by Kamran Pasha
This room had been the seed from which the grand fortress that protected them had grown. And Kab felt that it was fitting that he spend this night, when the fate of their people had been sealed, here.
Najma saw the sadness in his eyes and put a gentle hand on his arm.
“Once the storm ends, we can begin preparations for the liberation,” she said with a hopeful smile. “And then you can reclaim the oasis for our people and there will be peace.”
Kab looked up and met her dark eyes, saw in them the absolute trust of a child, even though Najma was a grown woman pursued by many suitors. He felt a pang of grief as the thought crossed his mind that he might not get a chance to see her marry. Confronted with her innocence, her misguided belief in his great wisdom and leadership, he suddenly felt very small and alone. Part of his soul wanted to let her keep believing that things would turn out well for their people, that his grand sagacity would turn this minor setback into an easy victory.
But he couldn’t. Najma needed to be prepared for what was coming.
“There will be no liberation, my dear,” he said, and the words burned his throat more than all the fiery sand he had inhaled that night. “The siege has failed.”
Najma’s brow crinkled as it always did when she was confused.
“Then we will bide our time,” she responded, trying as always to find the flicker of light in the shadows. “God will provide us another day.”
Kab hesitated. And then he took her tiny hand in his and squeezed.
“No. There will be no more days.”
She sat down beside him, looking up at Kab with uncertainty.
“I don’t understand” was all she said. Kab felt his heart break as he gazed into her wide eyes, filled with disbelief.
“Our allies are running out of food and water. The storm will decimate their supplies further. They have no choice but to break camp. And once the Confederates evacuate, Muhammad will turn his dogs on us.”
He saw the color drain from her rosy cheeks. She took her hand out of his grasp as if she had been scalded by a flame.
“You can’t be sure of that,” she said forcefully.
“It is what I would do in his position,” he said softly.
Najma rose to her feet and turned away from him. Kab looked away, unable to bear her grief at the revelation that he had led their people to disaster.
And then, after a long moment in which the only sound was the roaring of the wind outside, Najma turned to face her uncle again. But instead of sorrow or recrimination, her eyes burned with an intensity that he had never seen before.
“Then I will stand by your side, as Esther stood by Mordecai in the face of Haman,” she said.
Kab felt his eyes water. He rose from his carved cedar chair and put his arms around this beautiful girl who was worth more to him than all the treasures of Arabia.
“I’ve failed you,” he said in a quaking voice.
But Najma wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders and pressed him tight.
“You can never fail me, uncle,” she said softly. “Where there is love, there is only victory.”
The two stood together, holding each other tight as the roaring winds echoed like the beat of war drums, coming steadily closer.
14
The siege was over and the defeated army of the Confederates had fled the oasis. The sandstorm had devastated their base, killing men and animals and burying precious food supplies under mountainous dunes. Horses had bolted at the first sight of the black cloud racing across the horizon, decimating the ranks of the Meccan cavalry. It had been a final humiliating rout for the forces of the Quraysh and their allies. Despite desperate pleas from Huyayy, Abu Sufyan had ordered the evacuation, disgust and exhaustion written on every line of his aged face.
Muhammad had won again. But this time the victory was far-reaching. The failure of the unified armies of the Arabs and Jews to dislodge him from Medina had solidified his rule of the northern peninsula. Trade with Syria and Persia was now completely in the Muslims’ hands and the entire economic future of Arabia depended on making accommodations with the new city-state. The Muslim nation had survived onslaught upon onslaught and proved itself to be a lasting power that would reshape the course of history in the region.
Only one threat remained to Muhammad’s total domination of the northern lands, and his people swiftly moved to bring it to an end.
I watched as the Muslim army surrounded the fortress of the Bani Qurayza. The moment our scouts had confirmed that the Quraysh were in retreat, my husband had ordered the entire defensive force to abandon the trench and regroup at the enemy stronghold. Ali had ridden forward to the grand gates of the citadel and issued a challenge to the leaders of Qurayza to emerge and account for their treachery. His words had been met with an explosion of arrows from archers hidden in the walls. Ali evaded the missiles and turned to the men behind him. The mighty battering ram that had been prepared for the tribe of Qaynuqa years before was brought forth to be used against their brethren, the sole surviving Jewish residents of the oasis.
A dozen armored soldiers took hold of the mighty pole made of palm wood and reinforced with steel. And then they heaved forward, smashing it with terrifying force against the towering gates. The iron doors trembled but held.
As the men pulled back for a second blow, a shower of stones fell upon their heads, and several of the soldiers dropped, blood pouring from their shattered helmets. I looked up to see a surprising sight. My breath stopped for a second as I thought I was looking into a bizarre mirror. A young girl no older than myself, with bright red hair like my own, was lifting rocks that were impossibly large for her tiny size and throwing them down from the turret just above the gate.
Ali signaled and Muslim archers immediately targeted her. The girl dropped beneath the protection of the stone walls just as a curtain of arrows flew high upon the turrets like upside-down rain. For a long moment, there was silence. And then the girl raised her head above the ramparts just long enough to send another boulder crashing down on the head of one of the soldiers. There was a flash of gore as the man’s head burst like a squashed grape and he collapsed and did not move again.
The girl ducked as another volley of arrows tore at her position. But when the missiles were past, I could her hear childlike voice, laughing and taunting us.
I shook my head in wonder at this girl’s resilience.
Ali approached and filled a stone cup from a bucket I held. He sipped the water and then passed the cup among the men nearest us. I was surprised to see them each drink heartily from the small container and then pass it along as if it were still full.
Ali glanced at the girl high above us, who was still flinging rocks from behind the wall. Our archers had decided not waste any more arrows on her, and two dozen men carrying shields had gone out to protect the troops by the wall as her onslaught continued.
“She is brave,” I said.
And then Ali’s ethereal green eyes met mine and I felt suddenly uneasy, as I often did in his presence.
“Yes. She is brave. But she is also unwise.” He paused and looked at me as if seeing something in my eyes that even I was unaware of. “When a woman fights, she takes away from herself the cloak of honor which shields her. Remember that, young Mother.”
I felt a chill as Ali turned his attention back to his men. It was as if his words held a strange premonition, and for a moment I felt the veil of time shift and I saw a vision.
A vivid and terrifying image of me standing in the desert, surrounded by a thousand corpses washed in a river of blood.
I dropped the bucket and hurried back to the oasis. I suddenly wanted to be far away from the battlefield, from the stench of blood and the sickening fog of fear and rage that hung over the oasis. I wanted to be a little girl again, whose only occupations were playing with my dolls and brushing my mother’s soft hair.
I ran until I found refuge in my small apartment in the Masjid, far away from the ominous thunder
of the battering ram, the singing of the arrows as they cut through the dry desert air. But it was not far enough to escape my destiny.
There are times when I wished that I could have kept on running and never stopped. For it is when we take a moment for breath in the struggle of life, when we let our guard down and allow ourselves a second to exult in a false sense of security, that the terrible wave of our doom is finally able to catch up with us.
15
The Bani Qurayza held out for twenty-five days. But as their supplies of food and water vanished and the pestilence that had struck the Muslims during the siege of the trench migrated to the Jewish quarter, Kab’s people were faced with no alternative but to surrender and hope for the Messenger’s mercy.
But my husband was not in a forgiving mood. In all the years that I had known him, I had never seen such anger in his eyes as I saw on the day he first learned of Qurayza’s betrayal. Had God not intervened with the sandstorm that blotted their plans, the Jewish tribe would have struck us from the rear while we desperately held back the Confederate invaders at the barrier. Our women and children would have been the first casualties, as the homes where they were lodged would have been the first line of attack when the gates of the fortress had swung open.
The Messenger knew that the Qurayza had planned the utter annihilation of his people, and their treachery could not be left unanswered. Muhammad had shown clemency to the other Jewish tribes, guaranteeing their lives and letting them leave the oasis in safety. And they had repaid him by joining with his enemies. If the Qurayza were allowed the same easy fate of expulsion, they would inevitably join their kinsmen at the citadel of Khaybar to the north, where even now Huyayy was plotting to regain his lost lands despite the failure of the Confederate invasion. All of Arabia would be watching how we treated the Qurayza now that they had fallen into our hands. And mercy would be seen only as a weakness to be exploited by our enemies.
As the battered gate of the fortress opened, I watched the weary residents of the Jewish quarter emerge, their necks bowed in surrender. First the men came out, their bodies shorn of armor and their hands held high to show that they carried no weapons. There were at least seven hundred males, and I could see in their eyes the fire of defiance even as Ali, Talha, and Zubayr took them to the side and tied their hands together with sturdy ropes. I shuddered at the thought that these would have been our executioners had the sands not risen in rebellion.
And then, when the final man had emerged, the women and children followed. The women’s eyes were filled with grief and rage at the sight of their men bound like slaves, but I also saw a hint of relief in many of their faces. Their children had gone without food for days, and many were too weak even to cry. But now that the end had come, at least they could find a way to feed the little ones.
I quickly led the other Mothers to their side, carrying bowls of dates and figs and buckets of water. The Jewish women hesitated when they saw us, but their children ran forward at the sight of the food, their hands outstretched in desperation. I felt tears welling in my eyes as I saw their parched lips and sunken cheeks. They were the innocent victims of war, too small to understand or care about the differences of politics and theology that had led our peoples to this terrible moment. As the children swarmed around us, I saw their mothers looking at us with gratitude as we poured water into their open mouths and placed small treats in their tiny hands.
It was a heartbreaking scene and I felt numbed. I moved toward a woman of the Qurayza who could not have been older than my mother, her dark hair streaked with gray, and embraced her. At that moment, we were neither Muslim nor Jew, neither friend nor foe. We were just women caught in a world that was bigger than us and we held each other tightly, sobbing in our shared grief at the tragedy of life in this cruel wilderness.
And then I saw a young woman step out of the fortress to join the others and I broke free of the embrace, my eyes wide with concern. It was the redheaded girl who had so stubbornly defied us during the opening days of the siege. She walked slowly, as if in a dream, the fire in her eyes now quenched by hunger and exhaustion. Had this girl, whose name I learned was Najma, been more discreet, had she hidden her face behind a veil during the attack, she might have walked unrecognized among the other refugees.
But her fiery hair, so like my own, burned like a beacon in the crowd and she was immediately surrounded by several Muslim soldiers. I ran over to her side just as Ali arrived, holding a rope.
“What are you doing?!” I cried out as Ali steadily bound the girl’s hands.
“She goes with the men,” he said simply.
“They will kill her,” I said. I did not know this for sure, but I sensed that the Muslims were in no mood to give quarter. Whatever punishment awaited the warriors of the Qurayza, I did not feel that this young and impressionable girl should suffer it.
Ali shrugged as if I were commenting about something as trivial the weather.
“If she wishes to fight like a man, then she must be willing to die like a man,” he said. And from the look he gave me, I felt that somehow his words were not meant for the Jewish girl alone.
I stood shaking with impotent rage as Ali led the girl to stand with the male prisoners. Najma did not resist, and she followed like a lamb patiently walking to slaughter. But then, just before she disappeared inside the crowd of captured men, the girl raised her eyes and met mine. I did not see in Najma’s look sorrow or anger at her fate. Just confusion, as if she were lost in a strange world that she no longer recognized.
And for a terrible moment, I understood how she felt.
16
That night I accompanied my husband to the granary, where the prisoners were kept. Abu Bakr and Umar joined us, along with a man of the tribe of Aws I recognized as Sa’d ibn Muadh, who walked in great pain, a thick bandage around his gut that was stained with blood. Sa’d had been injured by an arrow during the Confederate attack and the whispers were that he was dying. Why he would leave his bed to walk here tonight was a mystery. But I saw from the grim look on the Messenger’s face that my normally inquisitive nature would be unwelcome tonight.
I wasn’t sure why I had been asked to come, but some instinct in me said that Ali must have mentioned to the Prophet my compassion for the Jewish girl who was the sole woman to be held prisoner. I sensed that judgment would be rendered against the Qurayza tonight and my husband wanted me to be there to witness it. If not to approve, then, perhaps, to understand.
As we entered the granary that was now a prison, I saw the Jewish men standing in prayer, surrounded by hundreds of armed guards. Their arms were still tied, but their legs had been freed so that they could sway back and forth as the elderly rabbi of the settlement, Husayn ibn Sallam, led them in reciting the ancient Hebrew words that sounded so much like our own tongue and yet were still so foreign
The Messenger stood respectfully, watching the men pray. I caught sight of the girl Najma alone in a corner, her red hair covered by a scarf. She did not join the others in worship but stared straight ahead, unblinking.
When the rabbi finished his invocations, a blanket of silence fell upon the crowd as all turned to face the man who would decide their fate. A tall, thin man with dark eyes who had been standing beside ibn Sallam now stepped forward, his head held proudly, and faced the Messenger of God.
My husband met his eyes for a long moment. When he spoke, it was in a deep voice. His words echoed throughout the vast chamber that had stored our supplies of wheat and barley before they were consumed during the siege and the famine.
“Kab ibn Asad,” my husband said, and the tall man nodded in acknowledgment. “You have sought my judgment against your people.”
“I have,” he said with great dignity.
The Messenger stepped forward, his black eyes glistening in the torchlight.
“Your treachery nearly brought the fire of death into he streets of Medina,” Muhammad said. “Had God not intervened, you would have assuredly left none of my peo
ple alive.”
Kab looked at his adversary without blinking.
“Yes,” he said. It was a simple statement of fact, without any guilt or shame.
The Messenger frowned and I could see a hint of the outrage that he had shown when he first learned of the Qurayza’s deal with the Confederates.
“It is not for me to judge you,” my husband said, to my surprise. “My anger is so great that I fear I will not be impartial.”
Kab nodded, no emotion on his face.
“I understand.”
The Messenger now turned to the injured Sa’d, who was leaning against a wooden post, his hand covering the bandage. I noticed that the splotch of blood had spread and now the entire wrap was soaked.
“Will you submit to the judgment, Sa’d ibn Muadh?” the Prophet asked.
Kab turned to face Sa’d. I recalled now that the two had once been friends and that Sa’d had served as an intermediary between the Muslims and Jews over the past several years. But if Sa’d had retained any memory of that friendship, I could not see it in his brown eyes, which were burning with anger at betrayal.
“Sa’d has always been a friend to the Qurayza. I trust that he will do what is just.” But even as Kab spoke these words, I knew that he, too, understood that whatever courtesies had existed between them, the bitterness of war had erased that past forever.
Sa’d moved forward, grimacing from the pain of his mortal wound. He stepped so close to Kab that that their noses almost touched. Kab did not flinch as Sa’d looked straight into his eyes and spoke.