The full moon sparkled above her, and for a second Safiya stared at it in confusion. For the face she had always made out in its shadows had changed. It was no longer an indistinct outline, and the features were clear and recognizable.
It was the face of Muhammad.
As Safiya stared in shock, the moon fell from the sky, a sparkling ball of pure light that lowered itself into her lap. And as the ethereal light from the heavenly orb flooded her, the pain vanished and her grief became a distant memory.
And then Safiya heard it. The sound of children’s laughter.
She gazed up through the circle of ethereal light and saw that the city had come back to life. The walls stood strong and firm, and there were no corpses. Everywhere she looked, there was rebirth. The flowers bloomed and the gentle trickle of water from a nearby fountain gave her hope. And then she saw the hustle and bustle of crowds as her people walked through the marketplace, apparently unaware of the devastation that had been there only moments before.
As the mysterious light around her grew brighter, her eyes fell on a group of children chasing one another gleefully. They stopped their games to stare at Safiya and then waved to her with a smile.
And then the magical moonlight became as bright as a thousand suns and the world dissolved into its warm bliss.
33
I watched from the Messenger’s battle tent set high in the hills of Khaybar as the Muslim army launched its surprise attack on the Jewish fortress. We had been warned by spies among the neighboring Bedouin tribes of the Byzantine army’s intention to use the oasis as a launching ground for an invasion of the peninsula and the Prophet had made immediate plans to take the city before the Romans could dispatch soldiers.
I was accompanied by my sister-wife Umm Salama. Together we were charged with the duty of caring for the wounded, and we had already spent much of the morning bandaging wounds and applying ointments made from crushed belladonna leaves to ease the pain of the dying.
The Muslim army was a small force of just over fifteen hundred soldiers and one hundred horses, but men and animals had been chosen specifically for their speed and agility. We knew that the fighting men of Khaybar numbered nearly ten thousand, so victory would come not by brute force but by craftiness and unpredictability. The Messenger intended to mount a series of raids on the oasis, which was guarded by three separate walled encampments, forcing the enemy to engage us on our terms. The hope was that our seemingly puny force would make the Jews overconfident and that our hit-and-run tactics would keep them confused as to our real plan of attack. My husband reasoned that the defenders of Khaybar would expend their energy fighting on several small fronts rather than concentrating on a single battlefield, disorienting them long enough for us to make a break in their defenses. It was the strategy of the bee, buzzing around its victim just long enough to confuse him before delivering the sting.
And so far, it was working. Ali had been placed in charge of the army that laid siege to Khaybar, a controversial decision that had caused some discontent among the Muslims. Though no one could argue with his military prowess, many felt that placing a man who was not yet thirty in charge of older and more experienced fighters would damage morale. There were many rumblings that an elder statesman such as Abu Bakr should lead the battle, but my father had quickly silenced the talk as he had silenced Umar at Hudaybiyya. Abu Bakr unquestioningly accepted Ali’s leadership on the battlefield, and my husband, natural diplomat that he was, gave his house a special honor. The Messenger had taken one of my black cloaks and had it fashioned into the war standard for the army, giving both my father and myself a special distinction in the eyes of the soldiers. And yet the rumblings against Ali did not fully subside, a fact that gave me secret pleasure.
But once the swords were unsheathed, all such idle talk ended and the blood rush of war replaced political posturing. Ali led the first wave on the surprised stronghold, and the Muslims advanced as far as the city walls before we were met with a shower of arrows. The archers of Khaybar were the finest in all of Arabia, and nearly fifty of our men were hit, forcing Ali to withdraw as thousands of defenders spilled out of the fortress of Natat on the outskirts of the settlement.
After our initial advances on the field, we were pushed back into the hills. But the Prophet’s strategy was working. The Muslims would emerge from different locations every hour, first from the east, then north, then southwest, and hit the enemy’s forces with lightning speed before vanishing like ghosts into the wilderness. The Jewish fighters became increasingly frustrated at our unpredictability and they were forced to divide their forces to patrol the countryside, which was exactly what the Prophet had expected.
The on-again, off-again battle had now been raging for six days, and we could tell that our adversaries were becoming exhausted by the intermittent raids followed by hours of wasted efforts chasing us into the shadows. We had enough food and water to keep up our pinprick attacks for at least another week, but I knew that we would not need that long. For last night, Umar ibn al-Khattab had captured one of the Jewish commanders in a surprise raid, and the man had saved his own life by betraying his people’s one military weakness. The castle of Naim was a small outpost at the western edge of the settlement that was not as well guarded as the other links in the defense chain. And it apparently contained stores of hidden weapons that would help us break through the walls into the heart of the oasis.
And so Ali had led a surprise attack on Naim this morning while the rest of the Muslim army engaged the sons of Khaybar at the eastern wall as a diversion. The fighting had been brief but vicious. Ali had dueled the famed Jewish champion Marhab at the gates, and as was the usual outcome of any encounter with the glowing Dhul Fiqar, Ali had sliced his enemy’s head off in seconds. Zubayr had joined Ali on the field and dispatched Marhab’s equally well regarded brother Yasir, swinging a blade in each of his hands as only Zubayr could. The death of the Jewish heroes had led to disarray among the small band of protectors at the castle and the Muslims had managed to break through its fortified gates and storm the outpost.
And then Ali emerged with a triumphant smile and returned to the Messenger’s base camp, where he advised my husband that the breach of Naim had provided the Muslims a back door into the oasis. But more important, the intelligence Umar’s captive had provided was accurate. Hidden inside storage rooms underground was an array of weapons that would facilitate our efforts to take the city, the most important being a ballista, a small Roman catapult that the Byzantines had apparently given as a gift to their new allies. And there were two testudos, covers of overlapping shields that the Romans wheeled up to walls to defend themselves from attackers. In a delicious twist of irony, these foreign contraptions that had been stockpiled for use against the Muslims would now be used against our enemies to break through the walls.
My father rose to congratulate Ali on the victory that had changed the course of the battle, as did the other Companions. As the men embraced and clasped hands with the young hero, the Prophet beamed like a father who had finally seen a misunderstood son receive honor in the world.
Ali’s sparkling eyes fell on me and in them I saw the desire for reconciliation, for an end to the rancor between the two of us who were beloved by the Messenger of God. But whatever grudging respect I could give him for his prowess as a warrior, I could not forgive him for his betrayal, which had nearly cost me my marriage and my life.