22

The battlefield smelled like a corpse that had been rotting for a week. The black volcanic ash mixed with the odor of disemboweled intestines, punctured hearts, and the rubbery gray slime of brain matter. It was a smell that would stay in my nostrils for weeks. It would penetrate my nightmares and cause me to wake up in the middle of the night and vomit.

As I looked down with grief at the many young and old who had suffered gruesome deaths on the field below, the sky darkened. The sun was blotted out by a vast flock of vultures, and the sound of their wings flapping impatiently above the valley made my skin crawl.

And then, as I peered through the battlefield for signs of any victims I knew by name, I saw a flash of color as Hind led her party of brightly clad dancers out among the corpses.

I watched in dread fascination as Hind moved among the fallen, gazing dispassionately at the muck and grime and exposed rib cages, until she found what she was looking for.

Hamza. The man who had killed her father still lay on his side, the javelin embedded deep inside his stomach. She knelt down as if to check to see if he were indeed dead, which was, of course, laughable, as he had lain there, skewered, for hours. And then Hind spoke, in a cold voice that sounded as dead as the men whose remains littered the ground beneath her dainty golden slippers.

“So here is the great Hamza,” she hissed like a cobra, her voice echoing through the valley. “They said you had the heart of an eagle and the liver of a lion. Let’s see if that is true.”

Hind grabbed a bloody knife from among the many weapons that had been dropped in the heat of battle. And to my horror, she cut deep into Hamza’s side and tore open his flesh. With her bare hands, she dug into the dead man’s flesh like a butcher ripping off fat from a shank of lamb. And then she tore out Hamza’s liver.

My stomach quivered violently in disgust as I watched Hind hold up Hamza’s liver high for the men of both camps to see. And then she put it in her mouth and ate it, the blood of Muhammad’s beloved uncle dripping down the sides of her mouth. She chewed it and swallowed, and then retched violently. Hind doubled over, vomiting back a portion of the human flesh she had consumed before all.

And then her gagging cough turned into a maniacal laugh and she grabbed the knife and proceeded to cut off Hamza’s nose and ears.

I heard moans and cries of horror from both camps. The pagan Arabs had strict taboos against disfiguring the dead of their enemies, and what Hind was doing was beyond even the meager moral restraints that their primitive religion imposed on their souls. But Hind seemed utterly oblivious to the disgust of her own people, and she began to sway like a kite in the wind.

And then, human blood still dripping from her plump lips, Hind began to dance and sing around the mutilated body of her enemy. She tore open her robes and smeared the blood of Hamza across her breasts. I could see the curve of her ample bosom as she stripped off her gold necklaces.

“O beauties of Mecca, throw off your jewels! Renounce gold and pearls! For there is no greater treasure than the flesh of our enemies!”

And with these words she whirled victoriously around the corpse of Hamza. Her madness spread to the other women like a disease. Suddenly they, too, descended on the bodies of our martyrs, tearing off their noses and ears. And then following her lurid example, they tied their bloody trophies with string and wore the human remains as jewelry. With their new prizes, they began to spin and swoon, their eyes thrown back so far into their skulls that only the whites remained. Their dance was raw and sexual.

Even though I wanted to close my eyes, it was impossible to stop watching. It was as if I were seeing a ritual so dark and ancient that it outdated the memory of man. The absolute purity of her evil was both revolting and mesmerizing, and I felt my heart pound. It was as if Hind had awakened some dark part of the soul that is buried so deep that touching it would unleash a force of transformation that went beyond life or death. It was at once terrifying and seductive and I felt myself being swept into the maelstrom of her madness.

And then Abu Sufyan rode up beside his wife and the spell was broken. He looked down at her obscene dance with unmitigated disgust.

“Enough! This is beneath us!”

Hind stopped spinning and crouched low on the ground, like a wolf prepared to strike. And then she took her hands, smeared with Hamza’s blood, and ran them across her face until her cheeks were streaked in human offal.

Abu Sufyan turned away from her, unable to comprehend how far his wife had fallen. He rode toward the base of Uhud and called out to us.

“War goes by turns, my friends, and today was our day,” he said in a booming voice. “All praise be to Hubal and the gods of Mecca! The dead of Badr have been avenged. We are now even.”

And then I saw Umar arise from among the survivors gathered on the hill. With Hamza dead, he was now the most feared and revered of our warriors.

“God is Highest, Supreme in Majesty! We are not equal. Our dead are in Paradise, and your dead are in Hell!”

Abu Sufyan stared up at Umar, and then he shook his head as if he would never understand this strange tribe that was in its own way as mad as his wife. He rode back to the camp to begin preparations for the long trek home.

The battlefield was now empty, except for the desecrated corpses. Unable to bear the sight, I turned my attention to Abu Sufyan, who was leading his forces out of the pass, and saw the different flags and markers of the tribes. I recognized the symbols of the clans of Mecca like the wolf of the Makhzum and the eagle of Bani Abd ad-Dar. But other pennants belonged to the rival tribes that had little friendship with Mecca, from the double-headed snake of Taif to the horned rams of the Bedouins of the Najd. These old adversaries had come together to defeat their common enemy-Muhammad.

It suddenly struck me that Abu Sufyan had successfully marshaled the warring Arab tribes to the south, even as the Messenger was attempting to unify the north. Arabia was on its way to becoming one nation, and its character would be determined by which alliance ultimately gained the upper hand in this bitter conflict.

In that moment, I realized what we were fighting for. Islam stood as a lonely light flickering in a wasteland covered in darkness. If Hind and her ilk were allowed to win this struggle, barbarism would prevail and eventually spread beyond the boundaries of Arabia like a plague. Our people would become a living curse on mankind, a nation diseased at heart that would pull the world into turmoil from which it would never return.

We had been defeated at Uhud, and now the pagan tribes would see us as weak. They would prepare to pounce on us like hyenas on a wounded lamb. If we surrendered to their combined might, the light of hope would vanish in the sands and something even more monstrous would be born in its wake. Either Arabia would unite under our banner, or it would fight beneath the veil of Hind. And the unsuspecting nations that surrounded us, torn apart by centuries of warfare and corruption, would either be rejuvenated by the message of Islam or fall victim to the unified might of a barbarian horde bent on destruction.

I understood now that the battle for Arabia was not about the survival of a new religion. It was about the survival of civilization itself.