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

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.
    Looking around in frustration, I suddenly saw a hint of blue in a corner. I ran over, my crimson hair flying behind me. There they were! My Yemeni sandals were tucked behind an intricate vase that my mother said was made in a faraway city called Damascus. I paused to admire the swirling floral designs in carnelian, citrine, and olive that circled the ivory vase in crisscrossing patterns.
    Umm Ruman had taught me the names of the different blooms depicted on the vase—hyacinths, jasmine and lotus—flowers that grew in faraway cities with mysterious names like Aksum, Babylon, and Persepolis. I loved flowers, but so few grew in the hot desert sun. I had yelped with delight a month before when I had found a small abal bush growing in a gulley just outside the perimeter of the holy precinct, at the base of the sacred hill of Safa. I had plucked its red, lantern-shaped blooms, which I had seen the older girls use to rouge their cheeks, but its thorns had torn into my tiny palm and I had run home crying.
    My mother had gently removed the needles from my hand and salved the little wounds with dried sap from the thornbushes that grew in our courtyard. After drying my tears, Umm Ruman had gently chided me for wandering so far away from home. From now on, I was to play only within sight of their house. Mecca was a dangerous city for little girls…especially girls whose families supported the heretic Prophet in its midst.
    I remembered her words as I grabbed the sandals and slipped them on. They were pretty enough, with little white stars woven though the tiny blue throngs, but I didn’t like them. Although other girls were obsessed with shoes, spending hours in silly talk about the merits of various designs, the newest fashions arriving on caravans from north and south, I found shoes to be an irritant. Instead, I loved the tingly feeling of the warm sand on my bare feet, even the tiny pricks caused by the pebbles that littered the streets of the ancient city. Shoes made me feel restricted and caged, like one of the goats my father had kept in a pen behind the old stone house in preparation for the sacrifice at the apex of the Pilgrimage.
    I ran back to my father, who was still waiting by the gate. Seeing the look of mild irritation on his face at the delay, I quickly kicked up my feet and showed off the little shoes, and then danced an excited jig around him, until his stern face broke into an exasperated smile. I always knew how to melt Abu Bakr’s serious mood. I was too full of life to allow others the luxury of gloom.
    My father took my hand and together we walked through the dusty streets of Mecca. Smoke rose from the chimneys of hundreds of small stone cottages and mud-brick huts, clustered together in expanding concentric circles around the central plaza known as Al-Haram —the Sanctuary. As we walked toward the heart of the city I saw children racing through the streets, chasing one another or a variety of animals—goats, lambs, and a few wayward chickens—that had escaped their pens.
    I also saw dozens of beggars, mainly women and bastard children who had been abandoned by their fathers. They held out their hands, their pathetic cries for compassion largely ignored. My father handed an old woman a gold dirham. Her eyes went wide in shock at his generosity, for she had come to expect little more than a copper piece accompanied by a grudging look. We were suddenly surrounded by what appeared to be every beggar in town, their hands reaching out