The Sword Of Medina

by Jones, Sherry

  Horses whinnied, reared, and fell to the parched ground. Men ululated the fierce Bedouin war cry as if gargling blood. Bodies fell to the dirt. Boys scurried about with water skins—for Umar had long ago banished women from the Muslim battlefield—and knelt over the fallen, bandaging the wounds of the injured. I strained to see al-Zubayr’s horse with the chain-mail blanket, Talha’s yellow turban, and Abdallah’s tall figure, but the fighting and the dust were too thick for me to discern which side was winning.

  Several hours later, my throat was hoarse from shouting, my water skin was empty, and the day’s heat was stifling. I eyed the shade of a small thorn-tree and wondered dizzily whether it was acceptable to sit while my troops toiled and bled in the sun. Then I saw my nephew Abdallah running toward me, his face streaked with dirt, sweat pouring down his skin, his helmet gone, his leather shield ripped. Talha followed behind, his chain mail broken and his hands smeared with blood.

  “Yaa Aunt,” Abdallah said, gasping, “we need you on the field!”

  My heart’s pounding filled my ears as, with hands that shook like leaves in the wind, I grabbed the shield Muhammad had given me and clumsily pulled my sword from its sheath. Here, at last, was the jihad for which Muhammad had armed me. I took a ragged breath, then lifted my chin and straightened my back. Despite my heart’s sickness at the pitting of brother against brother, of Muslim against Muslim, the facts behind the battle were undeniable, and the verdict was this: Righteousness was in our camp, and so was victory. Ali was in the wrong. So I told myself.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I said, and took a single step down the hill before Talha grabbed my sleeve to stop me.

  “We can’t let you walk into this battle,” he said. “Your death would dispirit our men and ensure our loss.”

  “But I thought you needed me!” I bristled with impatience.

  “We do,” Abdallah said. “But not on foot. Like this!” He gestured with his hand toward our camp below, where a group of five or six men ran toward us leading a camel by its reins. A green-curtained hawdaj covered in chain mail swayed and clanked on its back.

  “You want me to fight from the back of a camel?” I laughed in disbelief. “By al-Lah, are you djinni-possessed?”

  “It’s the way they used to do it, in the olden days,” Abdallah said. “My grandfather Abu Bakr told me. When an army began to lose a battle, the men would bring a woman onto the field riding a camel, to rally the troops. Everyone would fight harder to protect her.”

  I stuck my sword back into my belt. “I don’t want to perch myself on a camel while you fight,” I said. “I’d be much more valuable to you on the ground, killing the enemy, than sitting like a figurine on a shelf.”

  Talha frowned. “By al-Lah, our army loses more men every minute you stand here protesting,” he said. “Do as I say, A’isha, for once. Trust me. With the Mother of the Believers in their midst, our men will increase their fighting. When Ali and his warriors see you, they’ll falter. This is the only way we can prevail.”

  As much as I wanted to argue with him—I’d been practicing my sword-fighting with him, and we both knew I was not boasting when I’d said I could kill many men—I also respected this new Talha who had emerged, this serious, commanding general. I didn’t dare challenge his authority, not in front of my nephew and certainly not in front of these men who now had the camel kneeling before me. So without another word I mounted the hawdaj and took my seat, peering out at my cousin as the animal stood and, swaying, took me into battle with Abdallah holding her reins.

  “Remain inside!” Talha shouted as he walked beside me. “Don’t open your curtains for any reason, do you hear me? If you are even injured, we are lost. The chain mail will keep you safe, but only if you hold your curtain tightly shut.”

  I let the fabric drop shut and sat back in my seat, intending to do his bidding. When the camel had stopped, I listened to the commotion and tried to figure out what was happening. “A’isha, the Mother of the Believers!” I heard Abdallah cry, and cheers flew up all around me. The clanging of swords followed, and shouts. The rich, metallic stench of blood and the reek of bowels made me gag. The air felt thick and hot inside my enclosure. I longed to pull the curtain aside but I remembered Talha’s commands. He would be the khalifa and I only an adviser. It was what I had wanted, and so it was my duty to obey him.

  Then I heard a familiar cry. Gulping, I moved the curtain a few inches to see my beloved nephew falling to the ground, an arrow in his neck. His hand dropped the reins of my camel and another man rushed forward to grab them. I must have made a sound, for the man’s eyes turned upward to me and, in the next instant, he was impaled in the stomach by the spear of an enemy fighter, who then fell to the ground, stabbed by one of our warriors, who then took my camel’s reins.

  I dropped the curtain and sat back in my seat, my stomach wrenching. Abdallah, dead! And another man, too, beloved by someone, a man who had given his life for me, his Mother. By al-Lah, I’d never wished for anything as much as I wished for my own death in that moment! Who was I to deserve these sacrifices? A spoiled, stubborn girl who’d been forced at a young age to marry the Prophet of God, who’d almost dishonored him because of her own selfish desires, and who’d spent the rest of her life in pursuit of two goals: revenge against Ali for judging me, and power and prestige for my family members.

  Yaa al-Lah, please end my life now, I prayed, feeling as cold as if the fingers of a skeleton were scuttling along my spine. If you are even injured, we are lost, Talha had said. Wouldn’t my death mean an end to this battle? Suddenly, the question of the khalifa seemed as insignificant as the question of which robe to wear on a given day. Take my life now, God, and give the khalifa to whom You will. The decision was never in my power to begin with.

  Then a strange ping! sounded in my hawdaj. Distracted from my prayers and my grief, I looked around for the source. There was only me and my wretchedness inside this curtain. Another sound like the last, but sharper, drew my gaze to an arrow sticking through the cloth.

  My pulse raced as I realized that Ali’s men were shooting at me. Another arrow hit the hawdaj, and then another, until soon it sounded as if hailstones pelted my curtain. I felt my camel lurch under me, and heard a man shouting, Hold that beast steady, or we will lose our Mother!

  Our Mother. My heart lifted at the words. I was a Mother to them, just as Muhammad had been a Father. They had come to islam as meekly as lambs, like the runts I used to suckle with milk on my finger. These men had given up their homes and their families, their wives and earthly mothers, to come and fight for me—for me, the Mother of the Believers, for wasn’t I the one who had given the speeches denouncing Uthman’s assassination? Hadn’t I called them to arms? How could I have done all that simply out of revenge? No, my cause was just: to honor the memory of their Prophet by keeping alive his vision for islam.

  Each arrow’s ping! made my pulse skip and skitter more wildly. What kind of Mother hides away when her children need her help? I had prayed to die, and now it looked as though I would. But by al-Lah, I might as well die in a manner befitting the favorite wife of God’s Prophet.

  With a trembling hand I pulled al-Ma’thur, Muhammad’s legacy, from my sheath. Cowering had never been the way of A’isha bint Abi Bakr, as my husband had known. Use it well in the jihad to come. Here it was, the struggle he’d spoken of, and now it was incumbent upon me to do my duty. Then, when I met Muhammad in Paradise, I could tell him I’d done my best until the end, and that his sword had enabled me to die with honor.

  I took a deep breath and pushed the curtain of my hawdaj aside, struggling, for the chain mail made it heavy. I thrust myself through the opening and kept my knees bent so as to move with the camel. I lifted my sword, intending to bring it down on Marwan. I was a moment too late, for he had just speared Talha in the leg, pinning his knee to his horse. Talha struck Marwan down in return, then glared at me. “Get back inside, A’isha!” he shouted. “Or you’ll be killed!”

&n
bsp; Then he grabbed his leg and lost consciousness, slumping on his horse. The man next to him fell, his arm severed by an enemy’s sword, leaving the reins of my camel unguarded. Before I could take a breath, a Bedouin man had seized the reins—but when he glanced up at me, I noticed that it was one of our own warriors. He fought bravely, fending off attacker after attacker. I raised my sword, wanting to fight but my camel lurched, throwing me backwards into the hawdaj, where I landed hard on my tail bone. Wincing, I rubbed the sore spot—and realized that I had lost my sword. I poked my head out of the curtain again to search for it—and found it had been flung out of reach and was sticking in one of the ropes tethering my hawdaj to the camel. Every movement pressed the rope against the blade, fraying it more. Death seemed certain for me now. If arrows didn’t pierce me, my hawdaj would surely topple to the ground.

  Yaa Muhammad, I will be with you very soon. I closed my eyes to imagine my beloved’s handsome face, his beautiful eyes like copper coins gazing with love at me. In an instant, though, my vision changed—and I saw myself standing on my camel’s back and fighting, holding on to my hawdaj with one hand and slashing my blade with the other. I pulled the curtain aside again to meet death courageously, face-to-face, as Muhammad would have done.

  I threw myself over the back of my camel and grabbed my sword, ignoring the arrow that pierced my arm and the pain shooting through my shoulder. I stood shakily, preparing to fight as I had in my vision. Arrows fell all around me, but I never heeded them. Instead, I stared into the coal-black eyes of Ali, whose mouth opened at the sight of me, then pressed shut in determination. I watched as he urged his black steed forward to race toward me like a whirling zauba’ah.

  Ali was coming. Here was the contest I had longed for all my life, and now dreaded as if it were my brother I faced. Yet even as I watched him, I knew my time on Earth was ended. After all that had passed between us, I could not harm Ali.

  Ali

  The battlefield is not the place for fear. If fear makes its residence in a warrior’s heart, his enemy can smell it, for it is an aroma most sweet, portending victory for the man who detects its subtle mingling of sweat, sex, and milk fresh from the udders of a goat.

  For this reason, more than any other, accomplished warriors learn to banish fear on the battlefield. I, who had participated in many bloody and gruesome fights in my youth, had never allowed myself to become afraid during a fight, and so I had invariably defeated my foes. But during that terrible slaughter that would come to be known as the Battle of the Camel, when I beheld A’isha crouching atop her camel with her sword in hand while arrows flew about her head, fear seized my throat like the teeth of a hungry jackal.

  I had never seen a sight as awe-inspiring—or terrifying—as A’isha bint Abi Bakr astride that lurching beast, her mouth a rictus of fury, her left hand gripping the bar of her hawdaj and her right hand holding high Muhammad’s jewel-encrusted sword. Blood smeared her white gown and pale arms, and from her shoulder protruded an arrow that she seemed not to feel. My heart swelled as I watched her among my best and bravest men—men who would not hesitate to kill her if they could, for many of them were new converts to islam and therefore unhindered by the reverence for the Mother of the Believers that those who had known Muhammad still felt.

  Death seemed at hand for one of the most exemplary women al-Lah had ever fashioned and the most infuriating, also. In that moment I forgot the mayhem and stood admiring this woman whom I had previously hated.

  Al-Lah only knows how long I might have watched A’isha challenge me with her eyes and raised sword. But then my son Mohammad rode up and urged me to save his sister’s life. “If you don’t, then, by al-Lah, I will!” he shouted. “If it means giving my life for hers, then let God’s will be done. I would rather die than see my sister dishonored by Bedouins.”

  And then I recalled another warrior-woman, one as fierce, if not as beautiful: Umm Himl, the apostate warrior whom Khalid ibn al-Walid had brutally raped and murdered in battle. Perspiration broke out on my face and hands as I realized how imminent was a similar fate for A’isha.

  I knew that there would be no halting this battle, not by command, for this was the moment for which I had prepared these men with my rousing speeches condemning the actions of the Mother of the Believers. I had labeled her an “affront to islam” and a “flaunter of the wishes of Muhammad, who ordered his wives to remain in their homes, hidden from the lustful eyes and hearts of men.” After stirring their passions, could I now rush in and forbid them the very prize with which I had lured them? No. If I tried to stop them, they would ignore me, or, worse, turn against me.

  I remembered how Khalid had felled Umm Himl, and I saw the answer to my dilemma. “We must slice the hamstrings of A’isha’s camel,” I said. “The beast will fall to its knees, and the fight will be ended.”

  Mohammad frowned. “What if she falls to the ground? She’ll break her neck.”

  “That is a possibility,” I said. “But if we do nothing, she will certainly die.”

  A scream pulled our attention back to the fight. One of my warriors had grabbed A’isha’s blade and, in spite of his bleeding hands, yanked and tugged in attempt to pull her to the ground. She wrested the sword away from him, but it was clear that she was tiring. Now was the time to save her. She looked up and our gazes locked, and, for the first time, I saw terror in her eyes. Holding my breath, I kicked my horse into action and raced toward her, not thinking about what I had to do, but relying solely on God’s guidance.

  Such a feat as I had to perform would be difficult, for it would require maneuvering a horse around the crowd and back in, like thread through a weaver’s loom, then reaching out with a blade and slicing the backs of her camel’s legs even while the animal shifted and lurched—and doing all without getting kicked, stepped on, or killed by the enemy. Then I would have to leap to the ground and into the fray, to land by A’isha’s side. The task would be incredibly complicated; impossibly difficult for most. But not for Ali ibn Abi Bakr, the greatest warrior who ever fought by Muhammad’s side.

  I glanced at her as I approached, my sword lifted, hoping to convey my intention so that she might hold on tightly to her hawdaj, to prevent a deadly, headlong tumble. I beheld her luminous eyes, brimming like bowls of tears as she lowered her sword. She had determined not to fight me!

  I ululated a blood-chilling trill and bore down upon the group surrounding her so that they dispersed. I pulled back on my horse’s reins in an attempt to slow down, then reined him to the side to avoid the flurry of panic-stricken men. My steed skidded, nearly throwing me from his back.

  In an instant, however, my horse had regained its footing and had skirted around the camel’s side, then behind its back legs. I eyed my target, the backs of its knees. As I neared its far flank I leaned out as far as I could go and thrust my double-bladed sword toward its knees.

  I felt my blade sink into the camel’s tendon and slice through; then I cut the second hamstring even more quickly, and lowered my head to my horse’s neck as we passed on its lee side. My eyes watered from the stench of the dung the poor beast had dropped in its terror. The camel’s shrill scream, so human-like, brought chills to my body. I wheeled my horse around as the camel fell to its knees, its hind legs buckling first, then its forelegs—howling and rolling its eyes as its body crashed to the ground. I never heard A’isha make a sound, but I did see her topple backward, thank al-Lah, into her hawdaj.

  No one spoke. The cacophony of battle had ceased as all, followers of both A’isha and Ali, beheld the fallen beast and listened to its agonized groans. Mohammad rode up and pierced its neck with his blade, ending its misery. I leapt from my horse and ran to the hawdaj, which somehow had remained upright. I wanted to hurl myself to the ground in prostrations of thanks when I saw the torn green curtain ripple and heard the chain mail clink like a woman’s bracelets.

  “Are you harmed, yaa Mother of the Believers?” I called, every muscle tensed against a “yes” answer,
or, al-Lah forbid, no answer at all.

  “No, I am uninjured,” she said, and my relieved sigh was audible, I was certain, to all. “Only this arrow in my shoulder,” she added feebly.

  I leaned in to help her, and our gazes met again—but only for a moment, until she covered her face with her wrapper. In that brief encounter, however, I beheld a mingling of sadness and grief that would haunt my dreams until my dying day. Tears welled in my eyes as, working slowly and gently, I extricated the arrow’s head from her flesh and blood spurted anew from the wound. I tore a strip from my bandage belt and wound it around her arm. Then I extended my hands to help her emerge from the hawdaj, but she refused my assistance. As soon as she emerged, the men around her began to shout her kunya.

  “Mother of the Believers!” they cried, including those who had just fought against her. “The hearts of Muslims weep with love for you, yaa Mother.”

  Mohammad approached to lift her into his arms, but she shook her head and murmured something. Then she stood leaning against him and narrowed her eyes at me. I think she took note of my foolish smile. It was unmanly and might have appeared gloating to her, but I could not suppress it, for I was relieved. In spite of the tears making their slow roll through the grime and blood on her face, A’isha appeared to be in good condition.

  “May al-Lah protect you, yaa Mother,” one of my men called.

  I almost laughed to see her famous smirk. “I can protect myself well enough from the likes of you,” she said in a curt tone. “As you’ve just witnessed.”

  She nodded to Mohammad. He lifted her and walked, cradling her in his arms, to her camp. I stood in place to watch their retreat, whispering thanks to al-Lah for preserving her, before turning to my men.