“Manat protect us! The tidings are ill!” Amal squawked unexpectedly.

Abu Bakr looked over to see the midwife staring out of a small window facing east. Her eyes were wide, and she was slapping her head furiously in the ancient gesture of grief and terror.

“What’s the matter?” Abu Bakr asked sharply.

“The baby…she is born under a dark star,” Amal said. She pointed out the window to a constellation that was rising on the eastern horizon. It was a swirling cluster of lights, with the ominous red star Antares pulsating in its center.

Al-Akrab. The Scorpion. To the pagan Arabs, the stars of the zodiac were gods in their own right, beings that ruled men’s affairs from the heavens and set their destinies at birth. And al-Akrab was the lord of death.

Before Abu Bakr could react, Amal rushed to his side, her eyes wide with fear.

“The child…cast it into the desert…bury it under stones before it can wreak its havoc!” she said, her voice frantic, her leathery face contorted with a kind of madness.

Abu Bakr felt his fury rise. He pushed Amal away from him forcefully.

“Get away from my daughter!” he said with terrifying ferocity. A mild and restrained man by nature, his anger was a rare and terrible thing to behold. Even Asma shrank back at the sudden rage in his voice.

Talha quickly moved forward and put a steady hand on the agitated midwife. “Do not utter your blasphemies in this house, which God has blessed.”

But Amal ignored the boy.

“She is a curse…wherever she will go, chaos and death will follow her,” Amal said, her eyes brimming with the intensity of her superstitious belief. “Slay her now, before the wrath of the gods is kindled!”

Abu Bakr held the baby closer to his heart, which was pounding with anger.

“I will slay your gods instead, and the wrath of the One will be kindled against your lies for all time!” Abu Bakr’s voice boomed with such power and authority that Amal was struck speechless.

He turned to Talha, his eyes burning with righteous indignation.

“Pay this midwife what she is due, and then let her not darken my doorstep again,” he said.

Talha pulled the trembling woman away and led her out of the birthing chamber. She bowed her head and did not struggle with him, nor did she make any move to take the gold dirham that he offered her. He finally pushed it into her hand and closed her fingers around it.

As Talha pushed Amal out the door, she looked up at him with her dark eyes, which now shone with the frenzy that he had seen among the kahinas, the medicine women of the desert whom the foolish people consulted for their oracles.

“The child will lead you to your death someday,” Amal said softly.

Alas, poor Talha, how I wish he had but listened to her portent!

But he only looked at her with contempt.

“If that is the will of Allah, I will happily embrace it.”

His confident response surprised the woman, who suddenly looked confused and lost. Who were these strange people who ignored the ancient traditions of the gods and put their trust in a God that no one could see or hear or touch? She turned and gazed out across the stone settlements of Mecca as if seeing the city for the first time. Amal looked up at the stars for an answer but found none.

“The child is the beginning of the end,” she whispered. “It is all ending. Everything. And I cannot see what will take its place.”

Talha looked at the strange woman and shook his head.

“The Truth,” he said simply, before closing the door on the midwife.

Talha returned to find Abu Bakr leaning close to Umm Ruman, who now held the swaddled baby in her arms. The drama of the midwife appeared to be forgotten amid the family’s joy at her safe delivery.

He went up to his kinsman and smiled.

“The madwoman is gone,” he said.

Abu Bakr looked up at him and shook his head.

“She was not mad,” he said softly. “This little girl will bring death.”

Talha was stunned by these words.

“I don’t understand” was all he could say.

Abu Bakr stroked his newborn daughter’s soft cheek gently.

“She will bring death to ignorance, which will allow the light of knowledge to be born,” he said simply.

Abu Bakr took the girl from Umm Ruman and held her close.

“In a world of idolatry, she is the first to be born a believer,” he said softly. “She has already conquered death and has brought life.” He gazed into the child’s golden eyes, which were alert and seemed to exhibit an ancient intelligence.

“I will name her Aisha,” Abu Bakr said.

A name that Talha knew in the old language meant “She Lives.”

2 Mecca-AD 617

My first real memory is the day I witnessed death.

Ever since that day, I have been blessed-and cursed-with perfect memory. I can recall words said forty years ago as if they had been uttered this morning. The scent of a moment is forever impressed on my heart, as if I live outside time, and every moment of my life is now. The Messenger, may God’s blessings and peace be upon him, used to say that I was chosen for that reason. That his words and deeds would be remembered for all time through me, the one he loved the most.

But there is a darkness behind every gift, like the veil of night that remains hidden behind the sun, waiting patiently for its moment to cast the world in gloom. My gift of memory is like that. For even as I can remember every moment of joy, every instant of laughter in my life, I can also remember the pain with absolute clarity. There are those who say time heals all wounds, but that is not so for me. Every wound I have suffered, I relive with terrifying precision, as if the knife, once embedded in my heart, leaves behind a shard of crystal sharpness ready to cut me again should I turn my thoughts in its direction.

It is that perfect memory that has made me the most prized recounter of hadith, the tales of the Prophet’s life and teaching to be recorded for future generations of believers.

And it is that perfect memory that brought war upon my people and splintered our nation forever.

But every memory, even one as pristine as my own, must begin in earnest one day. Mine begins the day of the great Pilgrimage. My father had decided that I was old enough to attend the annual ritual, where tribes from all over Arabia descended on the arid valley of Mecca to worship at the House of God.

I ran shoeless out of the house when Abu Bakr called, and my father sternly sent me back, telling me that I could not accompany him unless I wore the tiny blue sandals he had bought from Yemeni traders earlier that summer. I pouted and stamped my feet, but Abu Bakr simply raised his eyebrows and refused to open the gate until I hung my head and sullenly went back inside in search of them.

I hunted through the house, trying to remember where I had thrown them in one of my tantrums earlier that morning. I searched in my small bedroom, beneath the tiny cot with its knotted rope fibers supporting the soft Egyptian cotton mattress. I looked through the mountain of dolls and toys that were piled in a corner, throwing the little wooden and rag figures everywhere and making a mess that my mother would assuredly chide me for later that day. But that inevitable reckoning did not concern me, a young girl who only cared for the moment. The future, as every child knows, is little more than make-believe. All that ever exists, all that ever matters, is now.

Frowning, I ran out of her bedchamber and looked in the main sitting room, underneath the emerald brocaded couches from Persia that were among the few luxuries that still remained inside our home. My mother told me that our house used to be filled with beautiful and expensive furnishings in the Days of Ignorance but that Abu Bakr had sold most of his worldly goods since I was born, dedicating his wealth to the spread of the Truth. I always wondered why spreading the Truth should be expensive, since it was obvious and free to all, but when I asked Umm Ruman once, my mother gave me the stern glance that was her practiced response to my litany of impertinent queries.