Ali glanced at the girl high above us, who was still flinging rocks from behind the wall. Our archers had decided not waste any more arrows on her, and two dozen men carrying shields had gone out to protect the troops by the wall as her onslaught continued.

“She is brave,” I said.

And then Ali’s ethereal green eyes met mine and I felt suddenly uneasy, as I often did in his presence.

“Yes. She is brave. But she is also unwise.” He paused and looked at me as if seeing something in my eyes that even I was unaware of. “When a woman fights, she takes away from herself the cloak of honor which shields her. Remember that, young Mother.”

I felt a chill as Ali turned his attention back to his men. It was as if his words held a strange premonition, and for a moment I felt the veil of time shift and I saw a vision.

A vivid and terrifying image of me standing in the desert, surrounded by a thousand corpses washed in a river of blood.

I dropped the bucket and hurried back to the oasis. I suddenly wanted to be far away from the battlefield, from the stench of blood and the sickening fog of fear and rage that hung over the oasis. I wanted to be a little girl again, whose only occupations were playing with my dolls and brushing my mother’s soft hair.

I ran until I found refuge in my small apartment in the Masjid, far away from the ominous thunder of the battering ram, the singing of the arrows as they cut through the dry desert air. But it was not far enough to escape my destiny.

There are times when I wished that I could have kept on running and never stopped. For it is when we take a moment for breath in the struggle of life, when we let our guard down and allow ourselves a second to exult in a false sense of security, that the terrible wave of our doom is finally able to catch up with us.

15

The Bani Qurayza held out for twenty-five days. But as their supplies of food and water vanished and the pestilence that had struck the Muslims during the siege of the trench migrated to the Jewish quarter, Kab’s people were faced with no alternative but to surrender and hope for the Messenger’s mercy.

But my husband was not in a forgiving mood. In all the years that I had known him, I had never seen such anger in his eyes as I saw on the day he first learned of Qurayza’s betrayal. Had God not intervened with the sandstorm that blotted their plans, the Jewish tribe would have struck us from the rear while we desperately held back the Confederate invaders at the barrier. Our women and children would have been the first casualties, as the homes where they were lodged would have been the first line of attack when the gates of the fortress had swung open.

The Messenger knew that the Qurayza had planned the utter annihilation of his people, and their treachery could not be left unanswered. Muhammad had shown clemency to the other Jewish tribes, guaranteeing their lives and letting them leave the oasis in safety. And they had repaid him by joining with his enemies. If the Qurayza were allowed the same easy fate of expulsion, they would inevitably join their kinsmen at the citadel of Khaybar to the north, where even now Huyayy was plotting to regain his lost lands despite the failure of the Confederate invasion. All of Arabia would be watching how we treated the Qurayza now that they had fallen into our hands. And mercy would be seen only as a weakness to be exploited by our enemies.

As the battered gate of the fortress opened, I watched the weary residents of the Jewish quarter emerge, their necks bowed in surrender. First the men came out, their bodies shorn of armor and their hands held high to show that they carried no weapons. There were at least seven hundred males, and I could see in their eyes the fire of defiance even as Ali, Talha, and Zubayr took them to the side and tied their hands together with sturdy ropes. I shuddered at the thought that these would have been our executioners had the sands not risen in rebellion.

And then, when the final man had emerged, the women and children followed. The women’s eyes were filled with grief and rage at the sight of their men bound like slaves, but I also saw a hint of relief in many of their faces. Their children had gone without food for days, and many were too weak even to cry. But now that the end had come, at least they could find a way to feed the little ones.

I quickly led the other Mothers to their side, carrying bowls of dates and figs and buckets of water. The Jewish women hesitated when they saw us, but their children ran forward at the sight of the food, their hands outstretched in desperation. I felt tears welling in my eyes as I saw their parched lips and sunken cheeks. They were the innocent victims of war, too small to understand or care about the differences of politics and theology that had led our peoples to this terrible moment. As the children swarmed around us, I saw their mothers looking at us with gratitude as we poured water into their open mouths and placed small treats in their tiny hands.

It was a heartbreaking scene and I felt numbed. I moved toward a woman of the Qurayza who could not have been older than my mother, her dark hair streaked with gray, and embraced her. At that moment, we were neither Muslim nor Jew, neither friend nor foe. We were just women caught in a world that was bigger than us and we held each other tightly, sobbing in our shared grief at the tragedy of life in this cruel wilderness.

And then I saw a young woman step out of the fortress to join the others and I broke free of the embrace, my eyes wide with concern. It was the redheaded girl who had so stubbornly defied us during the opening days of the siege. She walked slowly, as if in a dream, the fire in her eyes now quenched by hunger and exhaustion. Had this girl, whose name I learned was Najma, been more discreet, had she hidden her face behind a veil during the attack, she might have walked unrecognized among the other refugees.

But her fiery hair, so like my own, burned like a beacon in the crowd and she was immediately surrounded by several Muslim soldiers. I ran over to her side just as Ali arrived, holding a rope.

“What are you doing?!” I cried out as Ali steadily bound the girl’s hands.

“She goes with the men,” he said simply.

“They will kill her,” I said. I did not know this for sure, but I sensed that the Muslims were in no mood to give quarter. Whatever punishment awaited the warriors of the Qurayza, I did not feel that this young and impressionable girl should suffer it.

Ali shrugged as if I were commenting about something as trivial the weather.

“If she wishes to fight like a man, then she must be willing to die like a man,” he said. And from the look he gave me, I felt that somehow his words were not meant for the Jewish girl alone.

I stood shaking with impotent rage as Ali led the girl to stand with the male prisoners. Najma did not resist, and she followed like a lamb patiently walking to slaughter. But then, just before she disappeared inside the crowd of captured men, the girl raised her eyes and met mine. I did not see in Najma’s look sorrow or anger at her fate. Just confusion, as if she were lost in a strange world that she no longer recognized.

And for a terrible moment, I understood how she felt.