Muhammad (5 page)

Abu Talib would remember to take special care of the boy. Of that I am certain. That, and one more thing. Muhammad would never forget the water of life.

I
knew it was him kneeling beside my bed. I felt the breeze as he brought the fan close to my face. The palm frond made a soft swishing sound. My eyes were swollen shut by the fever, which is why I didn't see him come in.

“Who's the only woman in your life, Muhammad?” I asked.

“You are.”

I smiled through cracked lips. “You're becoming a man if you can lie like that.”

We could talk this way, you see, after so many years. The next thing I felt was a cold dampness. He had brought a bowl of water with him and was pressing a cloth to my eyelids, trying to unseal them. They were gummy and swollen. Only the fan managed to keep the flies away.

“Do you remember how small my breasts were?” I mused.

“Ssh. Drink this.”

Muhammad squeezed the cloth so that drops of water fell on my lips. “What kind of water do you call this?” I grumbled.

“Holy water, from Zamzam.”

I would have spat it back into the bowl if I wasn't dying of fever. There is no holy water in Mecca, I told him, only expensive water. He didn't have the money to waste.

They brought in a doctor with smudge pots last week to beat back the fever. He burned some dung chips and threw fresh herbs on them to create a thick, sweet smoke. That cost money too. You don't get decent behavior unless you pay, except in the desert.

“Give me my purse,” I said. I wanted to pay Muhammad back for the water he squandered his coins on. In his grandfather's day the tribes paid their family for water. Not any more. There had been fierce arguing after “the Slave” died. Now gangs of scowling Qurayshi youths circle the well, holding it hostage until the disputes are settled. Will they ever be?

“Don't worry,” said Muhammad, refusing any money. Seeing that I could drink a little, he held the bowl up to my mouth and tipped it. “Between you and me, I saw a pilgrim who had left a half-f jug on a window sill. I stole some of his water.”

I tried to laugh in disbelief, but my throat tightened up, and the laugh turned into a croak. “If you stole, then I marched into the Kaaba and ran away with a big black ram.” I painted a picture for Muhammad of what the ram and I did when we got home.

“Don't talk like that,” he said.

I don't know why I liked to make him blush. Maybe it made me feel more like his mother, poor soul. I reached up to see if his cheek was hot with embarrassment. I felt something else. A beard was coming on. I turned my head away.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

The young never understand the sadness of growing up. They're too busy doing it. At least my eyes were too swollen to show tears. I said, “Do they still let you tease the girls?” That would be forbidden once he had a real beard.

“I don't tease.”

“Oh, then you're holier than your precious water.”

There was a loud knock on the door, but nobody came in. Only one visitor a day was allowed. Doctor's orders, to keep the contagion from spreading. Muhammad opened the door a crack, and I heard two male voices. They were impatient. One tried swearing a little. He was just a boy, like Muhammad, but he needed to practice cursing the same way he needed to examine his fuzzy beard every morning to see how it was getting on.

Muhammad had many cousins. At least he enjoyed a scrap of good fortune. I didn't know all their names. His father, the cursed Abdullah, had nine brothers, so there was an army of cousins for him to run with on the streets. That would go on after teasing the girls had ended. Growing up never stops a man from prowling the alleys.

I lifted my hand to my breasts. Of course Muhammad didn't remember how small they were that year. He was barely out of the womb. But it was thanks to small breasts that he came to me.

Fifteen years ago we made our way to town, as the desert tribes do every spring. The men had lambs to sell and the yarn spun by the women over the winter. They gathered around the Kaaba, and the elders, who were trusted with the money, gathered at the inns. They bartered all day, arguing in loud voices. Every once in a while somebody told a joke, and then the tension was relieved by laughter. You hear
those filthy jokes all over the world, and the same laughter. Indecency is how men know that they are men.

Women didn't go into the inns, but we had our own business. We sat at the gates of the rich families, holding out our babies and waiting. It was for the milk, you see. City women have babies, but they don't give them the breast. It's not because they're lazy and pampered and don't want sore nipples. They're worried. Living in a city like Mecca, where breathing the air is the same as breathing in contagion, they had to be careful. So every spring we came in from the desert to offer our breasts. That was the custom and still is, although it's on the decline. It's a wonder the air in the city doesn't kill all the babies before they take their first step.

The newborns were put in baskets tied to the sides of the camels, and we took them back to the desert to nurse. In two years time we returned with them, and then the city women, overjoyed to have their children fat and healthy, showered us with coins and gifts. If you ever see a Bedouin woman with silk around her head, you know she's nursed a baby, maybe twins if she is wearing gold earrings.

I had my own boy baby to show them that spring, but times were bad. There had been no rain for months. Everyone's breasts dried up. Mine were half the size they should have been, shrunk like dried dates. I wrapped my robe around myself and held my arms crossed so no one would notice. Who was I fooling? My own baby was shriveled and crying, desperate for the little milk I had. The spoiled rich women walked straight past me without a glance. I spent three days wandering from courtyard to courtyard, without luck. My husband told me to keep trying, but what was the use? We needed the money, of course.

“Muhammad?” I couldn't hear voices at the door and thought he might have slipped out.

“Just here. Don't worry.”

He was by my side again. He pushed up my sleeves and began to wash my arms. We kept quiet. For a boy to do that, washing a woman's arms…Some people would have frowned, even if I was his milk-mother.

“Open the shutters. It's too hot. It's like a tomb,” I said.

“You know I can't do that. It would ruin everything.”

The doctor with the smudge pots said that the room had to be kept closed and hot, to drive the fever out. I knew no better. In my delirium, I couldn't even remember being taken to this room. It was small and close; it smelled foul. But Muhammad had no money. With both his parents gone, and now his uncle Abu Talib, he had no right to any fortune. He took what room they gave him for my sickroom.

I wanted to grumble some more, just to hear his voice, but suddenly I was too exhausted. I let my head loll on the pillow while Muhammad finished my arms.

His mother, Aminah, was the only one who didn't shun me the year of my small breasts. The whole town knew about her. Her husband died in caravan, barely two days away from home. Strangers put him in the ground immediately. She never got to throw herself onto his body. I don't think she would have. Her female cousins gathered at her gate to wail with her, but Aminah was a silent widow. No one had seen such a thing. A two-month bride robbed of the best husband in the city? She had to be in shock, they said.

But Aminah could still think. She knew she was being stalked like soft prey. Fate had fixed its eyes upon her. None
of the other Bedouin women would come to her house. She didn't have a brass coin to pay for their breasts.

A shadow appeared over me, and it was Aminah. “I have a new baby. Will you come in?” she said in a soft voice. I was squatting at her gate and was almost asleep from fatigue and thirst.

We drank tea without a word. Why speak? We knew we needed each other. I wouldn't beg, and neither would she.

After a while she said politely, “You're slender.”

“In our tribe, Banu Sa'd, we work too hard to get fat. Our men are used to it by now,” I replied.

I knew what she meant. I loosened my robe and casually bent over the teapot, pretending to wonder if it had steeped too long. She could see for herself that my breasts didn't hang as fat as they should have.

“May I have two years?” Aminah asked. She had such a small voice, even in her own home. Perhaps she was naturally timid. Or the eyes of fate had broken her.

Two years was the normal time for nursing a baby in the desert. As a precaution I asked to see the baby. She brought it out in swaddling clothes. She said the cloth was soiled and pulled it away. I saw that the baby, tiny and red as a skinned rabbit, had male parts. You understand?

There is another kind of “mother” who comes to the gates of the rich. It doesn't matter what her milk is like, because they hand her an infant wrapped in black cloth, its face covered from sight. Women are weak, even in the desert. If you carry a baby away to leave on the mountainside—always a girl baby—seeing its face might soften your heart. But what good would it do to save them? The boys grow up to a hard life, and many will die before they travel on their first cara
van. Some will never return. A surplus of virgins and widows is the last thing anyone needs. My husband asked if I would serve as such a “mother.” I told him I'd rather kill myself. We have a daughter ourselves, don't we?

The contract took only an hour to seal. First I rushed back to camp outside the town walls and got permission from my husband to take the widow's baby. A very grudging permission.

“After two years you'll be lucky to get a silver ring out of it,” he said.

“I'm doing this even if I get her cast-off sandals,” I replied.

We argued. I insisted. He frowned, but what can you do? We'd get nothing if I left without a baby.

After Aminah had cried a little, the Banu Sa'd passed the city walls at twilight, heading for the open desert. I don't know how sailors feel when they smell the sea again, but it must be like how I feel when I can smell the desert. A funny expression, for in truth you can't smell anything. When the last whiff of rancid smoke, sewage, and dung is out of your nostrils, you are in the desert, where the life is as pure as the air. For the next two years Muhammad never smelled corruption, or saw a house wall for that matter.

 

M
Y BREASTS SWELLED
when I began to nurse the new baby. The other women became jealous. They spread rumors that I was feeding him camel's milk. I cornered the worst shrew and showed her my breast.

“See? It got big on its own,” I told her and made clear what I would do if she kept up her accusations. The next thing you know, they'll say I made a pact with demons. How could
I tell them that it was the baby who brought me so much milk? The udders of the goats and camels also swelled, but no one would believe me if I told them. Milk in the middle of a drought. Who can say why?

“I must go,” Muhammad said.

His voice brought me back from my fever dreams. I didn't know how long I had slept. The blackness in that horrible little room was the same, day or night.

Muhammad put his hand on my brow. “Lie still. I won't be long. What can I bring you?”

“Bring me the stars,” I mumbled.

Which sounds like I was delirious, but he smiled. Any Bedouin would.

One morning soon after, Muhammad found me sitting up in bed, and when he felt my brow, it was cool and dry. The first thing I wanted wasn't food, even though I was starving. I wanted to be carried outside. Muhammad fetched two of his cousins, and they carried my bed into a dirty courtyard shaded by palm trees. I was puzzled. Why hadn't my people come to carry me?

“The contagion is worse. They had to leave,” said Muhammad soberly.

I asked how bad it was. He said people were dying too fast to be buried. The tribes were stacking up corpses outside the city walls. So it was right for my people to flee. They had no reason to lose their lives waiting to see if mine might be saved. Muhammad had girl cousins too, and they brought me millet gruel with lamb in it for strength. They were pretty girls, and gossips. Their chatter was meant to cheer me up, but I sent them away. I didn't need cheering. Hearing the wind in the palms was better than a chorus of blessed spirits.

We Bedouin are proud, but not so proud that we are immune to money. Sometimes foreign traders will ride into camp on half-dead horses. They empty their purses for a goatskin of water and a guide to the next oasis. Most foreigners foolish enough to cross the desert without a Bedouin don't make it to an encampment. We find their remains bleaching on the dunes.

The first time Muhammad saw such a sight he was no more than five. It shocked him. A man's body splayed out on the sand, his skin already turning to parchment, and his horse a hundred feet away, as dead as he was. The wind was mild that day. It had filled their mouths with sand, but not yet covered their bodies.

“There's a fool,” I said. “Letting his horse loose. Who would do that?”

“He wanted to be nice,” said Muhammad innocently.

I knelt down and looked him in the eye. “No horse can survive on its own out here. What he should have done is kill the horse and climb inside its belly. That way he would have been protected for a day or two.” I knew what I was talking about. The Banu Sa'd were close by. We would have seen the vultures circling over the dead animal and come to see. Even after three days a man might be found alive inside a horse or camel. He wouldn't be a pretty sight, but death is much uglier.

Muhammad listened, but his eyes kept wandering to the dead man, whose mouth had gasped open in his last moments, leaving a hole for the sand to fill. You could see the boy wanted to ask me something, but he didn't. I understood. Fate was a tease. Young as he was, he had experienced how cruel a tease. So had his mother. At the end of two years I brought
her baby back. Aminah was waiting by the gate and let loose a cry of joy when she saw us coming. Muhammad was walking on sturdy little legs by my side. Bedouin babies don't start to walk when they want to. They start as soon as they have to, which is very early among nomads.