim, and prevent this kind of disaster from happening again.”

  “New wife?” I asked Muhammad later, when he visited me in my room. “But why? I just moved in. Are you already bored with me?”

  “Of course not, A’isha,” Muhammad said. He reached out and pulled me onto his lap. “But Umar wants to establish a bond with me, so he has offered his daughter Hafsa. Her husband died fighting for me. She has no one to care for her.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to marry all the widows from Badr?” I slanted sly eyes at him, hiding my dismay. “Where will they all live?”

  Of course, I knew he had no plans to marry every widow in the umma. Umar was a special case. Once a bitter enemy of islam, he’d become an important member of Muhammad’s circle of Companions. “I must marry his daughter,” Muhammad told me. “There is no other way.”

  Umar had already suffered humiliation enough, Muhammad said. First he’d asked their Companion Uthman to marry her. But Uthman, a plump, wealthy man with a mustache as long as a pump handle, had just married Muhammad’s daughter Umm Kulthum. “I cannot take another wife so soon,” he’d said.

  “Having deep respect for Uthman, Umar said nothing,” Muhammad told me. “Then he approached Abu Bakr.”

  Wouldn’t my father like to marry the beautiful Hafsa? Umar had asked. Abi bowed his head and stared at his hands, wondering what to do. If he said yes, he’d be saddled with a hot-tempered wife who would forever disrupt the peace in his home. If he said no, he would insult Umar. So he said nothing. Watching my father stand still and silent, Umar turned red, then gray, like a spent coal, before rushing away to find Muhammad.

  “These so-called friends mock me with their indifference to my daughter,” he ranted.

  “Uthman and Abu Bakr declined her hand, but only because I asked them to,” Muhammad said to him. “I want to marry Hafsa myself.”

  As he finished his tale, I pressed my hand to my twisting stomach. Hafsa bint Umar was known to be a spoiled, self-centered woman whose screams at her husband had awakened her neighbors many times.

  “If you have to marry someone,” I said, “can’t you find a wife who’s nicer? Hafsa will make me her durra, and I’ll be miserable.”

  Muhammad chuckled. “You, the second-wife? After seeing you stand up to Ali today, I doubt it.”

  I hoped he spoke the truth—yet hadn’t my mother once been strong also? Seeing the amused glimmer in his eyes, I decided to try another approach.

  “Umar is a new convert to islam, and he was a close friend of Abu Sufyan’s before the hijra to Medina,” I said. “How do you know he’s not a spy? If you marry his daughter, you might put us all in danger.”

  Muhammad shook his head. Our army had crushed the Qurayshi fighters at Badr, he pointed out. Not only did the victory unify the umma, but it demonstrated to Abu Sufyan—and all of Hijaz—that we were to be feared and respected.

  “This marriage is for the good of the umma,” he said. “We are a brand-new community, doing something no group of Arabs has ever done: leaving our homeland to form a family outside the bonds of kinship. Hafsa’s widowhood has created a rift among my closest Companions. If marrying her will mend that tear, then naturally I will do so.”

  After that awful day in the market Muhammad tried to make peace with the Kaynuqah, but they jeered and threw rocks, telling him to send real men to fight next time instead of an old woman and a little girl. Worried about the threat they posed to us, Muhammad sent the men of the umma to drive the entire tribe out of the city. Then, with that concern out of the way, he made preparations to marry Hafsa bint Umar.

  I understood why Muhammad had to marry again. Yet how I dragged my feet across the courtyard on the day of the wedding! Sawdah was all smiles and congratulations, but welcoming a hateful new sister-wife into the harim was far from my pleasure. Especially when that wife shimmered with beauty, and with the haughtiness of a peacock in her expensive gown of the most vivid blue.

  I forced my legs to carry me past the looming date palm, through the wizened acacias, across the long, gray grass and the blood-red sands to where she stood under the weeping ghaza’a tree. My eyes returned again and again to her garments, as if she were a flower and my gaze a desperate bee: to the gloss of the brilliantine under-gown, more deeply azure than the midday sky; to the rich sheen of her brocaded purple silk shift, slit in the hem and plunging in the front to display the luscious blue beneath; to the girdle of fine blue lace encircling her waist; to the silken wrapper, also a rich, heady blue, sliding down the wave of ink-black hair I was certain she dyed with indigo. My precious red-and-white gown seemed shabby, all of a sudden, and my rust-colored hair more garish than ever.

  As I approached, Ali stepped up with smiling eyes and murmured to her. She laughed, darting her glance as she made a reply so low he had to bend his ear to hear. He laughed, also, and their eyes exchanged a sly glance before he moved to Muhammad.

  As I stood before Muhammad and Hafsa and mouthed blessings on their marriage—tripping like a clumsy child over the hated words—Ali watched with his tongue pressed smugly against his cheek. Hafsa regarded me with her nose so high in the air she might have been offering it to the birds to perch upon. In fact, her finely plucked eyebrows reminded me of birds in flight as she raised and lowered them over eyes like toasted almonds in burnt-butter skin.

  “What a lovely dress,” she said, raising them at my gown. I bit back a taste as bitter as grape seeds. Her tone made me want to rip out that shiny hair she kept flicking off her shoulders. Beside us, Sawdah fingered her amulet against the Evil Eye and wished Muhammad happiness with his new wife.

  “You must be A’isha, the child-bride,” Hafsa said. Her question dripped like venom from her pointed smile.

  “Muhammad’s favorite bride,” I said, glaring at her so she would know I planned to stay that way.

  She raised a dainty hand to her prettily yaw
ning mouth. “How nice for you.” She reached out and patted my head. I resisted the urge to slap her arm. “I hope you have enjoyed his attentions while they lasted.” She shifted her glance to Ali, who watched us with a cunning smile, and then back to me. “After he’s spent his seven nights with me, you may find his heart has changed.”

  “Yes, after seven nights alone with you, my husband will be more in love with me than ever,” I said. I thought her eyebrows would fly away completely.

  If Muhammad loved me more the next day—or at all—I couldn’t tell it. As I laid out their meal in Hafsa’s new hut, the pair settled themselves on a single cushion, so close she might as well have been sitting in his lap. And such an appetite Muhammad displayed! He and the ravenous Hafsa devoured a pile of dates nearly as big as her head.

  She was resplendent. Her thick hair spilled like a river of ink over her shoulders. Her blue silk trousers embroidered with yellow birds narrowed at her waist, then billowed over her hips, accentuating their fullness. Already she had lined her eyes thickly with kohl, which dramatized their erotic dance. Her gazes at Muhammad invited, then rebuffed, then teased, then laughed. Around her neck she wore a necklace of lapis lazuli flecked with golden glints like stars on a slender bronze rope.

  They cooed and preened like two nightingales in a nest. I thought of the night they had just spent, of her body under Muhammad’s, and my stomach churned. The tip of her breast brushed his arm as she leaned across him for another piece of fruit. He made a sound in his throat and looked at her with a hunger all the dates in Hijaz could not satisfy.

  “By al-Lah! Marriage has made you both so eager for food,” I said. Forcing a laugh. Vying for my husband’s attention. Yet he seemed oblivious to my presence.