Because I wandered in from the desert, nobody knows my name. They call me “the chick,” because I sit all day with my mouth open, waiting for people walking by to drop food in. It’s a cunning way to beg. Everyone knows who I am, and all of Mecca marvels at how I survive. At times there can be nasty surprises. I’m a decent man, or I would tell you some of the filthy objects street urchins have dropped into my mouth.
Today I’m a beggar, but I have ambitions. I hope to become a fool. People pity fools, and those who don’t are at least superstitious about them. The best fools have gone mad over God. They even think they speak with God’s voice, but it’s all babble. I think about that when I’m curled up in an alley on a cold night. Is it better to be pitied or despised? Those are my two choices.
I don’t feel sorry for myself. On feast days and especially weddings it’s good to sit with your mouth open as the guests pass by. A few will be feeling merry enough to toss a sweet-meat your way. The last wedding was Muhammad’s. Mecca couldn’t stop talking about it. A trader in his twenties marrying an old woman. Why did he agree? It wasn’t for her beauty. The lady Khadijah is forty. Two rich husbands have died on her. So it had to be for her money. He must have played a close game. The widow is rich enough that she resisted all offers from greedy suitors. Rich enough to be the one who proposed to Muhammad too, not the other way around. No one felt she was stooping beneath her station, though, because Khadijah’s purity is impeccable. She was waiting for a pure husband, they say.
And most people were glad that Muhammad was rising. I watched him passing in and out of her gate in the days before the ceremony. Being a beggar, I have a high opinion of him. He’s never thrown a pebble down my throat to see if I’d choke and get a bit of a laugh, like some others. One day he struck a filthy boy who was about to drop a ball of dung in my mouth.
Naturally, I expected much from the wedding of a man like that. I arrived at the bride’s house a few days early. Mostly women came by, always giggling. I turned my face away. It hurts to see the face a pretty woman makes when she sets eyes on me. Next was a young man in dirty sandals carrying a bolt of fine woolen cloth. I seized his leg and held on tight.
“Let me go,” he cried. “You’re crazy, not blind. Can’t you see I’m only a servant?”
But I didn’t let go until he shook his leg and hopped up and down like a nomad bitten by sand fleas. It was funny, really, because he didn’t dare drop the bolt of cloth to beat me. After that little prank time hung heavy. I got hungry sitting there with my mouth open, until a large ripe date dropped in. Opening my eyes, I saw Muhammad.
“May Allah give you joy,” I murmured, rolling the sweet fruit around on my tongue.
Muhammad was in a rush, but he paused with a curious look on his face. “Does the name of Allah help your begging? I wouldn’t think so.”
I fawned, hoping for another date. “God shows me who is his son when I am fortunate enough to see one.”
“So Allah is just one of your tricks, to see who can be flattered?”
Muhammad didn’t say this in an insulting tone. He was smiling and at the same time he pulled another date from his sash, putting this one in my hand. A proper and decent gesture.
I bowed. “I’ll tell you my secret, sir. I speak of Allah, because I am practicing to be a fool. When fools speak of God, people are more likely to be superstitious about them.” Muhammad shook his head with amused wonder and went on his way.
If I heard the tinkle of ankle bells but no giggling, it was usually Khadijah herself bustling past me on her way somewhere. She is always in motion. A rich woman must work twice as hard as a man to keep thieves from her hoard. In summer her caravans are headed for Syria, in winter for Yemen. She paces around the camels at dawn, inspecting every bale and sack. But Khadijah isn’t pinch-faced and shrewd, if that’s what you think. She wraps her head in black to go out at night, and many a poor wretch cowering from the cold and damp has felt her hand on his shoulder. She brings soup and a cloak, even to strangers. She busies herself behind the scenes to marry off her poor relations and drops gold in their dowries, so that the girls won’t wind up with a crook-backed bully no respectable woman would touch.
When she passes me, I murmur ameerat, or “princess.” Khadijah smiles. She’s heard that kind of flattery all her life. More than most, she actually deserves it.
One thing about her is resented, though. When feast days come and the other women observe the tradition of running around the Kaaba, she closes her shutters and stays home. The Hajj is not for her, and Khadijah has enough money that she can make no bones about it. Behind closed doors, say the gossips, she doesn’t fondle Muhammad’s beard. They sit together and mock the idols. Who knows what trouble it may get them into one day.
As the wedding drew near, the groom’s visits became more frequent. Sometimes he was too preoccupied to notice me, but if he did, he had a scrap or two to spare. One morning he caught me hobbling to my place by the gate.
“How did you become lame?” he asked.
“My toes were bitten off by dogs,” I said.
“Show me.”
I peeled the rags off my feet and let him see the ragged row of toes and stumps where curs had chewed on me.
“Is your pain severe?” he asked.
“Not enough to make me kill myself, but too much to laugh all day,” I replied.
Our eyes met. He could see that I wasn’t whining to cadge a bit of bread, and I could see that he was actually interested. I wasn’t lying at all. My mother made a bad marriage to a drunkard. To make matters worse, her mother-in-law hated her. One day I was left in her charge when I was still a baby in swaddling clothes. Out of contempt, my grandmother left me under a tree while she went to the town well for water. This wasn’t in Mecca, but in one of the hill towns surrounding it, on the edge of the wilderness. My grandmother knew very well that packs of wild dogs roam at will, making so brave as to wander into town. Two of them found me under the tree and began to gnaw at my feet, which were sticking out of my bundled clothes. My screams brought a man running, and with a stick he beat the dogs off, but not before they had taken a few toes from each foot. They say when my grandmother returned, she didn’t wail. Out of spite, it cost her nothing to see me maimed. Not that I remember anything about it. But one imagines.
You should not suppose that Khadijah spotted Muhammad in the marketplace and felt herself swoon. Nor did he leave love poems pinned to her shutters comparing her almond eyes to a fawn in the moonlight. They were both sober people. She knew two things about Muhammad that anyone in business would be intrigued by. First, he was not all that experienced, having left Mecca on small caravans such as his uncle, Abu Talib, could afford. Second, he could be trusted. Once the Arabs pin a name on you, it travels with you the rest of your life. I will always be “the chick,” and Muhammad expects always to be Al-Amin, the one you can trust.
Khadijah sent her steward Maysarah to greet Muhammad and formally make him an offer. He was to oversee one of her caravans to Syria, and in return the lady would pay him twice the commission she usually offered. You’d think that Al-Amin, the “trustworthy one,” wouldn’t need such an extravagant bribe, but Khadijah understood that a woman must be prepared to pay enough to discourage thieving from her agents.
The caravan came and went. The steward Maysarah was sent to keep track of the trades and balance the books, but he was also part family spy. Having been with Khadijah since her father and mother died, he had his mistress’s ear, and over the years Maysarah had never betrayed her. When he came home with glowing words about Muhammad’s character, Khadijah broke her vow never to marry. Passion didn’t carry her away. She waited some months. She continued to line Muhammad’s pockets. He rose in her esteem, and one day she sent a messenger, her intimate friend Nufaysah, who touched Muhammad’s hem with her forehead as if he was the master, offering Khadijah in marriage. A flurry of negotiations started. Uncles got involved, haggling over details like men with a thousand camels to lose or gain. Two clans, the Hashim and the Asad, came together on the suitability of the match, and thus it was.
That’s the story as I heard it from servants who squat in the courtyards and gossip with other servants.
Does a woman’s heart melt over balanced accounts and good behavior? You know the answer as well as I do.
It would have been auspicious for rain to fall on the wedding day, but it dawned bright and hot like every other day. The first to arrive were young male cousins, loose and wild. Being without women, it suited their mood to kick me, as if to prove that someone in this world was more miserable than they. I closed my mouth when they passed, just to be safe.
But I was also sunk in thought. I must find special words for the groom when he came in procession. It served me well to impress him; he was about to be rich. I kept turning over the same question in my mind. What would a fool say? For Muhammad, the best tactic was to babble about God, since I knew he had a weakness there. The crowd was growing thicker now. Like civets, the guests left a perfumed trail behind them as they entered the bride’s house. Rich robes swirled in the light wind. The richest women had seed pearls dangling from their gauzy veils. Someone dropped a coin in my mouth, and when I looked closely, it appeared to be silver.
At last Muhammad arrived. He smiled to the left and right, but his eyes looked pensive. He shuffled his feet the way he always did, not lifting them high to protect his new sandals from the dust. When he came abreast of me, a dozen hands were reaching for him. I didn’t raise my voice, but quietly said, “Lucky is the man who marries God today.”
I was in luck. He noticed me and looked down. “I marry a good woman today, not God,” he said.
“She might as well be a bad woman,” I said. “Allah is in all creatures. “
Guests who were close enough to overhear us began to mutter angrily. I was taking a risk if I kept talking such blasphemous nonsense.
“Your sons will be sons of God, even if they turn out to be drunks and cheats. Do you believe me?” I said.
“I do,” said Muhammad, which caused gasps around him.
“Then you are a bigger fool than I am,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because all words about God are lies. The Infinite is beyond words.”
A few feet reached out to kick me, but not Muhammad’s. He didn’t smile or frown, but only betrayed sadness with his eyes. Murmuring softly to himself, he tossed me a coin and entered Khadijah’s house. A burst of laughter and applause greeted him inside. One Qurayshi came very late, an old man without companions. I was surprised to see Waraqah. His weakness for God is worse than Muhammad’s. It has lost him most of his respectability.
“Allah has truly blessed this house,” I said, rising on my knees as he rushed through the gate.
Waraqah grimaced. “Forget your tricks. I’m the bride’s cousin. I have to be here.”
“For the joy of the occasion,” I murmured, to get back at him. Everyone knew that old Waraqah hated leaving his house and the mystical studies that devoured his days and ruined his eyes.
“Joy is the fruit of wine,” said Waraqah. “I have no use for it. She wants to talk business after the ceremony.”
With that, he rushed inside. Don’t be amazed that a rich man would waste so many words on a beggar. Waraqah’s God loves all men, which shows you how far this religious fever might spread.