That night, I lay by my husband’s side, facing away from him rather than nestling against his bosom as was my habit.

“You are angry at me,” he said gently.

I hesitated, unsure of what I was feeling in the hollow of my stomach.

“No,” I said at long last. “They would have killed all of us had they been able to attack. If we let them leave as we did the Qaynuqa and the Nadir, they would have come back to attack us. The judgment is cruel, but they cannot complain. The Qurayza have been punished by their own traditions.”

The Messenger took my hand in his.

“Not quite.”

I looked up at him in confusion. In his dark eyes I saw no more anger, but a profound sorrow.

“The rabbi read the wrong section of the Book, as I had asked him to.”

My eyes went wide.

“I don’t understand.”

The Messenger squeezed my fingers and I could feel the depth of emotion that he was suppressing.

“The law of Moses he read was a punishment only for distant tribes who fought the Children of Israel from other lands. It was not the punishment for a neighboring tribe.”

I looked up at my husband, unsure of what he was holding back.

“What would have been the punishment in the Torah for a neighboring tribe?”

The Prophet looked at me and I saw lines of great sadness in his eyes.

“The rabbi read to me the verses that followed,” he said. “The Book says that in the cities that are near, the judgment is to kill everything that breathes.”

I was stunned and shuddered at the horror. Could the God of Moses, the God of love and justice that we worshipped as Allah, be so cruel that He would call upon the Children of Israel even to slay women and children?

It was a barbaric code for a barbaric world, and I began to understand why God had sent a new prophet to mankind. A new Book that sought to restrain and regulate the madness of war for the first time. In a world where greed and lust for power were enough to justify bloodshed, the holy Qur’an said “Fight those who fight you, but do not commit aggression.” In a world where soldiers raped and killed innocents in battle without any guilt, the Revelation had established rules that prevented such atrocities from happening. Women and children could not be killed under the rules of Islam, and protection was extended to the elderly, as well as to the priests and monks of the People of the Book.

Allah had even forbidden the destruction of trees and the poisoning of wells, tactics that were widely employed by so-called civilized nations such as the Byzantines and the Persians. And the Messenger did not permit us to use fire as a weapon, for only God had the right to punish His Creation with the fires of Hell. Flaming arrows would have helped us burn down the houses of the Qurayza and end the siege, but the Prophet rejected the horror of burning people alive in their homes, even if it was the accepted practice of warfare throughout the world.

We had shown restraint, but in a world where death hung over the sands like a bitter cloud, bloodshed was inevitable. I looked up at my husband and realized from the sadness in his face that he did not relish the massacre that was to come. He had done what was necessary to save his community from extinction, and the death of the warriors of Qurayza would send a clear message to all the neighboring tribes that treachery would be punished. Once the Qurayza had been dispatched, more chieftains would realize that it was in their best interest to join the alliance. A state was being born out of chaos, and the price of establishing order was high.

I leaned close to the Messenger and buried my face in his breast, letting the gentle pulse of his heart lull me into a dreamworld in which there was no death, no blood, no tears. A world in which love alone could end tyranny and save the weak from the depredations and cruelty of the strong. A world where there was no war and men could lay down their swords and live without fear of attack from their neighbors.

It was a world that could exist only in dreams.

A mass grave had been dug in the marketplace, ten feet wide and nearly thirty feet deep. It looked like a miniature of the mighty trench that had protected the city from the invaders. And it was perhaps fitting, if macabre, that the men who had betrayed us would now be buried in a ditch that resembled the very defense they had sought to undermine.

The prisoners were brought forth in small groups, starting with the tribal leaders whose intrigue had brought this disaster on their people, as well as those who had been identified as having actively fought against the Muslims during the siege of the Jewish fortress.

I accompanied Najma, the sole woman among the seven hundred men who had been sentenced to death. I tried to remind myself that this girl who looked so much like me was no innocent. She had chosen to participate in the battle and had injured several good Muslim soldiers, killing one man who had left behind a wife and three children. And yet in my heart I knew that she was simply acting in defense of her own community. With my fiery spirit, I expected that I would have done the same if the situation had been reversed.

I led Najma out of the granary, holding on halfheartedly to the rope that bound her by the wrists. I was prepared for tears and shouts of rage, anything except what I found. The girl was in the best of spirits as we walked down the paved streets of the oasis toward the spot that would soon be her grave.

As we approached the marketplace and the crowd that had come to see justice against those who had committed treason in the midst of war, Najma smiled broadly and began to laugh and wave to the startled onlookers. Seeing the girl gaily walking to her death, people looked away and I saw a few women wipe tears from their eyes.

Najma turned to me and I saw in her eyes a terrifying madness. It was as if some djinn had come and possessed her, buried her mind beneath the veil of insanity so that it would sleep through the horrible moments to come.

She smiled at me broadly and glanced at my saffron-colored robe, the hem lined with brocaded flowers in red and green.

“Your dress is beautiful. Is it from Yemen?”

It was, but I could not find any words to respond. Her madness frightened and confused me, and I suddenly wanted to be anywhere but here.

Najma shrugged at my blank stare.

“I was planning on having a dress ordered from Yemen,” she said in a high voice. “For my wedding one day. Oh well. I won’t need it now.”

I felt my throat constrict and I forced myself to speak.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked.

Najma laughed as if I had told her the most wonderful joke.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. Najma paused and then looked at me closer. “You’re married to Muhammad, right?”

I nodded.

Najma smiled and then picked up our pace. As the colorful pendants and dainty tents that lined the marketplace came into view, she began to skip, pulling me forward with her little dance.

And then, just as we approached the grounds where the grave had been dug, she stopped and turned to face me.

“Is he good to you? Your husband, I mean.”

I felt tears blurring my vision.

“Very,” I managed to whisper.

Najma clapped her hands awkwardly, the bindings on her wrists stymieing her efforts to express her glee.

“Wonderful! How many children do you have?”

I shook my head.

“None.”

Najma’s mouth widened in an expression of genuine compassion.

“That’s too bad,” she said, leaning close to me in sympathy. “You’d be a good mother. But I’m sure it will happen soon. And then you can sing your baby a lullaby. Here’s one my mother used to sing to me at night.”

And then the poor girl started to sing some quiet, haunting verses about a bluebird that built its nest only in the moonlight because it loved to work beneath the canopy of the stars.