Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam by Kamran Pasha Read Free Book Online

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.
    “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 kahina s, 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