The Prophet had continued his policy of spending one day with each of his wives to ensure that they were all treated equally. Today was dedicated to Maymuna, and my husband was normally meticulous about spending all of his allotted time with the wife whose turn had come, so I was surprised to see him in my room.
“I just wanted to look at you,” he said simply, but there was something in his voice that worried me. It was the tone of a man who was about to leave on a long journey and was unsure when he would see his loved ones again.
The Messenger walked toward me slowly. He looked weak and tired, and I sat him beside me on a small cushion. He smiled warmly as I ran my hand through his black curls, which were now peppered with strands of silver.
As I looked into his eyes, I sensed he wanted to say something, and yet he was holding himself back.
“What is it?” I asked, despite my growing apprehension about whatever it was that he was hiding from me.
“You will live long, insha-Allah,” he said rather elliptically. “But there are times that I wish you would have passed away before me.”
I was shocked at these words. My husband wanted me to die before he did?
“Why would you say that?” I asked rather sharply, not bothering to hide my hurt.
The Prophet ran his hand across my face, like a blind man trying to recognize someone’s features. Or a traveler who was leaving and wanted to imprint a memory onto the tips of his finger.
“So that I could pray over your body and ask forgiveness for you.”
I gave him a surprised and perhaps ungracious look, as my pride managed to twist his words into some kind of insult. But in the years to come, there would be many times that I wished that I had indeed died that day, and that his blessing could have protected me from the Day of Judgment, when the true burden of my guilt will be weighed by God.
But alas, that was not my destiny, nor his. The Messenger of God took no offense at the rather sharp glance I had given him. He smiled again and rose to his feet to leave…and then collapsed to the floor!
“My love!” I cried out in shock, forgetting to be angry at his enigmatic words. The Messenger had fallen as if his knees had been cut from beneath him, and he lay curled at my feet like a baby in a crib.
I quickly bent over and touched his forehead. He was burning up.
And then I felt his body shake with tremors, but they were not the unearthly convulsions of the Revelation; they were the very human shivers of a man consumed by fever.
FOR THE NEXT THREE nights, we gathered around the Messenger as he lay in Maymuna’s bed. The Mothers had been at his side nonstop since the moment I had cried out for help and Ali and Abbas had arrived to aid their kinsman. We had kept a vigil into the late hours, applying cold rags to his forehead to lower the fever and feeding him bowls of soup and broth to give him strength. But the days passed and my husband’s state only worsened.
“It will pass…” I would reassure the other Mothers. “It always does…He is the Messenger of God…the angels will heal him…”
But even I had difficulty believing my own words.
ON THE FOURTH NIGHT of the Messenger’s illness, a council of his inner circle gathered at his bedside to debate the future of Islam. With the Prophet incapacitated and steadily deteriorating, the future of the entire Ummah was at stake. The fragile unity that the Messenger had forged among the Arabs by the sheer strength of his personality was now on the verge of collapsing. Rumors were coming that some of the Bedouin tribes were considering renouncing their pacts of alliance with Medina. And the Byzantine empire was allegedly massing its forces for an invasion.
While these were the kinds of political and military threats the Muslims were accustomed to facing, there was a more troubling development. A group of pretenders to the mantle of prophecy was rising, each trying to steal some of Muhammad’s success to enhance his own glory. A rogue named Musaylima had proclaimed himself a new prophet of Allah. He had written to my husband in the months past calling on his “brother” to recognize Musaylima as his fellow Messenger of God and suggesting that the two should divide the world between them. Before he had fallen ill, Muhammad sent a response to Musaylima branding him a liar and proclaiming that all the world belonged to God alone. But the false prophet was undeterred and had begun to raise a following from among the superstitious clan of Bani Hanifa on the eastern edge of the Najd desert. And a woman of the Bani Tamim named Sajah, a kahina who was rumored to be versed in dark magic, had similarly proclaimed herself a prophetess and was busy gathering a small but fanatically loyal group of disciples. Had the Messenger not been confined to his sickbed, the defeat of these new threats to Islam would have been his priority.
The council of believers had arrived, hoping to find the Messenger in a rare moment of lucidity in which he could guide them as to how to run the affairs of state. The small band consisted of my father, Umar, Uthman, Ali, Talha and Zubayr, along with Muawiya, a new member of the Messenger’s inner circle. The son of Abu Sufyan had emigrated to the oasis after the surrender of Mecca and had been chosen by the Messenger as his personal scribe, an honor that had formerly belonged to Ali. Muawiya’s sudden rise to prominence in the community had startled some Muslims, but my husband had wisely realized that an overture to this scion of the Quraysh would accelerate the process of reconciliation. And the honey-tongued young man had quickly proven his skills as a politician, winning over skeptics with gifts and sweet words. Umar in particular had taken a liking to the former prince of Mecca and had taken him under his wing. Muawiya’s star was rising rapidly in the heavens of Islam, and it appeared that the only one who remained suspicious of his intentions was Ali, which was perhaps understandable.
The Companions waited quietly by the Prophet’s side for over an hour until his eyes opened briefly. My poor husband looked at them all for a second as if he did not recognize them, and then his black eyes finally kindled with their mysterious inner light and he sat up slowly in bed.
My husband must have guessed why these men were here, as he spoke before any of them could greet him. His eyes focused on Muawiya as he gestured with his hand.
“Bring a parchment and pen…” the Messenger said, his voice hoarse and trembling. “I have something to dictate…As long as the Muslims follow my command, they will prosper…”
Muawiya rose and removed a sheaf of parchment from inside his rich emerald robes. But before he could move to the Prophet’s side, Umar put a restraining hand on his arm. I saw the troubled look on the towering Companion’s face when he glanced at the Messenger, whose eyes were struggling to stay open as the delirium came back with a vengeance.
“The holy Qur’an is enough for us,” Umar said, clearly nervous that the Messenger was in no state of mind to give commandments.
But Ali stepped forward, his green eyes flashing.
“Obey the Messenger of God,” he said to Muawiya sharply. The hawk-faced young man met Ali’s gaze without flinching and then turned his attention back to Umar, who shook his head gravely.
“He is sick and his words may be confused. Do you want to bring fitna on the people?” Umar said sharply, using the Arabic word for chaos and political strife.
Ali did not back down.
“You are bringing fitna by disobeying the Prophet!”
I felt the tension in the room rise, and my father quickly moved between the men and tried to calm them.