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

And I will release you and your family from your bonds.”
    Sumaya looked at him, and then at the idol.
    I held my breath, praying that she would do it. The Messenger had said that anyone who was forced to renounce his faith for fear of his life, but kept it in his heart, would be forgiven by God. My soul screamed to Sumaya from inside the darkness of the tree trunk: Do it! Save yourself! Save your son!
    Sumaya smiled at Abu Jahl gently, almost gratefully.
    And then she spit on the idol of Manat.
    And then I saw Abu Jahl change. Something terrible came over his face. Not rage, like Umar’s, but an emptiness. A lack of feeling. In that instant, he looked more like a corpse than a living man. And he frightened me more with the rigid calm of his face than Umar had with all his bluster.
    “So you would choose death over life,” he said softly.
    Sumaya laughed suddenly, as if she finally realized that she had been wasting her time arguing with an imbecile.
    “No…I choose life…eternal life,” she said. She steeled her eyes on him, and I saw no fear. “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.”
    Abu Jahl gazed into her face, and then nodded. He stepped back, locking his eyes on hers.
    And then, in one fluid movement that was so fast my eyes barely captured it, he stabbed her through her vagina, pushing the spear up into her womb!
    “No!” Ammar’s scream was the most terrifying sound I had ever heard. I bit my hand in horror, letting my own stifled cry shudder through my body.
    Sumaya cried out in terrible agony. She writhed on the tree trunk as blood poured out from her womb and into a thick crimson puddle at her feet. Abu Jahl continued to push the spear higher, tearing open her intestines and stomach from the inside.
    And then her screams ended. And there was only silence.
    As Ammar wept, I saw Abu Jahl casually remove the spear. He used Sumaya’s threadbare tunic to clean the blood off his weapon, before turning to face Ammar.
    “The gods have won,” he said simply, as if stating an obvious truth to the child.
    Somehow Ammar found his voice in the midst of terrible grief.
    “No…my mother has won…she is the first of the martyrs.”
    Abu Jahl allowed a small smile to play on his full, sensuous lips.
    “She will not be the last.”
    He turned and climbed back down the hill, whistling a happy tune.
    When he was gone, I emerged from the tree trunk. I felt like I was in a dream. The entire day had to have been a nightmare. Nothing I witnessed could happen in the real world.
    I stared at the dead woman, hanging ignominiously, her lower body drenched in the blood that had only moments before flowed through her veins.
    This was not real. It couldn’t be.
    And then the screech of vultures tore me out of my trance and I ran away, racing from the specter of death that would forever haunt me, even as the midwife had prophesied the night I was born.

3
    A lone figure knelt on the sacred ground of Mount Hira, where the Revelation had begun. He flexed his powerful muscles and then raised his hands in prayer to the One God that had chosen his family to redeem mankind.
    Hamza had always known that his nephew Muhammad had been destined for greatness. They were close in years and the man who was now called Messenger of God had been more of a younger brother to Hamza than a nephew. But even when they would race each other across the stone alleyways of Mecca, or wrestle playfully in the sand, Muhammad had never quite seemed like a child. There had been a wisdom in his eyes, a sadness that seemed to belong to someone who had already lived a lifetime of struggle, loss, and triumph. Perhaps it was the sorrow of an orphan, having lost his father before he was born and his mother at the age of six.
    But there was something else different about the boy. A sense of destiny that hung around him like an aura. It was a power that others in the family had sensed as well, and not all were comfortable with it. Hamza’s half