A smile creased across Amr’s handsome face.

“I will serve as an intermediary, if Allah wills.” Amr had been to Abyssinia before in a failed effort to convince the Negus to surrender the Muslim refugees. He knew the country well, had established profitable relations with its merchants, and could get a message to Ramla without alerting the other Meccans as to Muawiya’s plans.

Muawiya placed a friendly arm on Amr’s shoulder and smiled shrewdly.

“You said Allah and not the gods,” he said.

Amr grinned widely.

6

I was knitting in a corner of my tiny room when the Messenger’s adopted son Zayd entered. It was a bright winter day, the sun streaming in through my window and warming the crisp air. I was in a cheerful mood, as tonight would be my night with the Messenger. My husband followed a strict rule, rotating nights with each of his wives in order to make sure that each was treated equally as commanded by the holy Qur’an. Accordingly, as the harem steadily increased, my limited time with the Prophet was becoming more precious. There were now five women who bore the title Mother of the Believers: the elderly Sawda, myself, the fiery Hafsa, the ghostly quiet Zaynab bint Khuzayma, and most recently Umm Salama bint Abu Umayya. The latest addition to the household was another war widow whom the Messenger had married out of compassion. Umm Salama’s husband, Abdallah ibn Abdal Asad, had been killed at Uhud, leaving three children and a pregnant wife with no means of support. The Messenger had married Umm Salama after the four-month-and-ten-day iddat, her period of mourning, had ended, and she had given birth to her martyred husband’s son Durra shortly after the wedding.

When I had first learned of the Prophet’s intention to marry Umm Salama, I had been filled with jealousy. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, with sparkling eyes and a gentle smile. And she was still of age to bear children, and I had failed to produce an heir. But I had grudgingly accepted Umm Salama after the wedding, as it was difficult to dislike her patient and pleasant personality. Unlike Hafsa, who was my chief rival to give Muhammad a son, Umm Salama already had many children from her former marriage and did not appear overly eager to bear more. And so life continued largely as it had for the past few months in the house of the Prophet, with the petty jealousies among wives at a low simmer.

I sat by my husband’s side, knitting a woolen scarf for him to keep him warm during early morning prayers. The Messenger was busy with his own handiwork, using a needle and thread to repair the torn leather straps of his sandals. I had never met any other man who enjoyed simple housework like fixing shoes or sewing patches in old clothes. It certainly did not fit the masculine ideals of his followers, who were perplexed by his strange affinity for what they dismissed as women’s work. But the Prophet seemed more comfortable around the quiet hearth of the home than around the boastful jousting of the battlefield. As I watched him slowly suture his footwear, his black eyes utterly focused on and absorbed in the task before him, I realized how difficult it must have been for a boy with a gentle temperament to grow up in a world where cruelty and aggression were the proud hallmarks of a man. It struck me in that instant that the Messenger’s admitted love of the company of women had less to do with sexual hunger than with an innate comfort with their feminine nature.

But I would soon be reminded that, however gentle and nurturing his soul was, his body still belonged to a man, with all the needs and desires of the masculine flesh.

As we quietly continued on with our work, a shadow fell across the open door and I saw that the Prophet’s adopted son Zayd ibn Haritha had arrived. He was tall and lanky, with thinning hair and a face that years of labor under the sun had brutally weathered. His eyes, which always appeared sad, seemed particularly distraught today.

The Messenger caught the haunted look on his face and turned to face him, setting the sandals on the floor with a hard thump.

“What brings you here, my son?” Even as the Messenger spoke, I heard a strange tone in his voice, which in other men I would have recognized as a hint of embarrassment. But that, of course, made no sense coming from God’s Chosen One, the most perfect man in creation.

Zayd knelt beside the Prophet, whose slave he had been before he had been freed and inducted into the family. He hung his head, not looking his adopted father in the eye.

“My wife told me what happened between you two.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“What happened?” I felt the scarf slip through my fingers. Zayd’s wife, Zaynab bint Jahsh, was the Messenger’s cousin and one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, her statuesque features only growing more elegant with age. I had always thought it strange that she was married to the ugliest man I knew. The Messenger had known Zaynab since she was a child and I was always relieved that he treated her like a little sister and was the only man who did not stammer or make a fool of himself in her presence.

The Messenger glanced at me and I could see discomfort in his eyes. And I realized that something had changed.

“It was nothing,” he said quickly. “The matter is closed.”

His words did not alleviate the growing alarm in my heart.

“Tell me,” I insisted.

The Messenger remained silent. And then Zayd spoke up. The Prophet had come to visit him a few nights before, but Zayd had been out. Zaynab had heard the knock on the door and assumed that it was her husband. She had run to the door, forgetting her cloak and dressed in all her finery, her luxurious hair flowing below her waist. But when Zaynab opened the door, she was startled to see the Messenger. He had been struck by her beauty and quickly walked away. But she thought she heard him say, “Praise be to God, Master of the hearts.”

I felt my own heart sink. I knew that my husband had always been fond of Zaynab. Could the sight of her in all her bedecked radiance have inspired love?

Zayd looked up and I could see that whatever emotions I was feeling were nothing compared to the poor man’s torment. It was well known that Zayd and Zaynab had an unhappy marriage. She was from a proud and wealthy family, while Zayd was a freed slave, a social outcast in Mecca. They had wed after the Messenger had asked Zaynab to marry Zayd as an example to the other Muslims that piety mattered more in a mate than social class. Zaynab had always been fiercely loyal to the Prophet and had acquiesced to his request. It was clear to all of the women of the household that Zaynab was very much in love with my husband. Yet the Messenger had never expressed any interest in her, and she had resigned herself to her fate by marrying poor Zayd. But now, if the Prophet’s heart had turned, I knew that Zaynab would seek to escape her loveless union and join with Muhammad.

“O Messenger, you are dearer to me than my family,” Zayd said. “I chose you over my own father.”

I remembered the story of how young Zayd, who had been kidnapped by slave traders as a boy, had found refuge in Muhammad and Khadija’s home. The couple had treated him with great love and respect and he had become for all intents and purposes a son to them after the death of their own infant boys. When the lad’s father had finally found him after years of searching through the desert towns, Zayd had refused to go back to his own family and chosen to stay as a slave to Muhammad. My husband had been so moved by the boy’s devotion that he had freed him and then taken Zayd to the Kaaba and formally adopted him. It had been a momentous occasion, for in Arab society an adopted son was considered to share a mystical bond that made him the same as a flesh-and-blood child. Zayd had risen in that moment from a lowly slave to the heir of one of the most influential families in Mecca.