The Jewel Of Medina

by Jones, Sherry

  Muhammad held his own sorrow close, as he always had, retreating to his apartment for several days and emerging to utter a hoarse prayer over his body. Then he disappeared into the majlis with his Companions for long meetings.

  On his visits to me Muhammad spoke not only of Zayd, but also of the Byzantine emperor’s rejection. We couldn’t count on help from that wealthy empire. The drought that had plagued us since before the Battle of the Trench persisted still. Our allies would have to pay a tax to Medina, or we’d starve to death.

  “Yet there are many, like the emperor, who think us insignificant,” Muhammad said. “Few will agree to pay a single dirham until we prove our strength by ruling Quraysh.” Seizing Mecca was crucial to our survival.

  For our visits to Maryam’s home, I and Sawdah carried my replenished medicine bag and Sawdah’s incenses and charms. I went reluctantly, at first, out of duty to Muhammad. But soon Maryam’s home became our oasis within the oasis. She and her eunuch, Akiiki, welcomed us into her house filled with green plants and plush red and gold carpets, with blue and purple and yellow and green cushions strewn about like flower petals. A tapestry on the wall depicted a haloed Virgin Mary on an ass, her belly plump with her child under a star bursting forth from the heavens. A window looked out over pastures where ewes and lambs grazed and frolicked, luring me out to play. But I had more important tasks to attend: The massaging of Maryam’s hands and feet, which suffered from poor circulation, and of her belly, where Muhammad’s child seemed intent on kicking its way out.

  Not once did I hear Maryam complain: Not when the child bulged against her skin, making it shiny and taut. Not when it weighted her steps to make moving about a chore. She’d hold Akiiki’s arm when she walked, laughing.

  “My baby’s house is growing nearly as large as his mother’s,” she would say. “He will have to come out soon, though, for my body has no windows.”

  Going home was the most difficult part of each day. We’d say our farewells with light hearts, then stroll arm-in-arm through the fertile gardens and rolling meadows until the city enveloped us again in stink and gloom. Our covered faces marked us as Muhammad’s wives even to strangers, and we inevitably found ourselves dodging those questions—Why does he delay? When do we go?—and averting our gazes from anxious eyes.

  One evening, as we took our last breath of sweet air and pulled our wrappers tight for the descent into Medina, we heard shouts from behind. Akiiki, looking like an animated stick, ran toward us with waving arms. He spoke no Arabic, but his expressive gestures were easy to understand. As he spread his hands over an imaginary bloated belly and thrust them downward, we knew the child was coming. Sawdah waddled back to Maryam’s house with the eunuch while I fled into town to fetch Umm Hanifi, the midwife.

  I found the old woman attending a labor in the tent city, her hands coaxing a slippery babe from between a woman’s legs as if she were pulling a plant, roots and all, from the soil. At the sight of me children and old men patted my robe, searching for the barley and dates I usually brought. I promised them food tomorrow, but they would not leave me, and in their hunger I thought they might devour me, instead.

  “Yaa Umm Hanifi, the Prophet’s child is coming soon,” I shouted to her over the fray. “Sawdah sent me to fetch you to Maryam’s house. Her labor pains are coming hard and fast.”

  She nodded as if I’d announced the time of day and pulled a long knife out of the sheath on her belt.

  “Sawdah knows what to do,” she said as she sliced the cord holding the child to its mother. “Look for me on my donkey when I have bathed and rested.”

  Back at the house I found Maryam sweating and gasping on her bed with Muhammad holding one hand and Akiiki holding the other. Sawdah handed Muhammad a palm-frond fan, and he waved it over Maryam’s hot face.

  “You had better start the fumigation, yaa A’isha,” Sawdah said. “Umm Hanifi will move at her own pace, but we can get things started.”

  Maryam moaned. I lay my hand on her stomach and uttered a silent prayer to al-Lah for her comfort. Forgive me, also, for my envy over this child, I asked. Please do not let it harm the baby or its mother. As though in response, I felt a ripple like water flowing over a sharp rock.

  “What a kick!” I said, making Muhammad and Maryam smile. “Your child is a fighter, yaa Maryam.”

  “It has to be a boy, by al-Lah,” Sawdah said. “No girl was ever so boisterous—except maybe you, A’isha.” She sucked in her breath and reached for her amulet. “Male or female, whatever al-Lah desires,” she added quickly.

  I rummaged in my bag for my mortar and pestle, then a pouch filled with goldenroot. This I would grind with frankincense to mask its pungent odor, then smolder in my brazier to fumigate Maryam’s private parts. The vapors would protect the baby from infection—if the midwife ever arrived.

  “What, by al-Lah, is taking her so long?” Muhammad cried, after sending Akiiki out for the fifth time to look for Umm Hanifi. The eunuch shouted something unintelligible. I ran to the door to see the portly midwife riding across the meadow on a slow donkey, dressed for a celebration in a colorful gown that billowed about her in the afternoon breeze, earrings dangling to her shoulders, her eyes heavily kohled and her lips rouged a bright red. Hundreds of Believers crowded around her, tossing flowers in her path and ululating their good wishes.

  Inside, I told Muhammad what I’d seen. “While the midwife basks in the umma’s love, Maryam teeters in the maw of death!” he cried. I had to stop myself from laughing. Was this the mighty Prophet of God? He could learn a lesson or two from the eunuch Akiiki, who, though excited, was managing to remain calm.

  Maryam’s eyes twinkled, while Sawdah shook her head in disgust. “Warriors are the worst,” she murmured. “They kill and maim without a care, but the sight of a woman giving birth makes their blood tremble and their stomachs quake.”

  Umm Hanifi walked into the room as imperiously as any queen. Sawdah waved a handful of coriander and began her incantations against the Evil Eye. The midwife’s face sharpened to a stern point at the sight of Muhammad and Akiiki in the room.

  “Be gone, and let the women do their work!” she cried, waving her muscular arms. “If we need the aid of a man, we will summon al-Lah.”

  In truth, we summoned Him many times during the long hours that followed. The labor was hard and long, but the only screams came from Sawdah, who railed against the evil forces holding the child from this world.

  “You’re allowed to express your pain, yaa Maryam,” I said as she crushed my fingers in her grip. “You don’t have to be brave.”

  Tears rolled down the sides of her face. “It does hurt. But if I cry out, Muhammad might hear me and worry about his child.”

  At last the time came for us to help her into the birthing chair, where she pushed and strained and grunted as Umm Hanifi rubbed her stomach and legs.

  “This baby does not want to enter this world,” the midwife said, frowning. “A short life is the usual interpretation.”

  Sawdah shrieked, then grabbed her coriander bundle and waved it in front of the midwife’s mouth, “sending those evil words away before they could reach the child,” she told me later.

  Any malign spirits remaining in the room surely would have flown away when we began our earsplitting ululations announcing the baby’s arrival, setting off trills and cheers among the Believers surrounding the house. Maryam cradled the wizened child and gazed at him as if he were the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. I swallowed my tears, refusing to think of the child I’d lost, denying the taunting voice inside me that whispered that my status as hatun meant nothing now, that the infant was a boy and Muhammad would love him—and his mother—most of all, no matter how many children I might bear. Love, I reminded myself, was not a contest. Nor was it a dish of tharid, to be divided up and devoured until it was gone. Giving love away only made it increase. I smoothed the damp hair from Maryam’s face and she squeezed my hand.

  “May you be next, A’i
sha,” she said.

  Ten thousand campfires: That was Muhammad’s strategy for subduing Quraysh. Our army spread itself around the city of Mecca and built one fire for every man to emblazon the hills with light and make us appear as numerous as the stars. I and Muhammad stood at the edge of the al-Hudaybiyyah overlook and gazed in wonder at the bright lights at our feet, listened to the shouts of the warriors warning the Meccans that tomorrow would be ours.

  “Imagine what the Quraysh are thinking now.” Muhammad’s quiet laughter tickled my ear as he squeezed my waist. “They cannot but know that al-Lah has arrived.”

  His eyes shone with another kind of fire. His kiss tasted of metal and spice. I breathed him in, smoke from the cooking fires and miswak and dust from our long journey. “At last, habibi, you’re going home,” I said. “And when you arrive, you’ll rule. Abu Sufyan won’t challenge you now.”

  In truth, Abu Sufyan’s eyes bulged with fear when Ali escorted him to our tent that night. Inside, he fell to his knees and flung his arms around Muhammad’s legs, making Saffiya shriek. Ali grabbed his robe and yanked him backward, then pressed his dagger against the fat man’s throat.

  Abu Sufyan shook like a candle-flame. “I beg you, son of Abdallah, do not destroy Quraysh!” he cried in a choked voice. “Be merciful to your people.”

  “My supporters will be spared, Abu Sufyan.” Muhammad’s tone was casual, as though his enemies were always barging into his tent. “As for you, I have not heard any professions of faith from your lips.”

  “How can I profess faith in your God and betray my people?” Abu Sufyan croaked. “I am the leader of Quraysh. Their gods are my gods.”

  “And their Hell is your Hell, you sniveling coward!” Ali scraped his blade across Abu Sufyan’s neck, shaving off wisps of red-gray beard. “Profess al-Lah’s Prophet here and now, or die.”

  “Wait!” Abu Sufyan’s beard quivered. “I have seen the light of al-Lah in Ali’s blade. The truth is revealed to me! There is no god but al-Lah, and Muhammad is His Messenger.”

  “Liar!” Ali pushed Abu Sufyan to the ground and spat on him. “Can such a speedy conversion be sincere, Prophet?”

  “Only al-Lah knows the hearts of men.” Muhammad extended his hand to Abu Sufyan. “I accept every man who calls me Prophet. Arise, Abu Sufyan, and welcome to the umma.”

  Disappointment clouded Ali’s eyes. He’d wanted to kill Abu Sufyan—and, in my heart, I’d wanted it, too. At last, when he faced punishment for his wicked deeds, he’d needed only to say a few words to become blameless in Muhammad’s sight. Yet, I had to remind myself, as Muhammad’s hatun, my job was to support his decisions, not to doubt them.

  Behind our screen, I and Saffiya listened to the men discuss the plans for the next day. Our entire army would march into the city, followed by our women. Anyone who opposed us would be crushed.

  “Yet we would prefer to enter in peace,” Muhammad said. “We have come to claim Mecca for al-Lah, not to make war.”

  Abu Sufyan’s eyes darted from Ali to Muhammad. He licked his thick lips.

  “Most of us have agreed to your terms,” he said. “But a few young hotheads vow to fight you. They are no threat, of course. You will be able to overcome them easily without losing a man.”

  Muhammad smiled at him and nodded: This was the kind of information he wanted. “Already you prove a worthy ally, Abu Sufyan,” he said. “Your friendship will be well rewarded.”

  The night wore on. Throughout the camp, fires sputtered and gasped, succumbing to the dark and the cold. Inside my tent I felt the warmth of our own fire’s waning light against my cheek. Through my closed eyelids I watched their flickering images, like shadow puppets dancing their way into Mecca. The motherland. The city I hardly remembered. Home. Anywhere Muhammad was, there was my home. He was my home.

  His kiss awakened me even before Bilal’s summon to the morning prayer. The sun had barely brushed the sky, but I leapt up and pulled on my pure white gown. When Muhammad had led the pilgrimage to Mecca on the anniversary of his peace treaty, he’d taken Umm Salama and Zaynab but left me behind, punishing me for failing to support his pact. Now, having regained his trust, I would at last visit the famous Ka’ba, built by Ibrahim and his son Ishmael so many years ago, with its mysterious black cornerstone dropped to the Earth by al-Lah Himself.

  “The Ka’ba was built for al-Lah, not for the idols that profane it now,” Muhammad said. “Today we return it to Him.”

  Waiting for our turn to enter the city’s gates, we women sat on our camels and watched the procession. Nearby Abu Sufyan stood with his adviser, al-Abbas, uncle to both Muhammad and Ali. From my vantage I could see, and hear, the two men laughing as the Banu Muzayna jostled past, spitting and shuffling in their bare feet.

  “We surrendered to this?” Abu Sufyan jeered. Al-Abbas smiled and said nothing.

  “The laughter of Quraysh frightens me more than this ragged crew,” he said of the Sulaym, with their dusty robes and rotting teeth.

  But when the men of Medina marched past in perfect formation, fully armored, with their splendid, green-hooded horses, Abu Sufyan was silent. Muhammad’s army was nothing to laugh at, as he well knew.

  At last Talha came to lead the women through the gate in Mecca’s high stone wall. Nearly all the umma’s women rode in hawdaj s now, commanded by their husbands to endure the teetering ride in imitation of the Prophets’ wives. Through my curtain I could see that Mecca was nothing like Medina. The air smelled pure and fresh, if a bit dusty from our camels’ hooves. The houses of stone and pale clay shone in the sun. The market, in the shadow of the dark, bulky Mount Hira, looked forlorn with its long rows of stalls emptied of vendors, but festive banners crisscrossed the sky over its street. I recalled, faintly, the bustle of the place on an ordinary day: its jingling bells and smells of meat and incense, its lowing cattle and twittering caged birds, its beckoning merchants and men and women bargaining in strange tongues.

  We stopped before the Ka’ba, a large cube-shaped building so starkly white it might have been freshly washed for us. Although I’d seen it many times as a child, I’d been too dazzled by the market to pay it much attention. Now, though, my spine shivered as I stood on the black flagstones circling its base. As spotless as it appeared, the roil of horses and men seemed intent on dirtying it, sending swirls of dust into the air as the umma’s warriors smashed their blades on the hundreds of idols perched on pedestals around it.

  Muhammad stood in the Ka’ba’s doorway, his smile disheveled, his hair curling in the sweaty air, his right hand hoisting his sword. “The Ka’ba is cleansed!” he cried. “Al-Lahu akbar! God is great!”

  From the Ka’ba’s rooftop Bilal echoed his cry. The women’s camels knelt, and we emerged from our curtains, barefaced before God, and joined the wave of Believers dropping to the sand and stretching out their arms. Our shouts of praise soared as if on the wings of a hawk, wheeling higher and higher to the God who had brought His Prophet home at last.

  We stood to watch Ali wrap a black turban about Muhammad’s head. He handed him a white flag, which Muhammad waved as he ran—not daring to walk, lest Quraysh think him weak—three times around the Ka’ba, then twice between the city’s sacred hills. Then, his moist face gleaming, he raised the flag to the roar of men and women who lifted their swords and handkerchiefs and hands in return.

  The crowd parted at the base of the Ka’ba’s steps, making way for my father. He ascended carefully, holding the hand of a very old shaykh who hobbled with a cane, and whose clothes and skin hung loose from jutting bones.

  “My father stands ready to profess his faith in al-Lah and His Messenger,” abi announced. I hurried to his side to greet my grandfather for the first time in my memory. Seeing me there, Muhammad held out his hand, and I ascended the steps to sit beside him at his right hand.

  Soon the greetings of Believers and long-lost family members filled the air with joy.

  “Ummi!” Umm Salama cried, and ran to embrace a tall
woman in pale silk with her own prominent cheekbones. Ali presented al-Abbas, who held out to Muhammad a young woman with a thick cloud of black hair.

  “Will you do me the privilege of marrying my daughter Maymunah, and joining our families again?” he said. I narrowed my eyes, watching her closely. Al-Abbas was Muhammad’s uncle, but he was also Abu Sufyan’s closest Companion. Might he use his daughter to try to harm Muhammad?

  Uthman herded an entire family to kneel at Muhammad’s feet. Talha brought his father—my mother’s brother—making my mother gasp with delight. But when Abu Sufyan accompanied his pinch-faced wife Hind up the stairs, the umma hissed.

  The bulge between Muhammad’s eyes throbbed as he glared down at her. I cringed, recalling how she’d shrieked with laughter at Uhud as she’d lifted our general Hamza’s bloody liver to her mouth. Ali charged up the stairs with his double-bladed Zulfikar quivering in his hand.

  “You whore of Hubal,” he growled. “I’ll spill your blood all over these steps.”

  To Ali’s astonishment and mine, Muhammad raised a hand to stop him.

  “Yaa Hind, your husband has pleaded for your life today,” he said. “Before I decide your fate, I want to know: Do you recognize me as God’s Prophet?”

  Aghast, I looked at the ground, hiding my disapproval. Would Muhammad capitulate to the evil Hind as he’d accommodated her treacherous husband?

  She lifted glittering eyes to his—and spat on his robe. I trembled with the urge to lunge at her.

  “I, forsake the mighty Hubal and the glorious al-Lat for a son of Hashim?” she cried. “Unlike my weak-livered husband, I am no traitor to my gods. Nor will I pretend to believe for the sake of saving my pitiful life. Do with me as you will, Ibn al-Muttalib.”