Free The Jewel Of Medina by Sherry Jones

cannot do either for the Prophet now, not until you begin your blood flow.” She wagged a finger. “Save your tears for that day.”
    My mother cried out and pulled me to my bedroom, where she told me to forget Qutailah’s foolishness and get some sleep.
    “Forget your silly notions about Safwan, also,” she said. “You are the wife of Muhammad now, for which you should be thankful, not crying.”
    What mother ever truly knows her daughter? A stranger to my desires, my
ummi
could not begin to fathom my misery at being locked indoors or my longing for the mystery of womanhood to pin me with its red badge. For other girls, the marriage ceremony opened the doors of
purdah
and out they flew, transformed like butterflies by the wedding night. Only my blood—and my body—would win my emancipation.
    I spent many hours swinging in the courtyard, searching over the rooftop for Muhammad now, the only one who could free me—even as I dreaded the price of that freedom. For nearly three years I arced toward womanhood, then swooped back to girlhood, wavering between daughter and wife, between yearning for my new life and dreading it. Inside, I bumped against the walls in my father’s dark home, hidden from view like the holiest idols in the Ka’ba, my breasts now as sacred as Mecca’s twin hills, my virginity a temple to be guarded against marauders and Hypocrites like the would-be king of Medina, Ibn Ubayy.
    A man with a stout body and eyes like dark pebbles, Ibn Ubayy had been Medina’s leader before we arrived. Yet his hard swagger could never compete with Muhammad’s sweet smiles. His followers flocked to
islam
, discarding Ibn Ubayy as if he were a stale crust of bread. Jealous, he complained to anyone who would listen: Couldn’t people see how soft and weak Muhammad was?
    Desperate to discredit Muhammad, Ibn Ubayy began to insult Sawdah and Fatima in public. Whenever they went to market, Ibn Ubayy or oneof his grunting friends would snuffle up and try to touch them.
How much for an hour in bed, habibati? I’d pay in gold for a feel of those glorious breasts
. Listening to these tales, I shuddered. How much to let a man sweat and grunt all over me like that? There weren’t enough
dinars
in all of Hijaz.
    After our marriage, as promised, I saw Muhammad more than ever. Not only did he visit me every day, but now he spent hours with me in the courtyard, stick-sword fighting with me and playing dolls with me and my friends. My pulse had fluttered strangely in his presence at first and I shrank from his touch, fearing the marriage bed and his new power over me as my husband. But his laughter and kindnesses soon put me at ease.
    I’d known Muhammad all my life. He’d held me in his arms just moments after I was born, blessing me with a special prayer as I’d flailed and rooted against his chest in search of a nipple, hungry from the start. He’d saved my life, my parents told me, by convincing my father to break the Meccan law. Too few boys were being born that year, so the Qurayshi leaders had decided that all newborn girls should be buried alive in the desert.
Are not girls also the creation of al-Lah?
Muhammad had said to my father, who wept with relief.
    In Muhammad’s eyes, girls and women were more than just chattel for men to own and disown depending on their whims. They were valuable in God’s eyes, and in his own. As his wife, unlike so many other women, I would have a voice that my husband would listen to. I’d have Muhammad’s respect.
    And,
ummi
said, I would also be revered by the Believers, whose number had grown since God’s first revelations to Muhammad ten years ago. One taste of al-Lah’s poetry, pouring like sweet rain from Muhammad’s lips, could transform the hardest of hearts. Even Umar, sent by Abu Sufyan to assassinate Muhammad in Mecca, had left the Prophet’s house a Believer, changed by his recitations. I had heard many such stories, told to me by my mother in breathy, awestruck