I turned to face him, the tears still flowing down my cheeks.

“Your wives, perhaps. But not among the women your right hand possesses.”

My husband stiffened and I saw his kindly smile fade.

“Mariya gives me comfort,” he said slowly, as if measuring every word with due care. “But she does not take your place in my heart. No one can.”

I took his hand in mine and squeezed it.

“Then prove it.”

The Prophet sighed and he suddenly looked very tired.

“What do you want of me?”

I leaned closer, my eyes fixed on his.

“Leave this slave girl! Promise never to see her again!”

The Prophet blinked in surprise at the audacity of my request.

“Humayra-” he began, but I cut him off by removing my hand from his and shifting away from him.

“Promise, or you will never have my assent to touch me again! If you take me, it will be by force and not love.”

The Messenger looked as shocked as if I had slapped him. In all the years of our marriage, I had never threatened to withhold the intimacies of our bed from him, no matter how fiercely we had argued or fought. Even after the Messenger harbored doubts of my fidelity, I did not punish him by denying my embrace, and through the gentle warmth of our union, we had begun to repair what the gossips had shattered.

The Prophet stared at me with those powerful, unreadable eyes, but I met his gaze defiantly. For a long moment, the only sound that I could hear was the rhythmic call of the crickets and the gentle rustle of palm leaves in the wind.

And then the Prophet spoke and I could hear the frustration he was trying to suppress.

“I promise,” he said, although I could tell he was bitter at having to take this oath. “I will not go to Mariya again. Are you happy now?”

I felt a rush of excitement at my little victory and I smiled like a little girl who had finally been given a much-sought-after toy. But when I moved forward to kiss my husband, it was his turn to back away.

“Did the other women of the household put you up to this?” he asked, and I realized that he knew us too well to be deceived. I did not respond, but he seemed to find the answer he was seeking in my guilty face.

The Messenger of God stood up and shook his head, and I suddenly had a strange sinking feeling in my stomach, a sense that my victory was a mirage and that I had actually brought defeat down upon myself and my fellow wives.

“You are like the women who threatened Joseph with prison if he did not give in to their demands,” the Prophet said with a weary sigh, and I felt a sting of humiliation at being compared to the sinful ladies who had tried to seduce the son of Jacob.

And then without another word, the Messenger of God turned and walked out, leaving me feeling suddenly very alone and helpless. There was something in the way he closed the door behind him, a finality in his stride, that made me feel as if he were gone for good and would never return.

New tears welled in my eyes, tears of shock and loss, as I suddenly realized that I had made a terrible mistake.

37

The Messenger sent the Mothers a message through the fiery Umar. He would not speak to any of us for a month. He retired alone to a small tent at the edge of the Masjid courtyard and refused our desperate entreaties for reconciliation.

The next month was one of the most miserable in my life. The Prophet was true to his word and did not speak a single word to any of us for the entire time. And to make our punishment sting deeper, we received word that God had absolved his Messenger of his hasty oath and my husband was spending his nights solely in the company of the slave girl Mariya. As usual, the other wives blamed me for our collective predicament, although in this instance we all shared responsibility for pushing Muhammad too far. They avoided me as if I carried a disease, and I was more isolated than ever.

The only company I found during those miserable days was that of my sister, Asma, who would often bring you, Abdallah, to play in the corner while she comforted me. You were still a small boy, not yet five years old, but you had a seriousness and wisdom about you even at such a tender age. When I cried, as I often did during your mother’s visits, you would invariably put down your toys and come over to me, placing your head in my lap until the gentleness of your presence calmed me. I knew in my heart that I would likely never have a child of my own, and you became a son to me in those moments, a bond that I still feel as readily today, nearly fifty years later, as I did then. And it is perhaps for this reason that I open my heart to you now, for you have always been a salve to the pain of your aunt, whom destiny has chosen to be both blessed and cursed.

Time lost all meaning during those weeks, and yet I did not stop counting the hours before the ban would be lifted and-I hoped-my husband would return to us. Still, I was terrified at the thought of where we would go from there. Would he still love me, or had Mariya forever taken my place in his heart? Would the glorious fire that had once linked our souls be reduced to a smoldering ember, a pale echo of days long past?

And then one night, as I sat alone in my room, looking down at my husband’s threadbare mantle, the musky scent of his flesh still emanating from its fibers, I heard the sound of footsteps. And then the door opened, revealing the silhouette of a man standing on the threshold. Startled, I reached for my veil, and then the figure stepped inside and I saw that it was the Messenger of God.

For a moment, I sat utterly still, convinced he was just a waking dream, a shadow of my imagination. He looked down at me for a quiet moment, and then his pale face broke into a small smile.

I rose to my feet, my heart caught in my throat.

“But…it’s been only twenty-nine days…” was all I could croak The Prophet raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“How do you know that?”

I moved toward him, pulled like a drop of water toward the ocean.

“I have been counting the days. And the hours.”

And then I realized that this month, Rajab, had only twenty-nine days instead of thirty because of the early sighting of the new moon. The Prophet had waited exactly as long as he had promised and not a moment less. And he had chosen to come to me first of all of his wives.

The Messenger of God took my hand in his and squeezed tightly until I could feel the steady pulse of the blood in his veins, matching the rhythm of my own heartbeat.

“Aisha, God has revealed these words to me,” he said gently, but I sensed a hint of sternness still lingering in his glance as he recited the newest verses of the holy Qur’an.

O Prophet, say to your wives

If your desire is for the present life and its finery,

Then come, I will make provision for you

And release you with kindness.

But if you desire God, His Messenger

And the Home of the Hereafter

Then remember that God has prepared great rewards

For those of you who do good.

I listened with my head bowed as Allah presented me with two paths, the way of the world or the way of eternity. The God who had rescued me from disgrace, who had saved my honor when even my husband had doubted me, was now warning me that my future with Muhammad and the believers lay on the path toward which I turned my heart at this instant.

“So, Humayra, what do you choose?” the Messenger asked in a voice that was a whisper.

Hot tears ran down my cheeks and I looked up into the obsidian eyes of my husband, and I knew there had never been any choice in the matter.

“I choose God and His Messenger, and the Home of the Hereafter,” I said, trembling with an ache that threatened to tear my heart in two.