Amal knew what had to be done. She looked up at Umm Ruman, whose bloodshot eyes shone with grim determination. “The child…”

“I know,” was all Umm Ruman said, and Amal knew that she understood. The tiny woman with the heart of a soldier grinded her teeth in preparation. “Do it.”

Amal nodded. She hesitated and then made a loud prayer to Allah for the safe delivery of the child. She did not really believe that the Lord of the Worlds would take a moment from turning the stars in the heavens to care for the plight of one small, forgotten mother, but Amal wanted to give Umm Ruman hope. The odds were she would die from what happened next, but at least she would die with her heart satisfied.

The midwife took a deep breath and put her hands on Umm Ruman’s belly. Remembering the ancient techniques taught to her by her own mother, Amal placed pressure on her patient’s womb in order to turn the child headfirst.

Umm Ruman screamed, an agonized cry that echoed across the valley of Mecca and traveled high into the starry heavens.

ABU BAKR STOOD OUTSIDE his wife’s birth chamber, shaking with fear. He could hear Umm Ruman’s horrific wails, which seemed only to increase in intensity. Every fiber in his body cried for him to rush inside and comfort his dying wife through her final moments. But Talha held him back. “Let the midwife do her job,” the boy had said, and Abu Bakr knew he was right.

He looked down at Asma, his loyal daughter, who had chosen him and his faith even over her own mother, and squeezed her tiny hand. She was strong, stronger than he would have been in her position. He had torn their family apart with his decision to follow Muhammad, and she had never complained. Abu Bakr had always been close to his own parents, and he had found it beyond comprehension how his young friend Muhammad had endured the horrific loss of his beloved mother, Amina, when he was only six years old. Abu Bakr’s heart was heavy with the knowledge that he had orphaned Asma once already by renouncing Qutaila. And now, with Umm Ruman’s impending death, the child would be doubly motherless.

He looked around the antechamber where they waited for the screams to abruptly end and the midwife to emerge with her dreaded tidings. It was well furnished, as befitted a prosperous merchant of Quraysh. Thick rugs imported from Persia covered the marble floors. The stone walls were whitewashed and held many trophies and trinkets from his travels on the caravan routes. Silver plates from Syria, their tiles swirling in intricate geometric designs, lined one wall, while another was covered in an assortment of swords and daggers from Byzantium, their hilts embedded with precious emeralds and rubies. The arched windows were covered in thick curtains made from Abyssinian cotton. Couches covered in rich silk brocade had entertained many nobles from Mecca and beyond in the years past, although now that Abu Bakr’s true beliefs were known, he was likely to have few such visitors in the future.

Abu Bakr was by every account a wealthy man, but he would readily trade all the gold in his coffers for a miracle tonight.

Perhaps sensing his thoughts, Talha touched his shoulder.

“Let us pray the Fatiha. Perhaps it will be of help,” the boy said softly.

Abu Bakr looked at the sensitive young man and then at his brave little daughter, and nodded.

The three believers stood in a circle, their hands upraised to heaven in humble supplication, and recited in unison the Seven Oft-Repeated Verses that the believers read daily in their prayers:

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds

The Merciful, the Compassionate

King of the Day of Judgment

You alone do we worship, and Your aid alone do we seek.

Show us the Straight Path

The path of those who incur Your favor

Not the path of those who earn Your wrath

Nor of those who go astray.

Abu Bakr, Talha, and Asma recited the prayer out loud, their voices melding in lyrical unison. They repeated it again, and a third time. Perhaps it was Abu Bakr’s imagination, but each time he recited the sacred verses, the cries from the adjoining room seemed to lessen in intensity.

Again and again they repeated the holy words. And then, at the seventh recitation, a silence fell over the house, a quiet so sudden and so complete that Abu Bakr’s heart chilled. Umm Ruman was dead.

Tears welled in his eyes, and his heart started pounding. She was his strength, his soul. How could he live without her? He realized that Asma was now crying openly, but he found he could not move to comfort her.

Talha moved to take the weeping child out of the room, to leave Abu Bakr to the privacy of his grief.

And then they heard it. A strange, impossible, glorious sound.

The cry of a baby.

Abu Bakr raised his head and stared at the door to the birthing chamber. There was silence again. Had he imagined it? And then the child wailed louder and he felt a burst of light illuminate his heart, like the sun emerging from behind the empty blackness of an eclipse.

Talha looked up at him in wonder. And Asma laughed, clapping her hands with the unfettered delight that only a child can know.

Abu Bakr felt his legs go weak, and he grabbed hold of an intricately carved chair made from Iraqi cypress. And then he stumbled forward and threw tradition to the wind. He flung open the door to the forbidden chamber and rushed inside.

Umm Ruman was still seated on the sharply angled birthing chair, her tunic covered in blood and the fluids of childbirth. Her face was sickly pale, but her eyes were open and alert. And she breathed deeply, like a woman trapped at the bottom of a well longing for air. She was alive!

Abu Bakr looked at her in wonder and she smiled weakly. He would remember that smile in years to come, when the storm clouds that had been gathering would be unleashed and the armies of men and the devil would seek to destroy the believers. It would give him strength and hope and power to battle on in the cause of God and His Messenger. For in a cruel world where the only certainty was death, their way was the way of life.

The child’s cries turned his head and Abu Bakr looked at the midwife, who had just finished washing the baby and had wrapped it in a green swaddling cloth. Amal’s face was haggard and she looked as if she herself had endured the pangs of childbirth. She looked up at him and nodded a greeting, the lines of her mouth too tired to form into a smile.

“I give you glad tidings of a girl,” she said weakly. Abu Bakr saw the strain in her face and worried that she barely had the strength to hold the precious baby. He moved to take the child into his arms, and the midwife did not protest.

Abu Bakr took hold of the tiny child as Talha and Asma tentatively entered the birthing chamber. He looked down at the wrinkled face and ran a finger across the girl’s cheeks, pink like a rose blossom. His daughter had a healthy brush of hair, a fiery red that glittered like copper in the pale torchlight. As Abu Bakr held his child, he realized that she was a true miracle-the first child to be born into the new religion. He wanted his first words to her to impart the truth he had come to believe with all his heart. He bent down carefully and whispered into the infant’s ears the formula of faith: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.

The child opened her eyes for the first time at the sound of his words. Abu Bakr caught his breath. She had eyes unlike any he had ever seen before. Golden, like those of a lion, they seemed to glow with their own fire.

He felt rather than saw Asma step up behind him, and he turned to her.

“Come, see your sister,” he said to his daughter, who looked down nervously at the little girl. Asma hesitated and then bent down to kiss the baby on its forehead. Abu Bakr turned to Umm Ruman, who weakly reached out to him. He moved to show their daughter to his wife, when the midwife made a cry of alarm.