“By God, I will humble his face to the ground…I will tear him from his seat of honor if it’s the last thing I do…”

I saw the terrified look on Burayra’s face and I did not care. She stared at me as if she did not recognize me, and she was right. For in that moment, Aisha bint Abu Bakr, the frivolous, warmhearted girl who loved life, was dead. I had been reborn as a woman of ice, whose cold heart beat for only one purpose.

29

After I had heard that the Prophet was being advised to divorce me by his closest allies, I left the confines of my apartment and returned to my mother’s home. It was not that I felt safer or more accepted there. On the contrary, my parents’ doubts were like claws scratching at my heart, and it was difficult for me to look either of them in the face. But I could not continue to dwell in the household of the Messenger, sleep in the bed we had once shared, as long as there was a cloud of suspicion hanging over me. And if I were to be cut off from the marriage bond-or worse, placed on trial for adultery-then I did not want to face the indignity of being taken forcefully from my own house. And so I donned my veil and left of my own accord one morning, with Burayra my only protection against the accusing stares of the crowds as I walked down the cobbled streets of Medina.

My mother gave me a small room in the back of her stone hut, little larger than the cell that had been my apartment in the Masjid. She tried to comfort me, but I brushed aside her clumsy efforts at reconciliation and kept to myself. I spent the days in prayer, kneeling before God and asking Him to remove this lie that had been branded on my name. And every night I slept alone on the rough cot, the mattress made of knotted palm fiber that cut my skin raw as I tossed and turned with a thousand nightmares. But no matter how horrible the dreams were, the faces of djinn and demons that haunted my nights, I preferred the troubled madness of sleep to the greater nightmare that awaited me when I awoke.

I remained in that room for six days, emerging only to visit the rickety toilet shed behind the back wall of the house. My mother tried to coax me to join the family for meals, but I would simply take rough pieces of meat and bowls of wheat porridge back into my room and eat alone. After two days, she stopped asking me to come out and simply left the food on a tray by my door.

And then, on the seventh day, I heard a knock and my father’s voice asking me to let them in, for he had brought a visitor. The Messenger of God had finally arrived to speak with me. And I could tell from my father’s grave tone that he feared the worst.

I was numb from the unrelenting pain of the past few weeks and I felt nothing in my heart as I went to greet my husband. No anger, no fear. No despair. And even the love that had always bonded us was hidden so deep in the void of my heart that I could not find it. I was a corpse, without life or sensation, a dead tree whose branches rustled under a cold wind.

I opened the door to see the Messenger of God, his face drawn and solemn, looking down at me. I offered a perfunctory greeting of peace and then sat down on the hard cot and stared straight ahead, ready for whatever judgment he had brought.

The Prophet entered, followed by my mother and father, who looked more frightened than I had ever seen them. Even during the tense flight from Medina, their faces had been calm, their demeanor untroubled and steady. And yet now they looked as if everything they had was about to be taken away from them. I would have appreciated their fear for my future, a sign of their love for me despite their doubts and misgivings about my character. But my heart was like winter frost on the palm leaves, sharp and unyielding.

My husband sat beside me and looked at my face for a long moment. His dark eyes were impenetrable, and the hint of rose normally found on his cheeks was gone, leaving him as pallid as a ghost.

When he finally spoke, I barely recognized his voice, for its fluid melody had been replaced by a hoarseness, as if he had not spoken in years.

“O Aisha. I have heard these things about you, and if you are innocent, surely God will declare your innocence,” he said, measuring every word carefully. “And if you have done wrong, then ask forgiveness of God and repent unto Him. Truly if a servant confesses to God and repents, God relents toward him.”

So here it was. The Messenger of God was sitting beside me, asking me if indeed I had betrayed him with Safwan in the desert. After all our years together, after everything we had endured, he still did not trust me. His words cut through me and suddenly a hidden well of emotion was unleashed. Tears welled in my eyes and fell down my cheeks, but I made no effort to wipe them away. My eyes were blurring wildly, as if I had been thrust face-first into a river, and for an instant I thought I might go blind, like the prophet Jacob, whose grief at the loss of his son Joseph tore away his sight.

I turned my face to my father, who stood by the doorway.

“Answer the Messenger of God for me,” I said, pleading with Abu Bakr to intervene and save me from this final disgrace.

But my father bowed his head.

“I don’t know what to say.”

Through my tear-filled eyes, I could make out the figure of my mother standing behind him, her hands held to her breast in a sign of terrible grief.

“Mother…please…tell him…”

But Umm Ruman turned away from me, sobbing.

I looked at my parents and realized that I was truly alone in this world. And then something strange happened. I could feel a warmth spreading in my breast, a fire that had been kindled in my heart. The flame of dignity and honor that was my birthright.

I wiped my tears and stood up, my head held high.

“I know you have heard what men are saying, and it has settled on your souls and you believe it,” I said with pride, my eyes passing from my parents to my husband. “If I say to you that I am innocent-and God knows that I am innocent-then you will not believe me. But if I confess to something of which God knows I am not guilty, then you will believe me.”

And then I remembered again the prophet Jacob and his response when confronted with the lie that a wolf had eaten his son.

“So I will say as the father of Joseph said. It is best to be patient, and God is He to whom I ask help against what they say.”

And with that I climbed back onto my hard bed and turned my back to them, lying crumpled in a ball like a baby in its womb, my arms wrapped around my shoulders in an embrace that no one else would give me.

I heard the Messenger of God stir, and then I felt the bed shaking violently. It was a sensation that I immediately recognized, having experienced it so many times when he was lying beside me.

It was the convulsion of the Revelation.

I felt him slip off the bed and heard a thud as he fell to the ground. Despite my anger, despite my feelings of loss and betrayal, I turned to see if he was all right. The Prophet had fallen on his side and I saw him bent and shivering, his knees pulled up to the chest. Sweat poured down his face, even though the air was so cold that I could see the mist of his breath.

Abu Bakr and Umm Ruman were immediately at his side, but there was nothing they could do but gaze in awe as the divine communion played out before their eyes. The Messenger’s shaking slowed and finally stopped, and his eyes blinked open. He looked around, disoriented as he often was after a Revelation. And then he saw me on the bed and his face broke into a wide smile.

The Messenger struggled to rise to his feet, and my parents helped him as he steadied himself. And then he laughed, the first sound of joy that I had heard from his lips in weeks.

“O Aisha, praise God, for he has declared you innocent!”