19

The Mother of the Believers, the foundation stone of our hopes, was dying. As the Messenger and Ali helped her up the winding marble staircase that led to the family’s private rooms on the second floor, my father took it on himself to restore calm and order to the gathered crowd of believers.

After clearing the Prophet’s house of all except the closest members of his family and a few trusted advisers such as Umar and Uthman, we climbed upstairs to check on Khadija. I held on to the cold brass banister like a girl clinging to the edge of a cliff. Every footfall I made on the polished stone seemed to thunder like the beat of a war drum, announcing the arrival of death and pestilence in its wake.

When I followed my mother and father into the Messenger’s bedroom, I saw that Khadija was lying on a mattress of goose feathers that been imported from the north. The Messenger had rid himself of nearly all luxuries since the beginning of his mission, but he could not part with this one item that brought comfort and ease to his aging wife.

She looked so peaceful, lying there with her bony hands across her chest, that for a moment I thought she was already dead. But the gentle rustle of her gray tunic as it rose and fell with her breathing said that her soul still dwelled among us for a short while longer. Beads of pearly sweat ran down her lined face and her daughters quickly moved to wipe her brow with a clean rag.

The Messenger dropped to his knees beside her and closed his eyes, his hands uplifted in fervent prayer. I had never seen him so focused, so utterly unmoving. If I had not caught the steady pulse of a vein in his temple, I could have imagined that he had been turned to stone from grief, like the very idols that he despised.

Silence fell upon the room like the closing doors of a crypt. Even the wind outside became utterly still, like the mournful quiet before the rains are unleashed. No one moved; all eyes were on the elderly woman on the bed. Hours passed as if they were moments, and eventually Fatima left her mother’s side to light a small copper lantern as the sun’s rays dipped beneath the horizon.

When the disk of the sun vanished and the evening star ruled the sky, Khadija’s eyes opened and I saw her smile at the Messenger, who was looking at her like a frightened child. Seeing the lost look on his face, this man who was the center of our community, the rock that gave us stability while the deadly waters of the world raged and churned about us, I suddenly felt very small and alone.

I realized at that moment that it was Khadija who had been the heart of Islam the whole time. Without her initial acceptance of his vision, Muhammad would have dismissed his experience on Mount Hira as a dream or a delusion engendered by a capricious djinn. Had she not believed him and encouraged him, he would have eventually become like the madmen I saw wandering the streets of Mecca in putrid rags, whose disturbed minds had tortured them until even their families had driven them out and left them to die. Whatever this new religion called Islam was, whatever it was going to be, was the product of one woman’s faith in a man. And now that woman was dying and I was left to wonder whether our faith would die with her.

I saw a figure enter the room, a man with a deeply pockmarked face and thinning hair, despite his youth. It was Zayd ibn Haritha, the adopted son of Muhammad and Khadija. He had just returned from an unsuccessful hunt in the hills where a leopard had been seen the night before and had been told by the believers what had transpired at the Messenger’s house this morning.

Zayd leaned down beside Khadija and she ran her hand across his cheek. He had once been her slave, but he had grown so attached to her and her husband that they had freed him and adopted him as a son after the tragic death of their own infant boy Qasim. Next to Ali, Zayd was the closest person to a male heir in the Messenger’s household, and many of the believers looked to him as a future leader of the community. The fact that a slave could rise to become a master over the believers was a matter of great pride for the Muslims and a subject of intense mockery for Abu Lahab and our other enemies.

I watched as Khadija gestured to Zayd, Ali, and her daughters to come close. The rest of us kept respectfully back. The fact that we were even allowed in the inner sanctum to share her final moments was enough. Family had certain rights and prerogatives that needed to be respected.

As each member of the Ahl al-Bayt, the People of the House, approached, Khadija said a soft, almost inaudible prayer of benediction upon her loved ones and then whispered into each of their ears. I saw them nod and rise after she shared her private farewells, tears streaming down their cheeks. First her eldest daughter, Zaynab, then Ruqayya, even more beautiful as her black eyes shone with grief, followed by rosy-cheeked Umm Kulthum and dour Zayd.

And then she took Fatima’s hand in her right and Ali’s in her left and kissed them both on the foreheads. When Fatima stepped back, the look of grief on her face was so painful that I dropped my eyes for fear of being consumed by it.

“Aisha…”

I was startled to hear my name and looked up to see Khadija looking at me with compassion. She gestured weakly for me to come.

Stunned and unsure as to why I was being included in this special circle of family, I stood there, my finger in my mouth like a shy toddler. My mother, Umm Ruman, took my hand and pulled me to Khadija’s side, before stepping back and leaving me alone with her.

The Mother of the Believers ran her hands through my red hair like a child playing with a favorite doll. And then she moved her head a little and I sensed she wanted me to come close so that I could hear her better. I leaned forward until my ears were almost touching her cracked lips.

She whispered, but her words sounded through my heart like a trumpet.

“Take care of him when I’m gone,” she said inexplicably. “You were made for him.”

I had no idea what she meant, but there was something both exciting and terrifying in her words. As if she were using her final breath to pass on to me a secret that I was to guard with my life.

I sensed the Messenger standing behind me and scrambled back to my mother’s side, unsure of what to make of the strange words Khadija had bequeathed me.

When I looked up, I saw that the Prophet was crying. With what appeared to be a difficult effort, Khadija raised her hands and wiped his tears in front of us the way she had wiped them in private all those years. In that instant, I understood the truth of their relationship. The Messenger had seen his mother die when he was only six years old and had longed all his life for the nurturing touch of which he had been deprived. Khadija was more than just his wife and best friend, more than the first Muslim. She was also the mother that God had taken away from him once before, and I realized as I looked at Muhammad’s face that he was reliving the horror of the loss that had haunted him since he was a boy.

“I am summoned to the Abode of Peace…Beloved, it is time for me to go…”

I saw through my blurred eyes the Prophet lean down and place his cheek next to hers.

“I knew the moment I saw you that you were special…Had God never spoken to you, even then would I have known that you were His chosen…”

She was looking up, her eyes staring dreamily at the ceiling, at something only she could see.

“The men in white are here…I see where they are taking me…It’s so beautiful…so full of light…”

She turned to face the Messenger, peering deep into his fathomless eyes.

“There is no god but God, and you, my love, are His Messenger…”

She sighed and went still.

There was a moment of silence so great that it reverberated like an earthquake. And then cries of grief erupted all around me. I saw the Messenger of God touch the Mother of the Believers’ lips, stroking them in final farewell.