As the grand hall was set for the wedding festivities, Uthman’s white-clad servants rushing to and fro with baskets of dates and jars of honey, Muawiya mixed easily with men who should have been his enemies. He had a natural tact and grace of movement that was disarming, and I could feel the steady heat of his gregarious charm cause the initial cloud of suspicion that hung over the room evaporate. Even Umar seemed impressed with Muawiya’s courage in coming alone to the oasis, without the retinue of bodyguards that one would expect to protect the boy who was for all intents and purposes the heir to the throne of Mecca.
As the son of Abu Sufyan, he was, of course, well aware of his potential value as a hostage, but Muawiya moved among us with the confident ease of a trusted guest rather than an open enemy. He spoke to each man as if he were an old friend rather than an adversary and even congratulated the Muslim elders on their brilliant defensive tactics that had thrown off the Meccan invasion.
I was impressed with Muawiya’s diplomatic genius. Within minutes of arriving at the oasis, he had won over many of his detractors with honeyed words and carefully calculated compliments. Watching Muawiya charm his opponents was like watching a master swordsman in action-each stroke was both beautifully executed and perfectly timed.
Ramla, for her part, had nothing to fear, for she had long earned the trust of the community, if not my own. Many had once believed that her conversion had been some kind of tactic conceived by Abu Sufyan to infiltrate the Muslim ranks. But word from Abyssinia was that she had shown commitment to the faith over the years and had proven a tactful advocate in the court of the Negus, protecting Muslim interests in the foreign land. Even I did not really doubt the sincerity of her spiritual convictions, but I hated the hungry way she looked at my husband, as if he were a prize that she had been long denied. Her bright eyes met mine and she raised an eyebrow in defiance, and I frowned. Ramla would be a true rival in the harem, one who combined beauty with a deadly sharp mind, and I knew that I would have to keep a close eye on her. And then I saw the Messenger looking at me with an amused glance as if he could read my thoughts.
My husband smiled knowingly and then turned to his young guest, who had just finished making the rounds of the Companions, healing old wounds and cementing new alliances. Muawiya turned to the Messenger and bowed his head low.
“I am honored that my sister has found such a noble match,” he said in a rich voice that was deep and masculine.
The Messenger took the youth’s hand in his and squeezed it tight.
“May this wedding be the first step in ending the long enmity between your clan and mine,” he said.
As the Prophet went to stand by his new bride, wrapped in a wedding dress of dark blue, a red-striped veil covering her dark hair, Muawiya lifted a bowl of goat’s milk in honor of the nuptials and then drank with a slow flourish.
A shadow fell over him and he looked up to see the towering form of Umar ibn al-Khattab, the man who, before his defection, had been Mecca’s greatest hope of destroying Muhammad.
“Your father must be angry that you came,” Umar said, looking closely into the eyes of the guest as if searching for any hint of deception or intrigue.
“He was livid,” Muawiya said with a broad smile filled with devilish amusement. “But I am my own man. I realize that the old ways are dying. The Quraysh must accommodate the new reality or vanish into irrelevance.”
Uthman, our kindhearted host, came up to the young man’s side and put an affectionate arm around him. Muawiya was a distant cousin of his and Uthman had always been close to the boy in his youth, before the divisions of faith had torn apart the clan of Umayya.
“You always had great foresight,” Uthman said warmly. “The river of the world is changing its course, and only the wise anticipate its new direction.”
And then I saw Ali approach. He alone among all the Companions had remained aloof, despite Muawiya’s persistent efforts to charm him.
“It is one thing to foresee the course of a river,” Ali said softly. “It is another to foresee the fate of one’s own soul.”
Silence fell over the room and I could suddenly feel the tension that had abated over the past hour reassert itself like a cold wind. Ali and Muawiya stood in the center of the room, looking at each other without speaking. Even though they were only a few feet apart, there seemed to be a divide between them that was greater than the distance between the east and the west. Between heaven and earth. Ali was from another realm, a strange bird soaring above mankind, observing but never quite participating in the world. And Muawiya was his direct opposite, a man who had mastered that world and had little interest in the ethereal dreamland that Ali called his home.
And then I saw the Messenger step between them, as if to place himself diplomatically in the path of any confrontation between these young and passionate men that would mar the wedding.
But as I saw my husband come between them, smiling graciously as he placed a hand on each man’s shoulder, I suddenly realized that there was another meaning to the scene before me. Muhammad stood between these two poles as no other man could. He was both a resident of the ethereal realms of the spirit and a master of the worldly plane, and he alone understood how to bridge the gap between these opposing realities. In the years that would come, after the Messenger had returned to his Lord, the precarious bond that he had forged between these planes would shatter, and the history of Islam would forever be a war between the soul and the flesh.
And then Muawiya turned away from Ali and the spell was broken. The Meccan prince smiled brightly at the Messenger and spoke loudly, as if intending everyone in the hall to hear his words. It was unnecessary, as there was absolute silence at that moment and his words would have carried to each corner even if they had been whispered.
“The fate of my soul I leave to the judgment of my Creator,” Muawiya said with dignity. “But this I know. Before you came, O Muhammad, none of our people ever thought about a world different from what they had experienced for centuries. A world of barbarism, cruelty, and death. But you have given them a vision that has brought them together. Forged them from warring tribes into a nation. I know of no man who could have done this without the aid of God.”
And then to everyone’s shock, Muawiya stretched out his right hand in the formal sign of allegiance, and the Prophet clasped it in his own. Muawiya knelt down and kissed the Messenger’s hand. And then he spoke the words that would change everything.
“I testify that there is no god but God, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”
The room exploded in a commotion of cries. Surprise, disbelief, and jubilation mixed together in an air of heady celebration. Abu Sufyan’s son, the heir of our greatest enemy, had embraced Islam, and in that one instant, the two forces that had torn the peninsula apart were reconciled. I felt my heart racing in excitement. Once the other tribes learned of Muawiya’s conversion, the final vestiges of support for Mecca would collapse and the war would end.
It was the thought on everyone’s mind, except perhaps for Ali, who continued to gaze down at the young man with those unreadable eyes. But Muawiya ignored his stare and kept his attention focused on the Prophet.
“If it please you, O Messenger of God, I wish to stay here and support your cause,” he said. Which was, of course, what was needed. If Muawiya settled in Medina, his superb political skills and vast network of allies would help bring order to the nascent state. With Muawiya’s crafty guidance, we would bring together the recalcitrant tribes and then wage a final battle against Mecca. We had hidden in our homes in terror so many times as the armies of Arabia came down upon us that it seemed like justice that Hind and her followers should do the same now.