Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam Read Free

her side, tears welling in her dark eyes.
    “Go. Bring Abu Bakr to me,” she said, her voice growing faint. She stroked the girl’s still plump cheeks. “If I die before you return, tell him my last request was that the Prophet pray at my funeral.”
    Asma shook her head, refusing to face that possibility. “You can’t die! I won’t let you!”
    The girl was not of Umm Ruman’s flesh, but the bond between them was as strong as that of any mother and daughter. Perhaps stronger, for Asma had chosen her over her actual mother, Qutaila, who had refused to accept the new faith. Abu Bakr had divorced his first wife, for it was forbidden for a believer to share a bed with an idol worshiper. The proud Qutaila had left their home in a furious rage, vowing to return to her tribe, but Asma had refused to go with her. The girl had chosen the Straight Path, the way of the Messenger and her father, Abu Bakr. That had been three years ago, and Asma had not seen her mother since. Umm Ruman had felt sorry for the abandoned child, still too young to understand the enormity of her choice, and had raised the girl as her own.
    She wondered what would happen to Asma once she was gone. Abu Bakr would likely look for a new wife, but there were only a handful of believers, and the Message was spreading slowly because of the need for secrecy. If the pagan leaders of Mecca learned the truth of what the Prophet was teaching, their wrath would be kindled, and the tiny community the believers had founded in the shadows would be exposed and destroyed. In all likelihood, Asma would be alone, without any foster mother to guide her through the journey of womanhood. The girl was past due for her cycles, which usually began at the age of ten or eleven for those born under the harsh Arabian sun. The men-strual flow would erupt any day now, but Umm Ruman would not be there to comfort her through the shock of first blood.
    She ran her hand through Asma’s brown curls, hoping to bequeath a soft memory with her touch that would comfort the child in the days to come. And then a shock of pain tore through Umm Ruman’s womb and she screamed.
    Asma broke free of her stepmother’s grasp. She fell back, stumbling over one of the bricks that the midwife had placed at Umm Ruman’s swollen feet. As Amal searched desperately through her midwife’s stores for a salve to ease her patient’s agony, the girl turned and ran in search of her father.
    Umm Ruman closed her eyes and said silent prayer even as her body burned from within.
    As her uterus contracted with increasing urgency, she could feel the baby shifting, preparing to emerge into the world. A process that in all likelihood would lead to her death, and possibly the baby’s as well.
    It was the beginning of the end, she thought sadly.
    Umm Ruman was right. But in ways she could not have expected.
     
    M Y FATHER , A BU B AKR , walked through the quiet streets of Mecca, his head bowed low, his back hunched slightly, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Which, of course, it was.
    Tonight everything had changed. And he needed to tell someone. Normally he would have gone straight home after emerging from the Prophet’s house, as their dwellings were next door to each other. But after what he had seen and heard tonight, he needed to take a walk.
    And besides, his wife had entered labor earlier that day, and his home was now the exclusive domain of the midwife. Abu Bakr had learned through the birth of two sons and a daughter to give the tribe of women its privacy at such moments. A man could only serve as a bumbling annoyance or a dangerous distraction to the sacred rituals of birth. And the safe delivery of this child, the first to be born into the Revelation, was important not just to him, but to the entire Muslim community.
    All twenty of them.
    His child. Abu Bakr wondered for a moment what kind of world the baby would grow into. For years he had hoped that the Truth would spread discreetly