Kamran Pasha - Mother Of the Believers

We all groaned, realizing that the Prophet had played a poignant little joke on us, the women of the household, who were perennially creating drama in our rivalry to be the first in his heart.

The Prophet looked at me in amusement. I crossed my arms in mock irritation, but I could not suppress the smile on my face. I finally burst out laughing, and soon everyone joined in.

And the mirth of the afternoon was interrupted by the sound of a dog barking wildly nearby, and I saw the Prophet’s face grow dark. He began to tremble and I saw beads of sweat on his forehead, and I leaped to my feet on the assumption that the tremors of Revelation had set in. But the Messenger did not fall to the ground in convulsions as often happened during these moments of spiritual ecstasy. He stood where he was, his eyes gazing out across the pavilion as if he were looking through the cloth walls and seeing something far beyond the confines of time and space.

And then the moment passed and the Prophet blinked rapidly, looking around as if trying to remind himself where he was. He turned to face us, his eyes gazing long and deep at each one of his wives, his handsome face suddenly tense with anxiety. His gaze fell upon me and I felt a strange chill in my heart.

“O Messenger of God, what is it?”

The Prophet continued to look at me, as if his eyes were peering deep into my soul.

“The dogs of al-Haw’ab…they bark so fiercely…”

Al-Haw’ab was a valley to the northeast, on the caravan route to Iraq. I did not understand why the Prophet was mentioning this remote and desolate place, but there was something about his tone that suddenly frightened me. I looked at my sister-wives and saw that they were unnerved as well.

The Prophet now looked away from me and stared across the room. He continued to speak, but it was to himself and not to us.

“They bark at the Angel of Death…who follows her skirts…so much death in her midst…”

A terrible silence followed and the only thing I could hear was the pounding of blood in my ears. And then the Jewess stood up, her eyes filled with the terror that we all now felt.

“Who is she? Who do the dogs bark at?”

The Prophet stirred from his silent reverie and then looked again at each of us, sorrow etched on to his features.

“I…I don’t know…but I grieve for her…”

The air of festivity was gone, replaced by a terrible sense of doom hanging over us. The Messenger of God shook his head as if trying to free himself from the awful vision that had captured his heart. He turned to leave and then stopped, his eyes suddenly focused on me. He leaned close so that only I would hear.

“Please, Humayra,” he said softly. “Don’t let the dogs bark at you.”

He walked out, leaving me with an unearthly sense of foreboding. I suddenly threw on my veil and ran outside. As I fled the pavilion and raced back to the security of my little home, I felt like a terrified gazelle charging through the wilderness, escaping an unseen predator that was coming closer every moment.

In years to come, when the Messenger’s prophecy came true, I learned that we are all gazelles, and the lion that is bearing down upon us is the heartless hunter called fate. And the tragedy of life is that no matter how fast we run, no matter how far we go, the lion always wins.

In the eighth year after we had emigrated to Medina, when I was seventeen years old, the Meccans broke the truce of Hudaybiyya. Men of Quraysh helped a group of hotheads from the Bedouin clan of Bakr attack Muslims from the Bani Khuza’a. It was some foolish quarrel, a blood feud over a woman from a pagan clan who had fallen in love and run off with a Muslim boy. But it was a clear violation of the peace that had stood for two years, and the Prophet ordered the army of Islam to march out to Mecca in response.

By now, we truly could be called an army. Having been battle-tested in dozens of increasingly complex skirmishes, the barbarian tribes were now a powerfully disciplined and honed fighting force, one that had in recent months had its first confrontation with the legions of the Byzantine empire. After the failure of the Roman alliance with Khaybar, the day had been rapidly approaching when the imperial troops would engage our men. The Byzantines had precipitated the crisis by capturing the Prophet’s emissary to Syria and brutally killing him. The murder was a ruthless violation of the ancient diplomatic sanctity of envoys and was no doubt intended to show the Byzantine contempt for the rising Muslim power and to provoke a response.

The Messenger had sent a force of three thousand to avenge his ambassador’s death, led by his adopted son, Zayd. The resulting battle against Byzantine troops at the valley of Muta’h was the first in a war that would soon see the mighty Roman empire collapse at the hands of a group of desert warriors. The fighting was brutal and Zayd was killed. The death of Muhammad’s beloved kinsman had caused the Muslims to fight with such ferocity that the overconfident Byzantine legions were forced to retreat. The Meccan defector Khalid ibn al-Waleed took the standard of the army and fought the stunned Byzantine forces back to the Dead Sea before pulling his men into the safety of the desert. Though the battle could at best have been called a draw, the Byzantines were horrified. Their elite forces, which had ruled much of the earth for almost a thousand years, had been checked by lightly armed horsemen who had been outnumbered three to one.

When the survivors returned to Mecca, the Prophet had congratulated them for their courage and awarded Khalid with the title “the Sword of Allah,” by which he would forever be known. And then the Messenger had retreated to the privacy of Zaynab’s apartment to weep bitterly over the death of Zayd, who had been a son to him and a husband to her.

The Muslim army had faced down the Byzantines and was now ready to face its most important challenge-the conquest of the holy city of Mecca. The Messenger brought together ten thousand of his finest warriors and marched to Mecca in response to the treaty violation. Many of the men were filled with righteous indignation and a burning desire to avenge years of humiliation and death at the hands of the Quraysh. But the Messenger calmed their hearts, saying that he would prefer to take the city without bloodshed. Even though it had been the base of operations of our enemies, Mecca remained a sacred city and the Prophet had no desire to stain the Sanctuary of Abraham with blood.

And so, as the Muslim army camped in the hills outside the ancient city from which we had been exiled, he ordered each and every one of the men to light a small campfire, rather than a few large bonfires around which the army would gather. And so it was that the night sky of Mecca was illuminated crimson with the combined flames of ten thousand fires, creating the terrifying impression of an army of one hundred thousand camped on the edge of the city. It was an effective ruse, and the citizenry of Mecca devolved into panic at the illusion.

I stood by the Prophet’s side at the edge of a hill, my skin tingling with the waves of heat emanating from the burning camp behind us. The smoke from the fires made my eyes water and I was perennially terrified that a stray spark from one of the thousands of burning pits would consume the Prophet’s pavilion, which he had pitched just outside the perimeter of the camp. Though Umar and the other commanders had objected to the Messenger’s command center being established at the base of the hills, where it would be easy prey for the first Meccan attack force, my husband did not seem in the least bit afraid. And looking back at the flaming horizon, which seemed as terrifying as the gates of Hell, I understood his confidence. There would be no attack.