Muhammad Read online

  “And which gods do you think will help us?” he asked. He ticked off the names of Hubal, Al-Lat, Manat, and Al-Uzza. In Mecca everyone sacrifices to them, even those who have doubts. We’re practical. It costs little enough to please the idols.

  “I don’t know which one. All of them,” I said. I tried to sound casual as I smeared an extra layer of kohl around my eyes as a sign of grief. But I felt guilty pretending to be a believer. Who knows? Maybe one of the gods cursed our babies, or us. These things are impossible to fathom. I watched Muhammad standing behind me in the little polished mirror.

  “You can forbid me to go,” I said.

  In a sarcastic voice that he rarely used, he said, “Can a husband pretend to be more powerful than all the gods? Go if you must.”

  I went. It wasn’t piety that drove me, but fear and grief. I didn’t want the gods’ disfavor. But I didn’t want their protection either, the way common, superstitious people do. If I had dragged ten terrified animals to the altar and watched their throats being slit, would that have saved my two babies? What I wanted was to have the knife in my heart come out. Although I kept my desperation quiet, I had to find relief. If the gods existed—if only one existed—maybe it had the power to grant mercy to one in pain. The sacrifice was made, with many citizens standing around and nodding their approval.

  When I came home, Muhammad asked me if I felt better. I shook my head. I felt ashamed to put on such a dumb show before gawkers and idlers, people whose only interest was in seeing a rich woman suffer despite her money.

  I’ve never pretended to have humility, but my pride didn’t stop me from running to Muhammad and begging his forgiveness. He lifted up my face and asked me to look at him. Then he said, “I understand your despair. Bring it to me. Half your pain comes from keeping it a secret.”

  I can’t say that the knife immediately withdrew from my heart just because I had a kind husband. That took many months. But my husband and I sat up the rest of the night talking between us about things that wives rarely speak about, such as our sense of frailty. When we stand so low in creation, as every girl is taught, our hope is that at least the gods will give us strength. I was such a girl, wondering where protection would come from in a violent world.

  Giving birth is a death sentence for one mother in six, maybe more. I’m willing to believe, but in what? The finger of fate passes over the scrolls and chooses this one for pain, that one for delight, this one for life, that one for death. Has this invisible hand ever been seen by anyone, even the most devout? Once seen, would it change just because a pitiful suffering woman cries out? Fate wipes out creatures by the thousands with a single flash flood in the hills or a summer of drought. We humans are creatures too, subject to the same whimsical catastrophes.

  This episode of the sacrifice could have caused Muhammad to condemn me; instead, it brought us closer. We found that we shared no brilliant answers. We shared the same questions instead, and that was enough.

  It was my custom to go to the bazaar every morning to inspect the goods and keep an eye on prices. Once I got married there was no practical need for me to do this. I had turned all my business affairs over to Muhammad. He resisted at first. “There is no need. You’ve run your own affairs for years,” he argued. “And if it’s my pride you’re worried about, don’t.”

  “It’s the pride of every other man I’m worried about,” I said. They could barely endure taking orders from a woman. I didn’t want them whispering behind Muhammad’s back that I married him just so I could emasculate him.

  I won’t say the matter was settled in one conversation. It’s always delicate when a poor man is yoked to a rich woman. Muhammad understood. When a big ox and a small ox try to pull a cart together, it will likely tip over. I told my old steward, Maysarah, to present all the accounts to my husband from now on. He raised an eyebrow, but obeyed. So you see, I could have spent the rest of my life behind doors driving the servants crazy, the way respectable women do. I tried. After two weeks Muhammad begged me, for my own sanity and everyone else’s, to keep up my customary ways. The caravan camps were my natural habitat. As he put it, I would still be a lady even if my sandals smelled of camel dung. Unlike the chameleon, I jumped to a new tree, but kept one foot on the old one.

  I went on my inspections even when I was with child. The first delivery was two months away when an old man called out to me, “So it’s true. You really did change your sex.”

  It was Waraqah, who had only grown stranger as he grew older. He was sitting on a low wall in the warm winter sun. My legs were sore from waddling down the cobbled street, and I decided to have a rest beside him.

  “Ah,” he said. “You’ve given up a man’s life, but you’re still as brave as a man.”

  “Let people talk. I don’t have to be brave to sit beside you,” I said. “Unless I’ve made a mistake and you still have a tooth left in your head.”

  He tilted his head back and gave a croaking laugh. “I’m not the one who will bite you if you’re seen with me. There are others who will be happy to do it.”

  He was only half joking. The rich old man was regarded with suspicion among the elders. Waraqah no longer sat with them in the inns, and he hadn’t made things any easier for himself by hanging around the Kaaba, muttering oaths at the pilgrims who passed nearby.

  I said, “You don’t fool me, you know.” The veins in my legs had stopped throbbing. I balanced myself on the wall so that my swollen belly didn’t make my back ache so much. “You’re not as cracked as they say.”

  Waraqah shot me a sidelong glance. “If I’m not cracked, then what am I?”

  I searched my mind, but he didn’t wait for a reply. “The word you’re looking for is subversive. I’m a snake in a basket of dates. Like your husband.”

  The expression on my face made him give out another croaking laugh. “You’ve made him rich, and you did it overnight. But a dangerous mind doesn’t get less dangerous swathed in finery.”

  I was struck silent, which seemed to please Waraqah. The penalty for free thinking had gotten severe during the past few years. Mecca was no longer the city I grew up in. We breathed suspicion. Muhammad wanted to keep his good name, but he would no longer be Al-Amin, the trusted one, if people couldn’t trust his opinions. For most men, words are the same as thoughts. As soon as a thought is in their head, it’s on their tongue. My husband had thoughts he didn’t speak.

  The change that came over the city happened almost the day that the gates slammed shut behind Abrahah and his army. It wasn’t enough that the invaders all fell sick and their war elephants retreated like a mirage in the desert. Mecca felt defenseless as never before. A foreigner had breached the one barricade we thought was impassable, the desert. Now the Qurayshi elders decreed that no Christian or Jew should set foot inside Mecca. Since the idols had saved the city by miraculously defeating the invaders, they should have no competition. Foreign gods were banned, and worshiping them meant death or exile. One of Muhammad’s own cousins was exposed as a hanif who bowed to one God and was forced to flee. The hanif were no more to be seen, except for Waraqah, and he had grown much quieter.

  The rights of Jews and Christians meant nothing. To ordinary people only their money did. If a Jew was so rich that his business couldn’t be done without him, he could pay a levy to come within the city walls. Once here, he couldn’t be seen praying or doing obeisance to his god, Yahweh.

  The Quraysh had risen to such power that they were able to enforce these decrees. Abu Talib listened to Muhammad’s pleas for tolerance. Waraqah muttered at the door of the Kaaba. They were powerless to intervene, however, when the whole tribe stood against them. “I’ve tried to wear them down,” Abu Talib said mournfully. “My words evaporated like a summer shower hitting a hot stone wall.”

  The rabble were organized into gangs who roamed the alleys beating on drunks and frightening servant girls on their way to the well with water jugs. A hush settled over the city. If you clamp down, people will obey,
and the obedient can be mistaken for the contented, if you squint hard enough. To hear the elders talk about it, the Year of the Elephant, as everyone started to call it, became the beginning of a golden age.

  This state of Mecca went through my mind as I sat beside Waraqah. “Get pregnant. Drop as many young as you want,” he said. “But deep down you’re with us.”

  I looked at the ground, pressing my fingers into my upper thigh to make the biggest blue vein stop bulging.

  “So I’m not far wrong,” he muttered, interpreting my silence. “I can tell you something else. Muhammad broke my heart when he left the cause. There were only four hanif to stand up for the truth, and we were all growing old. I think of your husband every day, but we barely speak when our paths cross. Maybe now I have an understanding with you.”

  “Perhaps.”

  It was Waraqah’s turn to look surprised. “What gives a woman this kind of courage? I was just goading you.”

  I shrugged. It wasn’t courage, though. My caravans have traveled the length of the Arab world, from Yemen to Syria. When they returned home, I sat my men down and made them tell me about what they saw and heard. My father didn’t raise me to be ignorant. Like Muhammad, he was fond of the old sayings. One of them is this: “A fat woman is better in winter than a blanket.” My father would frown and say to me, “I want you to be more than a better blanket when you grow up.”

  My men told me in particular how foreigners think, because when you know what is in a customer’s mind, you have an advantage over him. That’s how it began. After a while, though, the peculiarity of men’s minds gained its own fascination. Arabs believe that Abraham built the Kaaba, but Jews believe he founded their tribe in Jerusalem. We say that God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his older son, Ishmael. The Jews say it was his younger son, Isaac. Muhammad was a bit shocked that I knew such things, perhaps more shocked that they made me think skeptical thoughts about the idols surrounding the Kaaba. He quickly realized, however, that this was a bond between us. We rarely spoke about it.

  “I don’t mind being hated, you know,” said Waraqah out of the blue. “A thousand curses never tore a shirt.”

  I smiled. That was another of my father’s sayings. The old man and I were relaxed now. He pointed to a donkey some yards away. The animal was tied to a long stick attached to a grinding stone. He trudged in slow circles, and as he did a lazy-looking boy threw grain under the millstone to be ground into coarse flour.

  “There is your common Arab,” said Waraqah. “He walks in circles and thinks he’s getting somewhere. Tie an idol to his nose, and he thinks the gods are leading the way to Paradise.”

  The old man was growing deaf, and he said these words in a voice loud enough that two merchants passing by overheard him. They looked our way and frowned. Then seeing who it was, they bowed and moved on quickly.

  I got up and dusted off my skirts, which were speckled with chaff from the millstone. “You know people who were driven out of Mecca,” I said. “They talked the way you do.”

  “They didn’t see what’s coming. I’ve read the signs. I can afford to wait.”

  With this strange comment Waraqah waved me on my way, saying that we’d meet again. When I returned home, I told Muhammad everything. I didn’t leave out that he had broken Waraqah’s heart. He winced but said nothing, and when I asked him to open his mind to me, my husband said, “Better a free dog than a caged lion.” Men. They could pass their whole lives with old sayings. And yet I knew that my encounter struck deep inside him.

  9

  JAFAR, A SON OF ABU TALIB

  It finally happened. A jinn has driven Muhammad mad. He was seized in the hills somewhere, inside a cave, they say. Why was he there in the first place? It is well known that jinns hole up in caves, and the wind that blows through the blackness is their howling. Even shepherd boys won’t chase a lost lamb into a cave without making a cut in their forearm and offering drops of blood to the gods.

  A stranger in the street told me what had happened, which meant that the news was spreading fast. I ran to Muhammad’s house near the center of town. Who would I meet there? My family is Hashim, and our first instinct would be to gather the clan around any member who’s in trouble. But trouble isn’t the same as being seized by a demon. That kind of thing is infectious. It was just as likely that I’d run into spies sent by the Qurayshi elders. I wouldn’t put it past them to use this as a pretext for seizing control of Muhammad’s affairs. Anything to get close to his wife’s money.

  There were no spies and no Hashim men milling around, though. There was nobody at all. A stray dog was sniffing at the locked gate. I stood there, listening. In a house of women there’s always something going on. Gossip, clattering pots, the clack of a loom. Here, there was nothing. I considered pounding on the gate and shouting for somebody to come. I was quite anxious for him. I would beg his wife to bring in a priest or a worker in spells. I looked around. The houses are pressed close together near the Kaaba, and my shouts would be overheard. Reluctantly I walked away. I wasn’t an elder, and feeble as the Hashim have become, it’s the elders’ business to help or condemn one of their own. Let it never be said that I was the first to move against him by raising an alarm.

  I fretted all the way home. Muhammad has strange ways. Everyone knows that, not least his family. I heard that he and some others, including his oldest friend, Abu Bakr, had gathered by night to swear an oath. A secret ceremony? I hate the hanif, but to tell you the truth, that sounded promising. My cousin is too sober for his own good. The spice of intrigue wouldn’t hurt. Once the oath was made public, I ran to Muhammad in disgust.

  “What is this? You’ve sworn to give to the poor? What the gods won’t do, you are going to do instead?”

  It was ridiculous. I’m not yet forty, but I agree with the old ones who grumble that this kind of sacrilege will tear society apart. Muhammad listened to me ranting for a few minutes, saying nothing. His silence made me more agitated.

  “You think a man’s life should be about helping dirty, squalid slaves?” I cried.

  “I don’t know what a man’s life should be about. That’s precisely why I help dirty, squalid slaves,” he replied calmly. “Do you have a few you can spare?”

  Muhammad became even stranger after his marriage. I, his favorite cousin, no longer could tap at his window to run off on an adventure. No one ever supposed he would lose his mind. I ached for news that he was all right. Muhammad wouldn’t leave his house, but gossip can pass through the tiniest crack in a fortress. Soon servants ran from the house of Abu Bakr to see what my father was willing to pay for scraps of news. They were excited, out of breath. Abu Talib was taking a nap as usual, so I met them. I sat them down and gave out dates and well water. I saw them furtively slip the fruit into their robes rather than eat it.

  “Tell me, quick,” I demanded. “If you’re spreading scandal, I’ll have you whipped.”

  The youngest one, a curly-haired Syrian who was good-looking and therefore presentable among people of quality, spoke up. “He was wandering in the hills by himself. Very dangerous. Some people don’t never return, and those people had ideas, just like him.”

  “What do you know about ideas?” I asked angrily.

  The Syrian slave gave me an insolent stare, and my hand itched to take out the leather crop I keep under my robe. But I let him proceed.

  “I know about tahannuf,” he said. “My master has gone on such a one. He thinks he goes into the hills by himself, but I am sent along to keep guard. Out of sight, you can bet. He wouldn’t like it.”

  Well, it’s no crime to go on tahannuf. For as long as we can remember, Arabs have sought solace in the wilderness. The meadows outside Mecca are ideal for this—green and quiet, closer to heaven. As for myself, I help to make sure Mecca stays filthy, if you know what I mean. But the Syrian’s master, Abu Bakr, took tahannuf every spring, and so did Muhammad. Muhammad’s interest in business affairs had steadily waned, year by year. Even his four daugh
ters found him aloof; he had turned away from our world, vainly hoping to find another.

  “What are you telling me? Nothing new,” I said. I reminded this insolent slave of an old saying: “A grateful dog is worth more than an ungrateful man.” To underline the point, I held out a small coin. Despite himself, his eyes widened greedily.

  He said, “I’m telling you, great sir, I have seen men kidnapped when they go on such retreats. I’ve hidden behind rocks and watched their throats get cut and their bodies flung into gullies. Some of them still had money in their purses.”

  “They didn’t have money for long,” I said dryly. “You can vouch for that, can’t you?”

  The ambushes couldn’t be denied. Who goes on tahannuf but the devout? And no one is more devout than these troublemakers who cry out against our sacred ways. Some of them go into the hills to find their God, and we make sure they do. It serves as a warning to the rest. Muhammad had more sense.

  “So you were sent in secret to spy on Muhammad?” I asked.

  “To protect him, great sir, not to spy.”

  “Abu Bakr had reason to fear for his friend’s life?”

  The Syrian slave bit his tongue; it wasn’t his place to divulge his master’s intentions. He looked surprised when I put the coin in his palm and closed his hand around it. “You did well,” I murmured. I love Muhammad. Once my father took him in as an orphan, he became my brother. In a tolerant voice I asked the slave to spare no details. He had to tell me what he saw that made Muhammad lose his mind.

  “For a long time, he did nothing out of the ordinary,” the slave began. “Master Muhammad liked to walk on the slopes of Mount Hira, because it lies only an hour by foot from the city walls. I got bored following him. It didn’t come into my head that he was searching for something, a hideaway, like. One day he found a lonely cave whose mouth was hidden by brush. He cleaned the cave of all the nasty debris and animal skeletons, even washing the floor himself with rags dipped in a stream. He began to take long retreats inside the cave, sometimes from dawn to nightfall. There were times when he had to use the stars to guide his way home. Like I told you, I was bored something terrible. I became restless sitting down below on the hillside with nothing to do but wait for him to leave. What use is there in avoiding other people like that? A rich man should enjoy himself. He should spread his money wherever he can find wine and women.”