“By your father?” I asked, my voice sounding squeaky like a mouse.

“No. By God.”

And with those strange words, the mysterious girl smiled sadly and gazed back up to the heavens. I looked down at my hands and pondered her words for a moment. When I turned to ask her what she meant, the hair on my neck stood up. The street was empty. Fatima had vanished.

18

The Messenger consummated his marriage that night with Hafsa, to her quite vocal satisfaction. I covered my ears with a rough leather pillow, but her throaty cries wafted through the thin mud walls between our apartments, adding to my misery.

A few days later, while I was still raw from the addition of this spirited girl to the harem, a second wedding was held. Fatima, I learned, was to marry Ali, and somehow that felt right. They were both strange, otherworldly creatures and their union felt almost destined.

The ceremony was not as grandiose as Hafsa’s nuptials, but there was a great dignity to the event. I felt an inexplicable solemnity to the wedding, as if this were something momentous in the history of the world rather than the union of two poor misfits who were lucky to find each other.

The Messenger was solemn and quiet as Ali and Fatima sat before him. The groom was dressed in a simple robe of black, his green eyes sparkling in vivid contrast. Fatima wore a russet gown, her face completely covered by a thin veil. Only a few intimates were invited, the heart of Muhammad’s family-his wives and daughters, Uthman the widowed son-in-law, and the Messenger’s two fathers-in-law, Abu Bakr and Umar. I was delighted to see Talha there, and my sister, Asma’s, eyes never left Zubayr, who had finally emigrated to Medina with a promise to marry her and end her spinsterhood.

Ali and Fatima signed the wedding contract and we all raised our hands to pray the Fatiha, as was customary. Normally the ceremony was completed with the supplication, but the Prophet did something unusual that night that I never saw before or again.

The Messenger of God raised a small bowl of carved acacia wood and poured it full of clear water from an earthen jug. He then rinsed his mouth with the liquid and spit the water back into the bowl and it seemed to sparkle as if he had cast diamonds into the bowl. And then Muhammad took the water and sprinkled it on Ali and Fatima, and the strange shimmer seemed now to emanate from then. Finally, my husband reached for a small glass vial of olive oil and touched it to his fingers before anointing Ali’s forehead. He then reached inside his daughter’s veil and did the same to her. It felt as if he was anointing them king and queen, as the prophets of Israel were said to do with their regal charges in days long past.

“May God bless you and your descendants,” he said with a look that somehow managed to combine joy and sorrow at once.

The whole ceremony seemed appropriately ethereal for this enigmatic couple and I was glad when the Prophet rose and kissed them, signaling that we had returned to the world I knew and understood.

The women took hold of Fatima’s hand and with the usual giggles and knowing glances led her to the adjoining bedchamber, where a sheepskin mattress similar to my own was laid out on the stone floor.

As I adjusted Fatima’s veil, which had shifted awkwardly as we moved her, I saw that her eyes were filled with tears and her mouth was a solid line.

“Smile!” I said with a wide grin of my own, hoping to lift her inexplicable gloom. “This is the most important night of a woman’s life.”

Fatima looked at me as if seeing me, truly seeing me, for the first time. And then she said words that I would never have expected.

“I wish I could be like you, Aisha.”

“Why?” I asked, sincerely surprised.

“You live your life freely, embracing every moment,” she said softly. “You are not troubled by the past. Or the future.”

It was a strange comment from a strange girl, and I responded as best as I knew how.

“My father says that the past is like a dream from which one has awakened. Why look back on it? And the future is like a mirage in the desert. We keep racing after it, and it keeps running away from us.”

I was startled at my own words, which had a flourish of poetry that I had not realized was in me.

Fatima smiled sadly, and there was something so tragic in her look that I felt my heart break.

“And yet sometimes the mirage runs toward us,” she said. “And then we see it is made not of water but of fiery sand, sweeping away everything we love into the wind.”

I looked at her, confused, even frightened. And then the women ushered me out as Ali entered the room, his green eyes as distant and unreadable as ever.

19 Mountain of Uhud-March 23, AD 625

The day of reckoning came at last, and war was upon us. The Meccans had come to avenge the dead of Badr and destroy Medina. It was the first day of spring and the sparrows sang from the palm trees as our soldiers marched out to defend the oasis from the invaders. Abu Sufyan led a force of three thousand men and three hundred horses, while we were able to put together only seven hundred Muslims, along with three hundred tribesmen allied to the shadowy Ibn Ubayy. Despite the overwhelming superiority of our adversary’s numbers, the Muslims remained confident. After all, we had seen the miracle of Badr, where we had defeated an army three times our size.

And there had been a special sign of favor in the days just before the battle. The Messenger’s daughter Fatima had given birth to a son, a chubby and smiling little boy named Hasan. The Prophet’s own infant sons from his marriage with Khadija had died many years before and Hasan was now the only living male heir to the Messenger of God. His birth had come after a difficult pregnancy during which Fatima had spent weeks confined to her bed. The old women of Medina had begun to whisper sadly that the Prophet’s daughter was not strong enough to carry the child to term, and my husband’s face had become increasingly bleak and despairing in the days before her labor had set in.

But then, as if God had decided that the poor girl had suffered enough, Fatima’s pains vanished and she easily gave birth to the plump, curly-haired boy. The successful delivery of the Prophet’s heir represented a clear sign of hope for our Ummah. None of the Mothers had borne the Messenger any children, a fact that was the source of my greatest personal sorrow. But I took some comfort in the knowledge that if Hasan lived past the difficult weaning years, when most children succumbed to the cruelties of the desert, he would carry in him the sacred blood of the Messenger and ensure the survival of Muhammad’s family. The fact that Hasan was Ali’s son had instantly pushed the strange young man to even greater prominence in the community, a reality that was greeted with some bemusement by the elders among the Muslims.

But now all rivalries were set aside, for the enemy was at the gates of the oasis. The two hosts met on a valley just beyond a craggy volcanic mountain called Uhud, where the Messenger made camp and awaited Ibn Ubayy’s reinforcements. I sat beside my husband as he looked down from the heights to the plain below. The Meccan forces were like shiny beetles, their mail coats glinting up at us in defiance. With my falcon’s gaze, I could see the cavalry being led by a powerful, chiseled face man I recognized as the great Khalid ibn al-Waleed. He raised the visor of his helmet and scanned the battlefield, his eyes expertly following the curvature of the mountain, searching for any weak points in our defenses.

As I looked down at the Meccan camp, with its red, purple, and blue flags bringing color to the dead valley, I remembered how similar the scene was to the one I had witnessed a year before. Except that the enemy had tripled its forces and was motivated by vengeance rather than hubris.