The Sword Of Medina

by Jones, Sherry

  “This battle is ended,” I said, surprised at the weariness of my voice, as though it had traveled far to be here. “Congratulations, men. We are victorious.”

  Their cheers sounded forced to my ears as I mounted my steed and rode slowly away, guiding my horse with care around the bodies, and body parts, of men I had known and respected. I moaned to see Tarif, the lighthearted eldest son of my faithful warrior Adi “The Generous,” whose wounds in this battle left him only one eye with which to cry for his loss. I shook my head at the dismembered bodies of al-Saq’ab and Abdallah ibn Sulaym, brothers of Muhammad’s Companion Mikhnaf, killed along with so many members of their clan while holding the reins of A’isha’s camel. I wept over the broken body of Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Attab, a friend of my cousin al-Zubayr’s, a quiet man who had been like a father to al-Zubayr’s son Abdallah.

  My eyes swam in tears at the sight of these good men slain, and for what? For the khalifa to remain in my possession? The fact that I had resigned myself to giving it up, had even embraced the notion of a shura to choose a leader, and had gone to sleep the night before with a heart lightened by A’isha’s respect, made this bloodshed even more sickening. Sitting on my horse, my heart swelling with admiration and constricting with fear as I’d watched A’isha in the midst of the battle, I’d had to struggle to keep my face impassive when an arrow stuck in Abdallah’s neck. Yet when Marwan’s spear had pinned Talha’s knee to his horse, making him faint, I had, with equal difficulty, suppressed my glee.

  As if conjured by my reminiscences, Talha appeared before me, lurching toward his camp. His hands gripped his thigh, where the blood spurted out whenever his fingers slipped, and his parchment-pale face shimmered in rivulets of sweat. A taste like hot metal filled my mouth and a voice like a lion’s roar urged me to finish the job Marwan had begun. One blow of the sword, and I would be rid of him at last.

  But I could see that I would not need to deal that blow. Death had locked its talons around Talha’s neck and was rapidly squeezing the life from him. I dismounted and pulled another strip from my bandage belt, then bound Talha’s wound in effort to stop the bleeding. It was to no avail. Marwan’s spear had struck an artery.

  Alas, Talha was unable to assist me as I tried to place him on my horse, intending to transport him to his tent. So I propped him against a thorn tree in the sparse, mottled shade and gave him water from the skin on my belt. He drank deeply until every drop had been relinquished.

  “My son . . . ” he said, gasping.

  “He is fine,” I lied. “His wounds were superficial.” I had seen the young man’s severed head on the field just moments ago.

  “A’isha,” he said. His eyes stared into the distance, as though the far horizon held the answers to his questions.

  “She is well,” I said. “She will be glad to hear that you are alive.”

  “Alive!” He gave to me, then, the first grin of his that I had ever appreciated. “You must learn to lie better,” he rasped.

  I returned his smile. “I have never been good at lying. Haven’t you heard? The truth is ever inscribed on my face for all to read.”

  He closed his eyes. “You and A’isha,” he said. “Just alike.” And then he exhaled, and his head drooped, and the candle that had been Talha’s life flickered, then snuffed, leaving only darkness behind.

  I said a prayer over him. Forgive him for his misdeed. He succumbed to avarice and the lust for power, as many have before him. But he loved your Prophet, yaa al-Lah, and he loved A’isha above all others, as Muhammad did, also.

  Riding to my tent, I thought of A’isha, her blazing eyes, her furious wielding of the sword from the back of that camel. She’d tried to defend the men who had held her animal’s reins, men who had vied to give their lives for her sake. How grief-stricken she must feel now, with the blood of her loved ones staining her hands!

  I bathed in the Euphrates that night, inviting the cool waters to awaken me from the horrific dream I had been living all day. The battle was finished. I was the khalifa. I had won the title at last, and no one, not even Mu’awiyya, could take it from me. By granting me victory, al-Lah had demonstrated His will. Yet—why did I feel so dissatisfied? The prize I had coveted for so long was mine at last. But the winning of it was tainted by the knowledge that A’isha had betrayed our pact.

  I yanked on my clothes with increasing fury as I relived the events of the night before and of this morning. How could A’isha have sealed an agreement with me in which I would have given up everything in exchange for her support—which, in truth, meant more to me than the khalifa—and then summoned her troops to attack? I had always known her to be a manipulator, but I never would have imagined outright treachery from her. Had she lied in order to gain the advantage of surprise? Or had her cohorts Talha and al-Zubayr convinced her to break her oaths?

  I determined to visit her the next day and demand answers, no matter how shattered she might be by the news of Talha’s death. This tragedy was of her making. I would have upheld my part of our bargain. If not for her, these men would not have died. A’isha was as guilty of their deaths as if she had murdered them all in their beds—and as khalifa, I held the power to make her pay any price for their blood. Unless she convinced me otherwise, I would exact my revenge in the worst possible manner for her. I would take away her cherished freedom. By al-Lah! She would never leave the mosque again.

  ♦

  I arose well before the sun the next morning, bristling with anxiety about the task before me. After dressing in the finest robes I had brought on this journey, I performed my morning raka’at, bows and prostrations before al-Lah, and then stepped out of my tent as soon as the maddeningly slow dawn had at last taken possession of the sky.

  To my dismay, her servant denied me entrance to her tent. The foreign woman’s knowledge of Arabic being so limited, we were reduced to hand signals until, frustrated, I cried out to A’isha and told her she must allow me entry. She did not answer. I called again, but she remained silent.

  I shouted. “Yaa A’isha, have you forgotten your crushing defeat on this very ground only yesterday? I am your imam, no longer to be defied. I command you to admit me, or I will order your tent dismantled.”

  In the next breath her tent flap moved and I glimpsed her face—or a portion of it, as she had veiled herself.

  “Afwan, imam Ali,” she said quietly. “If you have entreated me before to enter my tent, I was unaware. My sobs of remorse were all that I could hear.”

  Her formal tone stung me. Yet I reminded myself that this manner of speaking connoted her respect for me. As I stepped inside, I drew on a mantle of authority, playing the role for which I had fought, and for which men had died.

  She, also, played the part that had fallen to her. She lowered her head, hiding her face completely, showing complete submission, and took a seat on the ground. I should have been pleased, for I had envisioned this moment ever since she had married Muhammad and lifted her nose at the sight of me. Yet, with a scowl, I urged her to stand.

  So much enmity, so much strife had passed between us since that early morning pact—had it been only yesterday? I could not fathom it—after the oneness of purpose, and of heart, we had achieved. In our common love for my son, her brother, we had forged a bond greater than ourselves and our ambitions. But she had destroyed that bond with her capriciousness, and now, no matter what was said in this room, we would never be able to recreate it. The realization made me want to strike her, to view pain on her face such as I was feeling.

  “Humayra of Iram!” I cried, pointing my finger at her. Humayra,“Little Red,” had been Muhammad’s nickname for her, and I invoked it to shame her. Iram was a fabled tribe, the greatest before Arabs had inhabited Hijaz. According to legend, the tribe was destroyed because of the foolish actions of its leader—just as she, with her capriciousness, had nearly destroyed islam.

  Her eyes flickered and she tossed her head. “Humayra was an endearment reserved for my husband’s use,�
�� she said. “And, although you like to think so, you’re not Muhammad, nor do you bear the slightest resemblance to him in character.”

  I glowered at her, remembering what I’d always disliked about A’isha. Only a woman of extreme arrogance would speak to a man in this fashion. And only A’isha, the most arrogant woman of all, would insult me after suffering such a devastating loss.

  “Character?” I bared my teeth at her. She did not flinch. “Who are you to speak of character, you oath-breaker? I, at least, honor my pacts.”

  She lifted her arms toward the ceiling and laughed, as if to ask al-Lah whether He had heard my jest. “Which pacts have you honored recently, Ali?” she said, letting her hands drop and looking me full in the eyes. “I can think of at least one that you violated in a most dishonorable fashion.”

  I was imagining seizing her by the shoulders to shake her to her senses, when a call at the entrance to her tent interrupted me.

  “Assalaamu alei—” A’isha began, pulling aside the tent flap, then stopped. “Oh, it’s you,” she said in a flat tone.

  “I have come for imam Ali.” I heard al-Ashtar’s voice. “It is urgent.”

  “Please enter,” I said, ignoring A’isha’s frown. He stepped inside and bowed to me, then extended a long, blanket-wrapped item that he carried in both hands.

  “This was brought to your tent this morning,” he said. “It was found in the desert, on the road to Medina, beside the body of a man. He could not be identified. He had been stabbed many times, indicating an ambush. This was his sword.”

  My hands shook as they pulled away the cloth. The image of al-Zubayr walking away from my camp, headed toward the Medina road, flashed across my mind. Who else from my camp had seen him depart? I glanced up at al-Ashtar, who had stood beside me and watched al-Zubayr’s retreating figure, and who had often bragged that he would kill him on the battlefield. His blank expression only fueled my suspicions.

  I groaned when I beheld the sword al-Ashtar had presented to me. Al-Zubayr had hammered its wide, flat blade from the armor of a Byzantine warrior he’d killed; its tarnished brass handle had come from a sword that al-Zubayr’s father, my uncle al-Awwam, had wielded. Tears cut against my cheeks. Behind me, A’isha’s voice broke on the edge of my grief. Her sobs echoed my own slow pulse of sorrow, and we were joined again by our love for a man better than us both.

  I handed the sword to al-Ashtar with instructions to carry it to al-Zubayr’s son Abdallah, who lay in his tent recovering from his injuries. My arms longing for comfort, and for comforting, I turned to A’isha, who had fallen into a heap on her bed and buried her face in her arms.

  Moved by her grief, I stepped over to kneel beside her. “A’isha,” I said. “Al-Zubayr died with more honor than any of us.”

  “He colluded with Mu’awiyya,” she said. “I saw the letter you gave him.”

  “That was Mu’awiyya’s scheming,” I said. “He wanted to cause dissension in order to strengthen himself.”

  “But then, when Talha took command of our army, al-Zubayr deserted us.” Her shoulders began to shake. “He ran away.”

  “He did not run away,” I said. “He walked away after refusing to fight. He begged me to surrender al-Ashtar to you, and when I refused he said he would rather die than turn his sword against a fellow Muslim.” I covered my hand with the sleeve of my robe and ventured a tentative touch to her shoulder. She shrugged me away so vehemently, I took a step backward.

  “Which is more than you could say!” A’isha said in a snarling tone.

  I stood. “I do not know what you imply,” I said. “I tried everything short of walking away to avoid that battle.”

  “Such as sending your Bedouin friends over to destroy our camp?”

  I blinked at her. “What Bedouin friends do you speak of? If your camp was attacked, it was not by my command.”

  She laughed. “Am I supposed to believe that, Ali? Your bodyguard, al-Ashtar, came over with his friends in the early morning to slit our men’s throats. Fortunately, I’m a light sleeper, or they might have killed me, also.”

  As she spoke, I realized what had happened that morning. I began to bellow like A’isha’s hamstrung camel.

  “Al-Ashtar,” I said. “By al-Lah, I will have his head for this.” I told her how I’d returned to my tent after our talks were completed, too exhausted to tell al-Ashtar anything except that we would not fight. “He must have feared that I’d succumbed to your demands, and that he would be punished for Uthman’s death.”

  She pressed a hand to her throat. “You didn’t order the attack?”

  “No. I was sleeping, A’isha. Just as you were.”

  Her mouth quivered. “By al-Lah! It was all a mistake.”

  We stared at each other. Aisha’s eyes were as wide as if she beheld a djinni, but I knew she did not see me. Like me, she was reliving the horrors of the past day.

  “All those men,” she whispered. “Dead, and for what?”

  For islam, I could have told her. Every man in the battle had fought for the future of our religion and of our umma. Yet the words stuck in my throat. Islam, I feared, had been the greatest casualty of all. Unless ...

  I settled myself on the ground beside her.

  “Yaa A’isha, this is not the first battle to be fought over a misunderstanding. Many wars are fought for this reason. And we cannot undo these errors now. Al-Zubayr is gone. Talha is gone. But I and you, we can begin again. We can make their deaths count for something—”

  “Talha?” A’isha’s voice rasped. “He’s dead?”

  I wanted to impale myself, then, for my insensitivity. The hours had been long since the battle, the sleepless night seeming to stretch into eternity, muddling my mind. The terrible news about al-Zubayr had made me forget to inform her about Talha.

  I looked down at my folded hands, unable to bear her pleading gaze. She loved Talha yet, I could see that clearly. “I buried him last evening under the thorn tree,” I said.

  She threw herself down again, sobs wracking her anew, and I could only watch, my touch being unwelcome and my words insufficient. “Yaa Talha, forgive me,” she said. “I encouraged you to seek the khalifa because of my own lust for revenge. Now you are dead, the finest man of all. Yaa al-Lah, take me, also! How I wish I were dead! No, death is too good or me. How I wish I had never been born!”

  I listened and watched, debating whether I should tell her the truth about her beloved Talha. More than almost any other man, he had been responsible for Uthman’s assassination. He had given money to the rebels, enabling them to continue their siege of Uthman’s home. He had helped Mohammad and his friends gain access to Uthman’s roof. I had always wanted to tell A’isha these things, but I had known she would not believe me. Now, hearing her sobs, I could not bear to cause her more pain. So I kept my knowledge to myself, for her sake.

  “A’isha,” I said when her tears had finally subsided, “remember what I said before. We cannot correct the errors that have been made, or bring back the lives lost. But we can give meaning to the sacrifice. We can join together, I and you, to do what we have both wanted to do: to return islam to its original vision.”

  Her eyes flashed like daggers. “What does that mean to you, Ali? Power? Money? Status?”

  “Refuge for the poor, the orphans, and the weak,” I said. “Recognition that we are all created from a single soul. Submission to the One God.”

  She fell back, her eyes wide. “By al-Lah!” she whispered. “I and you want the same things.”

  “You speak truly.” I gripped the edges of my cushion. “A’isha, work with me. Together, we can make islam strong again, and we can prevent Mu’awiyya from seizing the khalifa.”

  A’isha wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. “I must respectfully refuse.”

  “But why? We could bring much good to the umma—”

  “I’m finished with public life,” she said. “I’ve lost the heart for it.” She turned to the corner near
her bed and lifted al-Ma’thur in its bejeweled sheath.

  “Take it,” she said, handing it to me. “This belongs to you now. I will never fight again, al-Lah willing. You, on the other hand, are the imam, and you will need it.”

  I accepted it from her, felt its weight in my hands and arms, and marveled that she could have even lifted the sword, let alone wielded it in battle. Here was the possession I had coveted after Muhammad’s death, and that I had resented A’isha for inheriting. Despite all the swords, daggers, and shields he had left to me, this, handed down to him from his father, was the one that mattered—then. Now, though, it felt wrong in my hands, as though it had been shaped for someone else’s use.

  “I cannot take this.” My voice sounded like a tearing cloth. “It is yours, A’isha, ‘The Legacy,’ left to the Mother of the Believers.”

  “A mother’s task is to give life, not destroy it,” she said. “There is no place for swords in my life now, Ali.”

  Then she told me her plans: to confine herself to the mosque and the courtyard for the rest of her days and nights, and to spend her time in prayer and in passing to others her knowledge of the qur’an and the stories of Muhammad’s life. “This is my atonement,” she said, “to become an exile of sorts—but one that will benefit others, and that will benefit islam.”

  For the first time since I had known A’isha, serenity lived beneath her veil. As she told me her plans, her voice soughed like a morning breeze. Looking at her, I felt as peaceful as if she had laid her hand over my anxious heart.

  I stood and bowed. “It will be as you wish, Mother of the Believers. And if you ever need anything, please do not hesitate to ask me for it. Anything.”

  “There is one thing,” she said. “Please, Ali, when you leave this tent, protect my honor. No—increase it. Besides my nephew Abdallah, it is all I have left.”

  That task was to begin immediately, for when I left A’isha’s tent I found a crowd of men, warriors from both sides, waiting to hear my verdict for her. A flogging, by al-Lah, and I will wield the whip! one man called. A woman of her courage deserves to be made a queen, if not the khalifa, another challenged. I held up my hands to quiet them, deciding how I would shield A’isha from speculation that she had retreated in shame, how I would preserve her honor and, although she had not asked for it, her dignity.