by Kamran Pasha
And then a towering black man stepped forward and I felt my breathing stop. I recognized him immediately, for his visage had been burned into my heart since the disaster at Uhud. He was Wahsi, the Abyssinian slave who had killed the Messenger’s uncle Hamza with a javelin.
I saw the Prophet stiffen as the hulking African knelt before him, his right hand held aloft. My eyes flew to Ali and I could see his green eyes burning with anger, and for a second I wondered if Dhul Fiqar would slice Wahsi’s head from his muscular shoulders.
The Messenger leaned forward.
“You are the one who killed Hamza, the son of Abdal Muttalib. Is that not so?” There was a hint of danger in my husband’s voice, and I could see a line of sweat drip down the Abyssinian’s broad face.
“Yes,” he said softly, his head bowed in evident shame.
“Why did you do this thing?” my husband asked, his black eyes unreadable.
“To secure my freedom from slavery,” the African said, his voice trembling.
The Prophet looked at him for a long time. And then he reached forward and took Wahsi’s hand in acceptance of his baya’ah, his oath of loyalty.
“We are all slaves to something,” he said. “Wealth. Power. Lust. And the only freedom from the slavery of this world is to become a slave to God.”
Tears welling in his eyes, Wahsi clasped the Messenger’s hand. He recited the testimony of faith and the Prophet nodded, accepting the conversion of this man who had murdered his beloved uncle Hamza, his childhood friend and the only older brother he had ever known.
And then I saw my husband’s eyes glisten with tears and he turned away from the African.
“Now let me not look upon you again,” Muhammad said, his voice caught in his throat. Wahsi nodded sadly and departed, and I did not see him again for all the days that the Messenger lived.
AS THE SUN SET, the last of the Meccans stood before the Prophet, ready to accept membership in the Ummah. Among them was an old woman, hunched over and covered in a black abaya. Her face was covered by a black veil, but there was something hauntingly familiar about her eyes.
Yellow green and piercing like daggers. The eyes of a snake that was poised to strike its prey.
I felt a wave of alarm rising in my heart, but before I could speak, she knelt before the Prophet and placed her long fingers in a bowl of water, and the Prophet dipped his own fingers in the bowl in formal acceptance of her allegiance.
“I testify that there is no god but God and that you, Muhammad, are the Messenger of God. And I pledge my allegiance to God and His Messenger.”
The voice was hoarse but unmistakable and I saw my husband’s eyes narrow. His smile was gone and his face now rigid as stone.
“Remove your veil,” he said in a powerful voice that sent a chill down my spine. There were murmurs of shock from some in the tent, as the Messenger was always respectful of the modesty of women and had never before asked anyone to remove her niqab.
The old women hesitated, but Muhammad continued to stare at her without blinking. Ali stepped forward, his glittering sword raised menacingly.
“Fulfill your oath. Obey the Messenger,” he said, and the tension in the air became unbearable.
And then the woman raised her hand and ripped off the veil, revealing the face of the Messenger’s greatest enemy. Hind, the daughter of Utbah, the most vicious of his opponents, the cannibal who had eaten the liver of Hamza as the ultimate sign of her contempt for the believers.
I gasped when I looked upon her, for I barely recognized her. Her dangerous eyes were unchanged, but her once-beautiful face had been cruelly ravaged by time. The perfect alabaster skin had turned a sickly yellow and was scarred with deep lines. Her high cheekbones, which had highlighted the chiseled perfection of her features, were now skeletal crags. She looked like a corpse, and the only evidence of her living spirit was the steady rise and fall of her sagging throat as she breathed with some difficulty.
The Prophet looked at her with his eyes brimming with anger.
“You are she who ate the flesh of my uncle,” he said simply, no accusation in his voice, just a harsh statement of fact.
I saw the revulsion on the faces of the Companions, and I glanced at Umar, who had been her lover in the Days of Ignorance. The horror in his eyes at the sight of the decrepit woman he had once loved was palpable.
Hind ignored the stares, the cruel whispers, and kept her eyes on my husband.
“Yes,” she said simply, acknowledging before the world the crime that easily merited her death.
My eyes fell on Ali and I saw Dhul Fiqar glowing red. I would have dismissed the vision as an illusion created by the flickering torches, but I had seen enough to know that the sword burned with its own anger.
And then I realized that Hind was looking at the weapon as well and her ugly face curved into a truly terrifying smile.
“Do it. Kill me,” she hissed defiantly, and yet I could hear what I thought sounded like a plea beneath the affectation of pride.
There was a hush of silence as the Prophet looked at his adversary, a trembling sack of bones who had once been the most beautiful and noble woman among the children of Ishmael. And I saw a sudden softening in his eyes that mirrored the change in my own heart, for in that moment I truly felt sorry for her.
“I forgive you,” he said simply. And then he turned away from her and placed his attention on a mother who was standing behind her, a young woman carrying an infant in her arms.
Hind looked at him, confused. Her eyes went to Ali, who had lowered his sword, and then to Umar, who refused to meet her gaze. She stared at the other Companions and then at the men and women of Mecca around her, but all chose to ignore her. In that moment, I realized that Hind had been both pardoned and condemned. For she had gone from the most feared and hated enemy of Islam to a nobody, a woman who was irrelevant to the new order, who had no power or say in anything that happened in Arabia from that day forward. As she turned and hobbled away, I realized that my husband had given her the one punishment she could not endure. The curse of anonymity.
The defeated old woman skulked away and left the tent, her head bowed. I should have stayed inside by my husband’s side, but something in my heart compelled me to step outside, to see for myself the final end of my greatest nightmare.
Hind was already past the guards who had been placed at the perimeter of the Messenger’s tent when she suddenly stooped and turned. Her yellow-green eyes met mine and for a second I saw a hint of the pride and dignity that she had always carried. The old crone hobbled over to me and looked at me closely. My face was hidden behind my veil, but my golden eyes shone forth unmistakably.
“You are the daughter of Abu Bakr,” she said, with an unnerving smile, the look of a cat as it plays with a mouse it has caught in its paws.
“Yes,” I said, suddenly regretting my decision to come outside.
“I always liked you, little girl,” Hind said in a raspy voice that still tinkled with seduction. “You remind me of myself.”
I felt my face flush at her words and my pulse pounded in my temples.
“I seek refuge in Allah that I should ever be like you!”
Hind smiled broadly, revealing a row of cracked and blackened teeth.
“Even so, you are,” she said with a laugh that lacked any joy. “There is a fire inside you that burns very bright. They can cover you with a hundred veils and it will still shine through. But know this, my dear. The fire of a woman’s heart is too hot for this world. Men will fly to it like moths. But when it burns their wings, they will snuff it out.”
I felt the hair on my arm standing up and chills ran through me. I turned to leave, when Hind reached forward and took my arm in her bony grasp. I tried to pull free, but her fingers were like the jaws of a lion, crushing down on my bones. And then she put something in my hand, something that sparkled under the evening stars that were slowly taking possession of the sky.
It was her golden armlet, the band o
f snakes intertwining until their jaws met to encase a glittering ruby.
I stared down at this strange and awful symbol of Hind’s power, a totem that she was now passing along to me as the sun of her life set into the horizon of history. It was a gift with terrifying implications, and one that I had no desire to accept.
But when I raised my head to protest, Hind was gone.
42
It was my husband’s distinct tragedy that soon after each victory he was given in his mission, God always exacted a terrible price from among his loved ones. Shortly after we returned to Medina and the city was alive with rejoicing at the final victory of Islam, the Messenger’s infant son, Ibrahim, fell ill and began to waste away.
Despite the desperate prayers of the community and the efforts of those who were skilled in medicine, the poor boy deteriorated rapidly, his tiny form ravaged by the camp fever that few grown men could survive.
I watched through eyes reddened by tears as Muhammad stroked his dying son’s curly hair in farewell. A steady flow of tears ran down his face, causing one of the men present, a Companion named Abdal Rahman ibn Awf, to raise his eyebrows in surprise.
“O Messenger of God, even you? Is it not forbidden?”
The Prophet spoke with some difficulty, his eyes never leaving the face of Ibrahim as the flow of life seeped out from the child.
“Tears are not forbidden,” the Messenger said softly. “They are the promptings of tenderness and mercy, and he who does not show mercy will have none shown to him.”
And then my husband leaned close to the little boy, who was looking up at him with dreamy eyes as his soul began to detach from this valley of sorrow.
“O Ibrahim, if it were not that the promise of reunion is assured, and that this is a path which all must tread, and that the last of us will overtake the first, truly we would grieve for you with even greater sorrow. But we are stricken indeed with sadness for you, Ibrahim. The eye weeps and the heart grieves, but we say nothing that would offend the Lord.”
I felt my heart quiver in grief as Ibrahim smiled up at his father, his tiny hand wrapped around the Messenger’s finger. I saw the little boy squeeze one last time and then his eyes closed, and Muhammad’s son passed away into eternity.
WHEN WE HAD WEPT all the tears we could, the Messenger covered Ibrahim’s face with a sheet and stepped outside to address the agitated crowd. I looked up in the heavens and saw that the sky was dark, and realized that the sun was in eclipse and the stars were shining in the middle of the day.
The Muslims were gazing up in wonder at the thin crescent where the sun had been only moments before, and I heard a man cry out.
“Behold! Even the heavens weep for the Prophet’s son!”
I did not doubt that this was a sign from God for the poor, innocent child who would never have a chance to experience the joys of life and love in this world.
But even at this moment, when grief had overpowered us all, the Messenger remained true to his faith.
“No,” he said loudly, his voice echoing through the streets of Medina. “The sun and the moon are signs of God. They are eclipsed for no man.”
And with that Muhammad reminded us that he was no more than a man himself and that his own son was no more special than the hundreds of children who died every day in the cruelty of the desert, whose families were forced to grieve alone, without the loving support of an entire nation.
My husband turned away, his face looking very tired and old. I reached over and took his hand, and he held mine tightly, his eyes brimming with gratitude. And then we walked back inside and began the preparations for the funeral.
43
The next several months were a flurry of diplomatic activity as the Messenger dispatched envoys throughout Arabia. With the fall of Mecca, the ancient pagan cult had breathed its last, and it was time to bring the remaining tribes under the governance of Medina. A nation had finally been forged, and the Prophet was busy making plans for its survival. I did not understand the urgency in his daily letters to the varying provinces of the peninsula that now swore allegiance to him, perhaps because I did not want to face the truth. My husband was over sixty years old and had lived a hundred lifetimes in one. But he was not immortal, and as the weight of his age grew upon him, he was making plans for the survival of the Ummah once he was no longer there to guide it.
With the death of Ibrahim, talk had begun among the people of Arabia about the successor to the Prophet now that he had lost his direct heir. Many names were whispered, most prominently that of my father, Abu Bakr, who was an elder statesman and held the respect of the entire community. My father always angrily dismissed such speculation and yet it persisted. A few voices suggested that young Ali, who was now just over thirty years old, would be a natural choice, as the closest living male relative to the Prophet and the father of his grandsons. But there was a natural dislike among the independent-minded Arabs for monarchy, and the idea that the leadership of the community should be based on the right of bloodlines left a sour taste in the mouths of the tribes.
It was significant that of the few Companions who spoke in favor of Ali, the most prominent was Salman, the Persian hero who had devised the strategy of the trench that had saved Medina from invasion. The Persians were an ancient people who were proud of their long lineage of philosopher-kings and looked upon the Arab custom of choosing tribal leaders by an assembly known as a shura as a crass system that could be manipulated by the powerful to oppress the weak. For the Persians, the qualities of leadership, the instincts for justice and honor, were sacred traits that were passed along by blood and upbringing and should not be bartered away for the mercurial passions of the mob. It was a passionate and proud stance, but one that was utterly alien to the freethinking Arabs, who were only now becoming accustomed to being ruled by a single man.
My husband was certainly aware of the talk, but he made no effort to end it or to clarify his own preferences in the matter of succession. In the years that followed, I have often looked back and wondered why he was so circumspect. In all other areas of life, he was a clear and commanding guide, one whose words were carefully chosen to limit the possibility of misinterpretation or confusion. Yet when it came to the matter of succession to the leadership of the Ummah, he was stubbornly silent, and much of the chaos that was to emerge would arise from our best efforts to understand his ambiguous pronouncements on this subject.
It is my belief that my husband did not announce his intentions clearly because his heart was torn, even as the Ummah itself would one day be torn apart. The death of Ibrahim had taken away his last hope for a son to carry his lineage, which would now pass through his daughter Fatima and her sons, Hasan and Husayn. Ali was indeed the closest of his living male relatives and had been in many ways both a brother and a son to him. The Messenger spent a great deal of time talking in private with him, and none except Fatima would be permitted to join them in those moments. What was said between them was always a mystery, and there were rumors that my husband was passing along divine secrets that were too weighty for the common Muslims, even for pious men like my father or Umar, to hear.
This speculation added to Ali’s reputation for otherworldliness, and many of the Muslims became increasingly uncomfortable around the strange young man. No one would deny that he was a mighty warrior and an eloquent speaker, but it was this peculiar sense that he was not like the rest of us that estranged him from the hearts of many. And it is for that reason that I have difficulty imagining that my husband expected the Muslims to follow Ali unquestioningly, as his supporters would claim with increasing vehemence in later years. Muhammad was a statesman above all, one who understood the nature and character of the people he had been destined to lead. It was his diplomatic wisdom that had caused him to agree to a truce with Mecca, even though the Muslims were in open revolt at the idea. My husband had seen further than the rest of us and had known that Islam would grow rapidly in peacetime and that Mecca would one day fall without bloo
dshed. And it was that same visionary thinking that had caused him to pardon his worst enemies and offer the leaders of Quraysh prominent roles in the new state. Even though many Muslims resented the lords of Mecca, the chieftains retained the broad respect of the Arab tribes and their support would bring unity to the nation
My husband, who saw so much, must have seen that his beloved Ali was a polarizing figure, one who brought about intense reactions of both love and hate. My own antipathy to him was visceral, and I knew I was not alone. Muhammad must have known that Ali would never be able to unify the Arabs, and it was the unity of the Ummah that was his primary concern in all the years that I knew him. Others, like my father and Umar, had the respect of the entire nation and could easily hold the community together when Muhammad was gone. And yet my husband did not openly proclaim in their favor either.
As I look back in my own twilight years, dear Abdallah, I believe that my husband’s heart and his mind were divided on the matter. In his heart, perhaps he would have preferred Ali and his grandsons to be the leaders of the community. And yet his intellect saw that the Muslims would probably not support his family’s claim to power, and everything that the Messenger had worked for would shatter upon his death. That truth, the vast chasm between his preferences and those of his own people, was so painful that I believe he intentionally left the matter unresolved in those final days of his life. Perhaps he was hoping that God would give him a Revelation that would clarify the issue of succession, which would absolve him of having to make a choice that could lead to discord and civil war. But when the day of the last Revelation came, the matter remained unsettled.
Those final verses came down upon him during his participation in what would later be called the Farewell Pilgrimage. My husband led tens of thousands of believers to Mecca to perform the rites of Abraham, during which he established forever the rituals according to the laws of Islam. Gone were the old superstitions of the desert, including the pagan custom of circumambulating the Holy Kaaba naked. In their place were the simple acts of piety that reminded us of our connection to our father Abraham.