Kamran Pasha - Mother Of the Believers

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.

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?!”