Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam

by Kamran Pasha

  The Battle of Badr was about to begin.

  5

  I gazed across the field to the massive army that was ready to move and avenge the deaths of its heroes. The acrid smell of blood was in the air, and I could taste the sweat and fear that covered the valley like the cloud that had appeared during the challenge.

  And then I saw a tall and handsome figure emerge from the Meccan lines and my blood ran cold. Abu Jahl moved forward with dignity to stand near the pool of blood that marked Utbah’s fall. He stared across the field to the command post and then clapped his hands contemptuously.

  The Prophet met his gaze without a word. And then I saw Abu Jahl’s eyes fall on me and a smile played across his sensuous lips. I wrapped my scarf closer across my breasts, and he smiled wider at my discomfiture, like a wolf that had found the weakest lamb in the flock. I suddenly had a terrible image of what would happen if our men were defeated and I was taken back to Abu Jahl’s tent as a slave. The memory of how his well-manicured hands had torn apart Sumaya’s womb without any hesitation haunted me.

  “It appears that consorting with pretty girls has not drained you Muslims of your valor,” Abu Jahl said with an exaggerated bow. “But three against three is an even match. Is your puny band ready to face the might of a thousand? You will all die before the sun sets.”

  The Messenger bent down to the ground. I watched in confusion as his sturdy fingers reached for the earth underneath my sandals. He picked up a handful of orange pebbles and then closed his fist around them.

  And then my husband rose and stepped forward until he, too, stood alone on the battlefield, his eyes locked on Abu Jahl only twenty feet away from him.

  “By Him in whose hand is the soul of Muhammad,” he began, “no man will be slain this day, fighting against them in steadfast hope of his reward, advancing, not retreating, but God shall straightaway enter him into Paradise.”

  His words reverberated throughout the plain as if the rocks themselves were speaking. And then I saw the front lines of our raiding party move into perfectly straight formation behind the Prophet, heads held up, weapons at the ready. The contrast between them and the disorganized and slouching Meccan soldiers was striking. At that instant, I understood why the Prophet had insisted that men and women line themselves in perfectly straight rows every Friday for communal prayers. The discipline and the unity they had practiced for the past few years was now second nature. The Muslims were not three hundred individual men facing a thousand. They were one giant body that moved and acted in unison. As I witnessed the martial discipline on display, I felt a stirring of hope in my heart that we might just survive this encounter.

  The Messenger stepped forward and raised his clenched fist as if he held an invisible javelin. Abu Jahl moved back warily, sensing something was about to happen. His eyes darted to the Muslim archers, whose deadly arrows were all trained on him.

  At that instant, the wind rose and began to howl like a jackal. The sudden gusts stirred the sands, causing clouds of dust to rise from the rocky earth.

  And then I saw Muhammad, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, shake his fist and then throw the pebbles he had gathered from beneath my feet toward the army of Quraysh. The tiny rocks flew across the plain like a thousand spears hurtling forward to rain death.

  “Defaced be these faces!” The Messenger’s words rang with authority, and I felt a flash of awe when I recognized the Voice that came during Revelation thundering from his lungs.

  And then all hell broke loose. The Muslims charged straight at the Meccan army even as the wind raged and sent a cloud of sand toward the Quraysh. I heard screams of rage and triumph as our soldiers tore across the field and engaged the surprised enemy. The Meccans fought back desperately, but their efforts were impeded by the sudden raging sandstorm that had descended on them from all sides.

  I strained to see what was happening, but the whirling clouds of dust made it almost impossible. I could hear the clang of metal and the painful screams of the injured. The dry air was suddenly filled with the terrible scent of blood, gore, and feces, the three odors that dying men exude as their final curse on a cruel world that brought them this fate. My mouth was painfully dry and I could taste fiery salt from the wind as it tried to find its way into my lungs. I fell back, coughing and struggling to breathe. The earth beneath me felt cold and clammy, as if I were already locked inside a grave.

  The madness of battle always plays tricks on the mind, and as I staggered to find refuge from the biting wind, I thought I heard the sound of horses thundering all around me. Since we had brought only three and the Quraysh had dozens in their camp, I felt a flash of panic as I looked around for any sign of enemy horsemen racing up to deliver death.

  But the whinnying and hooves that I heard seemed to be moving toward the Quraysh, not away from them. I looked up in confusion and for a moment the cloud of dust parted and I thought I saw men dressed in white riding mighty stallions racing through the sand, trampling the Meccans under their relentless assault.

  Whatever it was that I saw, whether an illusion of the wind or a ghostly army riding down from heaven, Abu Jahl seemed to see it as well. I could see him standing alone amid the chaos, looking around in disbelief as his men fell to the slaughter. And then he dropped to his knees amid the whirling sand and raised his hands to the sky, calling out to his gods.

  “Allat! Al-Uzza! Manat! Daughters of God, help us!” he cried out in despair. “Hubal, lord of Mecca, vanquish your enemies!”

  And then I thought the wind changed and I could hear cold, terrifying laughter in its midst. The sand flew around us and it appeared that we were alone in the center of a dust devil that swirled up into heaven. I struggled to stay standing as earth and air became one flowing dune.

  As I fell to my knees and tried to cover my face from the burning sand, I saw something that I will never forget. Abu Jahl was kneeling, his hands in front of his face, his mouth contorted in horror. And then out of the wall of flying sand, I saw what looked like a figure emerge, dressed in a gown of flowing white and gold.

  It was Sumaya.

  The phantom raised a hand and reached out to the man who had ended her life. But I saw no anger or bitterness in her gaze. Just an infinite compassion that overwhelmed my heart.

  Whether it was the product of my fevered imagination or a vision from the afterlife, perhaps I will never know. But Abu Jahl recoiled as if he, too, saw something in the veil of dust. I heard him scream and strike out at the ghostly figure with a sword.

  Sumaya, if that is truly who it was, lowered her hand sadly and vanished into the ethereal swirl from which she had emerged. And then the sands parted as Muslim soldiers of flesh and blood, not these strange hauntings of the wind, descended on Abu Jahl from all sides and cut off his head.

  I saw the disembodied head fly across the sky, carried by the unearthly wind, until it landed at my feet. I stared down at Abu Jahl’s face, his thick lips curled in fear, and then saw a hand reach down and grab the grisly remains by a tuft of gray hair.

  It was the Messenger of God, who held up the decapitated head of his worst enemy, blood still pouring from the severed neck tendons.

  I recoiled in horror at the sight of the man I loved holding this macabre trophy. And then the Messenger turned to me and I saw that he was not exulting in the downfall of his foe. Instead he looked sad.

  “He was my friend once” is all he said. And at that moment, I realized the true burden that he carried.

  The wind died down and I could see that Muslims had broken through the Meccan defenses. The enemy camp was uprooted and the pagans were in disarray.

  The Messenger turned to the southern face of the valley and held up the head of Abu Jahl for all to see.

  “Behold the enemy of God!”

  The sight of Abu Jahl’s severed skull cheered the Muslims and sent the Meccans into a panicky retreat. I watched as our enemies, armed with the finest weapons and sparkling ringed armor, fled over the southern pa
ss, leaving the field of Badr covered in a sea of corpses.

  EVERY VICTORY HAS A price.

  That night we returned to Medina, the younger men joyfully boasting of their prowess, while the more mature thanked God for His miraculous aid on the battlefield. We had killed over seventy of the most prominent leaders of Quraysh, the “best morsels of Mecca’s liver,” as the Messenger called them. Aside from Abu Jahl and Utbah, the day had seen the death of Umayya—at the hands of his former slave Bilal, whom he had once tortured in the public square of Mecca. The gentle African whose beautiful voice summoned us to prayers had avenged himself on the battlefield, impaling his former master on the end of a spear.

  Along with the mighty lords who had been slain, we had captured over fifty of the highest-ranking noblemen of the city, who were now tied together like common slaves and dragged back to the oasis. Some would be ransomed in the weeks to come. And others would be executed for their past crimes. In one day, nearly the entire leadership of Mecca had been killed or captured.

  We were giddy with joy, overwhelmed with our feeling that God was truly with us. As the men sang songs of victory, I ignored the demands of modesty and loudly joined in. Only the Messenger remained silent, pensive, although he finally smiled when we entered the streets of Medina and were met with the jubilation of the crowds.

  The captives were taken away to be temporarily housed in barns and storage rooms, since the city as yet had no prisons. Those who were to be spared execution would eventually be allowed to live with some dignity in the houses of Muslim families until their people ransomed them. The Messenger had made it clear that prisoners of war were guests and had to be treated with the Arab tradition of hospitality until their fate was determined.

  The Prophet led the joyful warriors to the Masjid, where he was planning to deliver a sermon to mark this momentous occasion. But as he approached the courtyard, I saw him stop in his tracks and grasp at his heart.

  For a moment, terror gripped me that he was ill or had been injured unknowingly during the battle. But then he stood up tall and turned, his face full of grief more than physical pain. And then I saw a man standing alone by the doorway of a grand house that stood near the Masjid. It was the kindly Uthman, who had been excused from battle to take care of Ruqayya, whose fever had returned.

  I saw tears glistening on Uthman’s cheeks and felt a terrible sense of foreboding.

  “What has happened?” the Messenger asked, his voice cracking.

  Uthman bowed his head, breathing in rapid gulps of grief.

  “Your daughter Ruqayya…she fell ill…and…and…I’m sorry…”

  I suddenly felt my husband teeter, as if his legs were giving way. I grabbed him from behind, but I was too small to keep him standing. Umar saw what was happening and grasped the Messenger by the shoulders to keep him from collapsing.

  And then a sudden scream erupted from inside Uthman’s house. The doors flew open and I saw Fatima emerge. Faster than my eye could capture, she was in the Messenger’s arms, crying out in such horrifying wails of grief that my blood filled with ice.

  There was something so visceral about Fatima’s screams that I felt myself being swept up into another world. A primordial realm where the idea of sorrow itself is born in the mind of God. Her wails spread like a brushfire and suddenly all the women in the city were caught in her grief, beating their breasts and weeping for the Prophet’s daughter.

  Ruqayya, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, was gone.

  As the Prophet held Fatima close, I looked at her in awe and fear. The unearthly sounds that were coming from her throat had a power unlike any I had ever heard before.

  It was as if when Fatima wept, the world itself wept.

  6

  Muawiya, the son of Abu Sufyan, watched as the defeated Meccan army sulked back into the city. The men looked more confused than humiliated, unable to understand what had happened on the battlefield of Badr. The exhausted soldiers, dehydrated from the long trek through the desert, slumped toward the well of Zamzam, ignoring the accusing looks of the women who had heard of their devastating defeat at the hands of a pathetic little raiding party.

  His father gazed at his vanquished comrades in shock. Abu Sufyan looked through the crowd, stinking of blood and urine, for the other leaders of the Assembly. But he saw no sign of the great lords who had controlled the city for decades.

  “Where is Abu al-Hakam?” he called out loudly for the man whom the Muslims referred to as Abu Jahl.

  A young man whom Muawiya recognized as a silversmith named Nawaf bin Talal stumbled by with the help of makeshift crutches of palm wood. His right foot had been shattered by a spear and had turned an ugly green, almost definitely requiring amputation.

  “Slain” was all Nawaf said as he stopped to rest against a wooden post used to tie camels.

  Muawiya’s eyebrows rose. This was an important development. Abu Jahl had been his father’s long-standing rival for control of the council. With him out of the way, there were few impediments to Abu Sufyan seizing total control over Mecca. Perhaps, he thought with a secret smile, his childhood dream of becoming the king of the Arabs might still be realizable.

  And then Muawiya felt the air grow colder around him as it always did when his mother appeared. Hind had heard the news of the Meccan defeat and had come to personally release her rage on the incompetents who had ruined her well-crafted plan.

  She spit at the train of wounded and tired soldiers and let her voice rise until it resounded off the stone walls of the ancient city.

  “Maybe next time we should send the women of Mecca to fight, since there are clearly no men among you!”

  Nawaf ’s weary face contorted and he stepped forward, despite the obvious agony of his crushed heel. And then he did something that no one had ever dared.

  He spit in Hind’s face.

  “Hold your tongue, woman, for you speak ill of your own father.”

  Hind stood there, her mouth open. The glob of mucus hung from her cheek like a yellow tear. Muawiya had never seen her so taken aback. All the blood drained from Hind’s face, leaving her olive skin a sickly green not dissimilar to Nawaf ’s dying foot.

  “Father…no…” She gripped her chest as if she had to pressure her heart to keep beating.

  “Not just your father, Utbah.” Nawaf sneered. “But your brother Waleed and your uncle Shaybah as well.”

  Hind’s eyes flew to the back of her head, and she fell to the ground, wailing like a madwoman. She tore her clothes with her talonlike fingernails and poured sand over her hair in grief.

  “Who did it?! Who killed my father?!”

  Nawaf gathered his crutches and began to hobble away, undoubtedly toward a surgeon who could do the ugly work that was needed to save his life. He turned back and threw out a name, like a man tossing scraps to a dog.

  “Hamza.”

  Hind’s face went from green to bright red as her fury built inside her. She began to dig her nails into her own cheeks, drawing blood.

  Muawiya saw the crowd’s fascination with his mother’s performance, both riveted and repulsed, and decided that it would be a good time to announce what needed to be said at long last in public.

  “We must end this before more good men of Quraysh die. It is time for a truce with Muhammad,” Muawiya said, his young voice echoing through the streets. He saw the warning look on his father’s face but ignored it. If he were ever going to fulfill his destiny as the leader of the Arab nation, he had to reach an accommodation with the man who was doing the hard work of uniting the desert tribes for him.

  There were loud murmurs of assent from the people, but his words were like a hot needle tearing into Hind’s wound.

  “No!” she screamed, more demon than woman. “There will be no truce!”

  And then she was on her feet and racing toward the Sanctuary. She tore open her robes, exposing her perfectly rounded breasts to the idols. She ran her bloodstained hands across her flesh sensuously.

/>   “Hear me, O sons of Mecca!” Hind cried out in a voice that was not quite human. “The martyrs of Badr will be avenged! The enemy will be crushed beneath our feet! If you do not have the courage, then your women will march without you! We will tear their eyes from their skulls! Rip off their ears and wear them on our necklaces! We shall eat of their flesh! Their hearts! Their livers! Who among you is man enough to join us?!”

  Her throaty screams, her sheer insane passion, boiled the blood of the Meccans. Muawiya watched in despair as the crowd fled from his side and surrounded her, spinning and dancing with the frenzy she inspired. Soon, both men and women were chanting along with Hind, mesmerized by her spell.

  Muawiya shook his head, awed and frightened by his mother’s ability to capture the minds of the masses. They were like flies caught in a glittering web as she steadily crept up to feed upon their souls. He turned to Abu Sufyan, who had just been handed the keys of Mecca with Abu Jahl’s death and yet looked increasingly old and irrelevant.

  “Behold, Father, how a woman steals your throne,” Muawiya said contemptuously. “But fear not, one day I shall regain the honor of the House of Umayya.”

  And with that, the brooding young man walked away, his mind racing with thoughts of how to turn the troubling course of events to his advantage.

  7

  Even as our enemies plotted against us in Mecca, a new threat was rising on our very doorsteps. The Muslim victory at Badr had changed the political map of the peninsula. The Ummah had been transformed from a small and insignificant community into a force to be reckoned with, not just for Arabs but for Jews.

  Yathrib was the ancient home of three Jewish tribes—the Bani Qaynuqa, the Bani Nadir, and the Bani Qurayza. In the beginning, the Jews had cautiously welcomed the Messenger’s arrival as the new arbiter. Muhammad was clearly a man committed to establishing justice and order in the oasis and ending the tribal wars that pitted not only Arabs against Arabs but sometimes Jews against Jews. The Messenger had drafted a treaty of mutual defense whereby the Jewish and Arab tribes would unite against any attacker but both would be free to follow their own religion.