Abu Jahl had come for them.

I tore the flesh from my hand trying to break the cruel knots, but to no avail.

“I can’t do it!” I felt hot tears coming to my eyes. Today was a day of death and destruction. Everyone I loved was in trouble, and I was powerless to help them.

And then I heard footsteps. Someone was coming. Ammar heard it, too. He looked down the hill and saw a figure approaching.

“It’s him! Hide!”

I turned and saw a man dressed in rich purple robes, a lavender turban wrapped across his head, climbing toward us.

Abu Jahl, the monster of my childhood nightmares, was here.

My heart in my throat, I looked around desperately. And then I saw a fallen tree trunk lying to the side. I jumped inside the trunk, ignoring an enraged spider whose web I tore apart as I hid from this demon.

Abu Jahl clambered over the ridge and stood only five feet away from me. He did not look like a monster. In fact, he was quite elegant in his rich robes, laced in gold filigree. His face was handsome and evenly proportioned, his cheekbones high, and his skin unusually fair for a native of the desert heat. He had a small and well-trimmed mustache that gave him a dapper look. His real name was Abu al-Hakam, which meant “Father of Wisdom” but the Muslims always called him Abu Jahl, “Father of Ignorance.”

I saw that his hands were full. In his right hand, he held a spear, the jagged head polished to sparkle in the sun. In his left, I saw an idol. A small, curvaceous stone made of shining obsidian. Even from the distance, I could tell that it was an icon of Manat, Abu Jahl’s patron goddess, to whom he attributed his remarkable wealth.

He looked at the three prisoners whom he had been left to die here. Abu Jahl smiled almost apologetically.

When he spoke, his voice was soft, almost soothing.

“I hope the sun god has taught you reason, Ammar,” he said, without any hint of the rage or madness that possessed Umar.

Ammar looked him in the eye, ignoring the persistent flies that were buzzing around his sweat-drenched face.

“There is no sun god. There is only Allah, the Lord of the Worlds.”

Abu Jahl shook his head, looking deeply disappointed. He sighed, as if filled with regret.

“Even to the end, you remain dedicated to your heresy,” he said. “Think, boy. If Allah cared about your singular devotion so much, why would He leave you to die in the desert?”

Ammar’s lips curled in fury.

“You did that, not Allah.”

Abu Jahl shrugged and turned to Sumaya, who looked up at him serenely despite her pain.

“You are Ammar’s mother,” he said, his voice eminently reasonable. “Tell me, Sumaya. Do you remember his birth? The agony of labor. The pain almost killed you. Yet your midwife prayed to Manat and you lived. Without the mercy of the goddess, how could you have endured those pangs?”

He held up the idol and dangled it right in front of Sumaya’s face.

“Manat ended your pain and gave you and your son life that night. And she can give it you again. Right now.” He leaned forward, holding the idol close to Sumaya’s lips. “All you have to do is kiss her holy image. And I will release you and your family from your bonds.”

Sumaya looked at him, and then at the idol.

I held my breath, praying that she would do it. The Messenger had said that anyone who was forced to renounce his faith for fear of his life, but kept it in his heart, would be forgiven by God. My soul screamed to Sumaya from inside the darkness of the tree trunk: Do it! Save yourself! Save your son!

Sumaya smiled at Abu Jahl gently, almost gratefully.

And then she spit on the idol of Manat.

And then I saw Abu Jahl change. Something terrible came over his face. Not rage, like Umar’s, but an emptiness. A lack of feeling. In that instant, he looked more like a corpse than a living man. And he frightened me more with the rigid calm of his face than Umar had with all his bluster.

“So you would choose death over life,” he said softly.

Sumaya laughed suddenly, as if she finally realized that she had been wasting her time arguing with an imbecile.

“No…I choose life…eternal life,” she said. She steeled her eyes on him, and I saw no fear. “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.”

Abu Jahl gazed into her face, and then nodded. He stepped back, locking his eyes on hers.

And then, in one fluid movement that was so fast my eyes barely captured it, he stabbed her through her vagina, pushing the spear up into her womb!

“No!” Ammar’s scream was the most terrifying sound I had ever heard. I bit my hand in horror, letting my own stifled cry shudder through my body.

Sumaya cried out in terrible agony. She writhed on the tree trunk as blood poured out from her womb and into a thick crimson puddle at her feet. Abu Jahl continued to push the spear higher, tearing open her intestines and stomach from the inside.

And then her screams ended. And there was only silence.

As Ammar wept, I saw Abu Jahl casually remove the spear. He used Sumaya’s threadbare tunic to clean the blood off his weapon, before turning to face Ammar.

“The gods have won,” he said simply, as if stating an obvious truth to the child.

Somehow Ammar found his voice in the midst of terrible grief.

“No…my mother has won…she is the first of the martyrs.”

Abu Jahl allowed a small smile to play on his full, sensuous lips.

“She will not be the last.”

He turned and climbed back down the hill, whistling a happy tune.

When he was gone, I emerged from the tree trunk. I felt like I was in a dream. The entire day had to have been a nightmare. Nothing I witnessed could happen in the real world.

I stared at the dead woman, hanging ignominiously, her lower body drenched in the blood that had only moments before flowed through her veins.

This was not real. It couldn’t be.

And then the screech of vultures tore me out of my trance and I ran away, racing from the specter of death that would forever haunt me, even as the midwife had prophesied the night I was born.

3

Alone figure knelt on the sacred ground of Mount Hira, where the Revelation had begun. He flexed his powerful muscles and then raised his hands in prayer to the One God that had chosen his family to redeem mankind.

Hamza had always known that his nephew Muhammad had been destined for greatness. They were close in years and the man who was now called Messenger of God had been more of a younger brother to Hamza than a nephew. But even when they would race each other across the stone alleyways of Mecca, or wrestle playfully in the sand, Muhammad had never quite seemed like a child. There had been a wisdom in his eyes, a sadness that seemed to belong to someone who had already lived a lifetime of struggle, loss, and triumph. Perhaps it was the sorrow of an orphan, having lost his father before he was born and his mother at the age of six.

But there was something else different about the boy. A sense of destiny that hung around him like an aura. It was a power that others in the family had sensed as well, and not all were comfortable with it. Hamza’s half brother, Abu Lahab, in particular had taken an early dislike to their nephew, seeing Muhammad as a dreamer and an idealist, someone who refused to adapt to the harsh realities of life in the desert.

When Muhammad had come to Hamza and told him about his vision, in a cave not far from where Hamza sat now, he had been fascinated but not really surprised. Still, Hamza had been set in his ways and found it difficult to renounce the gods of their fathers. But as he watched the growing opposition of the Meccan lords to his nephew’s teaching and their increasing cruelty toward his followers, he had felt a growing passion within his breast. Hamza had always believed in living life with honor and justice, and he began to see that the followers of the old ways displayed few of those traits.