As I looked at the faces of the defeated Meccans lining up before my husband, I did not see what I had glimpsed on that Jewish woman’s angry face. I saw no fire of defiance, no hint of rebellion still in their hearts. They were humbled and weary, tired of fighting, tired of losing, tired of being on the wrong side of history. I felt a particular flash of satisfaction when I saw Suhayl, the pretentious envoy who had negotiated the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, bow his head before his new master. There was no insouciance in his voice, no flash of contempt in his dark eyes. Just eager gratitude that the Messenger had chosen to show clemency to men like him who did not deserve it.
And there were moments of sincere reconciliation and joy. The Prophet’s uncle Abbas, who had been his secret ally inside Mecca all these years, could finally embrace his nephew openly. And to my great joy, my estranged brother Abdal Kaaba, who had nearly killed his own father at the Battle of Uhud, rejoined our family. The Messenger embraced my brother and gave him a new name, Abdal Rahman. I had never seen my father so happy as on the day that his eldest son returned to his bosom, and it was as if years of pain fell off Abu Bakr’s face and he was a young man again.
My half sister, Asma, also received a blessing when her elderly mother, Qutaila, came and finally embraced the faith that she had rejected years before. It was a tearful reunion, and I wondered how Asma had endured all those years cut off from the woman who had given her birth and then rejected her when she chose her father’s religion over the ways of the ancients. I suddenly realized how lucky I really was to have had a loving family that remained intact despite all the hardships we endured, and how brave my sister had been all these years when her heart had been weighed down with such unspoken sorrow.
And then a towering black man stepped forward and I felt my breathing stop. I recognized him immediately, for his visage had been burned into my heart since the disaster at Uhud. He was Wahsi, the Abyssinian slave who had killed the Messenger’s uncle Hamza with a javelin.
I saw the Prophet stiffen as the hulking African knelt before him, his right hand held aloft. My eyes flew to Ali and I could see his green eyes burning with anger, and for a second I wondered if Dhul Fiqar would slice Wahsi’s head from his muscular shoulders.
The Messenger leaned forward.
“You are the one who killed Hamza, the son of Abdal Muttalib. Is that not so?” There was a hint of danger in my husband’s voice, and I could see a line of sweat drip down the Abyssinian’s broad face.
“Yes,” he said softly, his head bowed in evident shame.
“Why did you do this thing?” my husband asked, his black eyes unreadable.
“To secure my freedom from slavery,” the African said, his voice trembling.
The Prophet looked at him for a long time. And then he reached forward and took Wahsi’s hand in acceptance of his baya’ah, his oath of loyalty.
“We are all slaves to something,” he said. “Wealth. Power. Lust. And the only freedom from the slavery of this world is to become a slave to God.”
Tears welling in his eyes, Wahsi clasped the Messenger’s hand. He recited the testimony of faith and the Prophet nodded, accepting the conversion of this man who had murdered his beloved uncle Hamza, his childhood friend and the only older brother he had ever known.
And then I saw my husband’s eyes glisten with tears and he turned away from the African.
“Now let me not look upon you again,” Muhammad said, his voice caught in his throat. Wahsi nodded sadly and departed, and I did not see him again for all the days that the Messenger lived.
AS THE SUN SET, the last of the Meccans stood before the Prophet, ready to accept membership in the Ummah. Among them was an old woman, hunched over and covered in a black abaya. Her face was covered by a black veil, but there was something hauntingly familiar about her eyes.
Yellow green and piercing like daggers. The eyes of a snake that was poised to strike its prey.
I felt a wave of alarm rising in my heart, but before I could speak, she knelt before the Prophet and placed her long fingers in a bowl of water, and the Prophet dipped his own fingers in the bowl in formal acceptance of her allegiance.
“I testify that there is no god but God and that you, Muhammad, are the Messenger of God. And I pledge my allegiance to God and His Messenger.”
The voice was hoarse but unmistakable and I saw my husband’s eyes narrow. His smile was gone and his face now rigid as stone.
“Remove your veil,” he said in a powerful voice that sent a chill down my spine. There were murmurs of shock from some in the tent, as the Messenger was always respectful of the modesty of women and had never before asked anyone to remove her niqab.
The old women hesitated, but Muhammad continued to stare at her without blinking. Ali stepped forward, his glittering sword raised menacingly.
“Fulfill your oath. Obey the Messenger,” he said, and the tension in the air became unbearable.
And then the woman raised her hand and ripped off the veil, revealing the face of the Messenger’s greatest enemy. Hind, the daughter of Utbah, the most vicious of his opponents, the cannibal who had eaten the liver of Hamza as the ultimate sign of her contempt for the believers.
I gasped when I looked upon her, for I barely recognized her. Her dangerous eyes were unchanged, but her once-beautiful face had been cruelly ravaged by time. The perfect alabaster skin had turned a sickly yellow and was scarred with deep lines. Her high cheekbones, which had highlighted the chiseled perfection of her features, were now skeletal crags. She looked like a corpse, and the only evidence of her living spirit was the steady rise and fall of her sagging throat as she breathed with some difficulty.
The Prophet looked at her with his eyes brimming with anger.
“You are she who ate the flesh of my uncle,” he said simply, no accusation in his voice, just a harsh statement of fact.
I saw the revulsion on the faces of the Companions, and I glanced at Umar, who had been her lover in the Days of Ignorance. The horror in his eyes at the sight of the decrepit woman he had once loved was palpable.
Hind ignored the stares, the cruel whispers, and kept her eyes on my husband.
“Yes,” she said simply, acknowledging before the world the crime that easily merited her death.
My eyes fell on Ali and I saw Dhul Fiqar glowing red. I would have dismissed the vision as an illusion created by the flickering torches, but I had seen enough to know that the sword burned with its own anger.
And then I realized that Hind was looking at the weapon as well and her ugly face curved into a truly terrifying smile.
“Do it. Kill me,” she hissed defiantly, and yet I could hear what I thought sounded like a plea beneath the affectation of pride.
There was a hush of silence as the Prophet looked at his adversary, a trembling sack of bones who had once been the most beautiful and noble woman among the children of Ishmael. And I saw a sudden softening in his eyes that mirrored the change in my own heart, for in that moment I truly felt sorry for her.
“I forgive you,” he said simply. And then he turned away from her and placed his attention on a mother who was standing behind her, a young woman carrying an infant in her arms.
Hind looked at him, confused. Her eyes went to Ali, who had lowered his sword, and then to Umar, who refused to meet her gaze. She stared at the other Companions and then at the men and women of Mecca around her, but all chose to ignore her. In that moment, I realized that Hind had been both pardoned and condemned. For she had gone from the most feared and hated enemy of Islam to a nobody, a woman who was irrelevant to the new order, who had no power or say in anything that happened in Arabia from that day forward. As she turned and hobbled away, I realized that my husband had given her the one punishment she could not endure. The curse of anonymity.