His first fear was for himself. For his soul, I mean. My father knew that something must have gone horribly wrong. Only later did we discover that he had run from the cave to the top of the mountain to hurl himself onto the rocks below. He never suspected God’s wrath. Yet when he summoned the light, it shattered him. Allah can drive someone as mad as any demon.
I was showing my littlest sister, Fatimah, who was barely five, how to pick flowers in the courtyard when he staggered home. “My child!” he cried, clasping Fatimah so hard to his breast that she could hardly breathe. His agitation made me tremble. After a long, deep stare into Fatimah’s eyes, he ran to his room and bolted the door. I don’t think he even recognized me.
We will never forget the seventeenth day of Ramadan. The brunt of it fell on my mother. I watched her pace the floor, growing paler and paler. That first day we lived in dreadful silence. My father allowed no one to approach him. Leaning at his door, we girls heard weeping and loud, tormented cries. I tell you, I had heard the words “gnashing of teeth,” but the actual sound, like stones grinding together, is horrifying.
On the second day he allowed my mother into the room. When she emerged again, her face was set and grim. I thought my father must be dying. When I asked her, my mother said, “Some things are worse than dying. There is also death in life.”
She wouldn’t let me ask any more questions, but sent me to fetch the servants. When they were assembled, my mother put on a face of incredible calm.
“I won’t lie to you. The worst may not have happened, but if not, God save us from the worst,” she said.
My mother couldn’t stop the anxious cries her words caused, but she quickly moved on to allay them. “None of you will have to leave. You are safe with me. You’ve heard the sounds of your master in torment. If you love him and trust me, listen to my orders.”
With that she told the servants to run to our relatives among the Hashim and bring them to her.” Don’t give out any details. It’s not for you to suggest anything, not with a certain tone of voice or a rolling of the eyes. This is no idle moment. It’s a crisis that will tell me everything about who you are from this day forward.”
What could they say? My mother’s will subdued the servants as long as they were behind our walls. As they ran off to gather the clan, some may have panicked or indulged in wild fantasies. We all did. As soon as the house was empty, my mother took me aside into a private corner with my two older sisters. Fatimah could be distracted by giving her a doll to play with in the next room.
“Your father isn’t mad. He has been overwhelmed,” she said. “We will nurse him. We will watch over him. Those things go without saying. I know they are the desires of your heart. But only waiting will tell the tale.”
“What has overwhelmed him?” asked Zaynab. As the oldest, she had the right to speak first. Later as events unfolded, she was not so faithful to my father. Zaynab’s mind was occupied every waking hour with getting a husband. Even at that critical moment, her thoughts lived halfway in another man’s house.
“He doesn’t have enough of his wits back to make sense,” said my mother, who was always candid with us. “He mumbles the word ‘power’ over and over.”
In Arabic she said qadr. The only way for me to explain the word to strangers is “power.” For us there are hints and shadows in this word. It signifies a mystery, a holy presence that has descended to shatter one’s body and mind.
My second sister, Umm Kulthum, stole a glance in my direction. She didn’t want to understand anything at first. Her instinct was to protect the young ones. Besides Fatimah, there was the slave boy Zayd. He was new, and we had not learned to think of him as our brother yet. He was some years older than Fatimah, but too young to understand how a grown man in the space of a single night could turn into a quivering heap.
The Hashim men came quickly, demanding in loud voices to set eyes on Muhammad for themselves. My mother refused. “You will see him when he’s himself again. What lies in that room is not Muhammad.”
An unfortunate choice of words. Mutterings about jinns arose. My mother knew they would, but something else was on her mind. She had to keep Muhammad’s name from being ruined. Instead of fighting with rumors, she went on the offensive.
“When was the Kaaba in ruins? When was it rebuilt? Let any man step forward who did more to rebuild it than my Muhammad.”
The rumbling began to die down. You see, the Hashim were so poor and trampled on that they had little left but their honor. My father was the most honorable among them. He earned that title five years before. The Kaaba had become a shambles. A wag said that it was a good thing pilgrims came for the Hajj to run around the Kaaba, because if they dared to touch it the walls would fall down. As things stood, no one was willing to repair the sagging roof and the cracks that ran from top to bottom. Fate then stepped in. A flash flood stormed through the center of town. The waters dug a course straight for the Kaaba, almost submerging it.
In a panic people ran to save the idols. My mother laughed at that. “They can’t wait to rescue the very gods that caused this,” she muttered. By the time the waters receded, the roof had collapsed. There was no choice now. A certain faction was still too superstitious to intervene, holding that the walls were sacred, even though they were on the verge of falling down. To touch them risked angering the gods even more.
Others grew disgusted with this attitude. The issue was settled when Al-Mugirah, a rough, sensible type, walked up to the Kaaba in front of everyone with a sledgehammer. He took a swing and knocked a huge gap in one of the walls.
“If the gods want to kill me, let them do it now,” he shouted.
Nothing happened, so it was decided to start over and build a shrine that would last forever. All at once the very clans that wanted to kill each other to keep the Kaaba intact vied to make a new one. That too proved futile, for when they got down to the foundations, a layer of green stone was exposed that could not be broken, no matter how many burly slaves knocked at it. The Quraysh declared that the foundation was laid by Abraham and must not be touched.
My father watched quietly off to one side. He came home one night and said, “A fellow brought a bowl of blood to the work site today. He held it up in the air, screaming that his clan was entitled to finish the work, no one else. He was backed up by twenty toughs with knives drawn. Who knows where he got so much blood? It spilled over the edge of the bowl and streaked his face while he screamed.”
Yet this bizarre incident made my father’s fortune in a strange way. There was one stone set in the eastern wall of the Kaaba that my father told us to hold in reverence. It was black and polished and about the width of a large man’s hand. “We are the people of Abraham, and when he built this shrine, he laid in place a single stone from the time of Adam and Eve. In that stone is our hope,” he said. I didn’t know what my father meant by “our hope,” but I can’t remember a time when the Black Stone was not touched and bowed before by every pilgrim.
When it came time to set the Black Stone back in place, a feud broke out among the clans. Nobody wanted to grant the privilege to anyone else. At the same time, no one wanted to risk the wrath of the gods by not claiming it for himself. Fights broke out daily at the site, until it was decided that only one man, Muhammad, was trusted enough by all the clans to settle the dispute.
Muhammad wasn’t eager to go. I found him lingering by the gate with his best robe on, washing his hands in a basin, then calling for fresh water so he could wash them again.
“It’s a sly tactic to call on me,” he said. “There is no one who deserves the privilege over anybody else. Whoever I choose, the rest will be furious with me. They will fall on each other’s necks, and when the dust clears, our family will be blamed. We will be weaker than ever, which is the whole point.”
You wouldn’t think that the same man would have returned home two hours later wreathed in smiles. “I did it,” he said with quiet exultation. He called for the best sweet wine and even diluted it three times with water so we girls could drink.
“What did you do?” my mother asked, as baffled as anyone.
“I stared solemnly at the rock for a long time, as if it was going to deliver an answer. In fact, I was scouring my brain in mounting desperation. Then the simplest idea occurred to me. I ordered that someone bring a large sheet of cloth. I had the Black Stone placed in the center and signaled for the elders of the four major clans to each take a corner of the sheet. ‘Now lift it together to the height where the stone will be placed,’ I said. ‘Then you will all share in the honor and reap the same reward from the gods.’”
From that moment on my father earned a respectful nod and a raised beaker at the inns. But he insisted to us, his family, that he wasn’t wise. “I am only a man among men. The point was to give these hotheads an escape route, so they wouldn’t lose face. Nothing more. If the gods noticed, they were as amused as I was.”
My mother’s efforts to remind the clan of their debt to my father worked to hold off the spiral of ruin momentarily.
Several days later my father appeared at the door of his room. He still looked pale and stunned, but he held his arms out, and one by one his daughters ran into them. When I embraced him, it felt as if half his body had wasted away. The last to be embraced was Fatimah, who was frightened by the deep black circles around my father’s eyes.
You could see that he was hurt when Fatimah backed away. “What’s wrong, my child?”
“I want my papa back,” she blurted out and burst into tears.
My father swept her into his arms, calming Fatimah’s fears. Even as he did this, he looked around at the rest of us. His eyes said, “And do you think your papa is not here?”
You must understand, during that terrible week we held the family together by not speaking our deepest fears out loud. I asked to be taken to the Kaaba to pray. I’m sure my sisters did as well. We avoided looking at one another during meals. Some of the servants weakened and began to spread rumors; my mother wasn’t above taking a stick to them.
Then as quickly as we lost him, my father became himself again. Like a patient whose fever has broken, he mastered his crisis. I don’t know how he did it. Yet one day I found him sitting alone on the floor of the pantry eating one flatbread after another between gobbets of lamb and beakers of well water. When he saw me, he burst out laughing.
“Forgive me, Ruqayah, you shouldn’t see your father with a greasy chin and bits of food hanging from his beard. But I am famished!”
“Your chin? Papa, you should see yourself. Your whole face looks like Fatimah’s when she’s gotten loose in the butter.” I laughed with him, even as tears blurred my eyes.
He stuffed himself, and then he slept. By nightfall he called his wife and us daughters into his presence. He smelled freshly bathed, with a touch of rose oil in his hair. His beard was no longer an unruly weed patch, and his eyes gleamed, even though they seemed far away.
“My dear,” he began, addressing us as one beloved person, “a great thing has occurred. My soul has wrestled with the possibility of madness. I teetered between destruction and greatness. But by God, the matter is resolved.”
None of us expected this. His distraction had turned to joy. He seemed as exultant as a bridegroom.
“Zaynab, quit looking at your sisters like that. I wasn’t mad before, and I am not mad now!”
“Then what are you, sir? Explain it to us simply, so we can understand.” Being the eldest—and somewhat spoiled—Zaynab could speak like that, on the verge of insolence.
My father saw that her motive was anxiety. “I want you to celebrate with me, my dear. This is a victory of the soul. I have been touched to the quick by Allah. “
My father caught himself a second time. He could see from our anxious faces that he must compose himself. Once he had, he continued in a calm voice.
“I have enjoyed the fruits of a good life, and another man would have been satisfied. You poor girls have been cursed with a father who cannot close his mind. Ordinary men think it their solemn duty to never open their minds. But I cannot speak for them. All I know is that despite the comforts and love within this house, I have been restless and discontented.”
My father spoke without accusation in his voice, but he sensed our disquiet.
“I am not putting even the slightest bit of blame on you. I should ask your forgiveness.”
He would have reached out for us, but my mother spoke up. “If you want to calm our fears, do as Zaynab asked. Explain in terms we can understand.”
My father bowed his head almost meekly. “I have been leading a secret life. Inside the walls of Mecca, I have played the part of a man who must be like other men. When I walk into the hills, Mecca vanishes like a fever dream. Behind my back those in the clan shake their heads and pity this poor, deluded seeker. They believe in no God and trust none of the gods they do believe in. My secret is that God is not someone you can seek. He is in all things, and always has been. He created this earth and then disappeared into it, like an ocean disappearing into a drop of water. I saw much in my cave, but this mystery was the most important.”
Zaynab interrupted him. “Simpler, Papa,” she pleaded.
My father sighed. “An angel came to me. He told me that I was God’s chosen one.”
I will always wonder if Zaynab was ready to shriek or burst into wild laughter. We will never know, because my mother shot her a look like daggers. With all the effort she could summon, her face growing red, Zaynab stayed silent.
“Are angels real?” my mother asked quietly. We all knew, although we never spoke of it, that my father had been talking to wanderers, some of them Jews, others Christians. To an Arab, angels were fantastic, all but unknown.
“Very real,” my father said quietly. You could see that he was treading lightly inside, like a man who may be walking on quicksand. “In the middle of the night one came to me in all his radiance. I was wrapped in a blanket on the cold floor of the cave. I shivered when the angel called to me, and at first I didn’t know that my trembling was awe, not the cold. I saw a figure arrayed in light standing before me. His voice was commanding, like a soldier who could not be disobeyed, but it was also so gentle that it all but broke my heart. ‘Recite!’ he ordered.”
My father looked around at our little group. We were hanging on every word. “You know, my dear, that he was asking the impossible.”
It was true. My father never recites verses or sings songs. It has been a sore point with him since he was a boy with the Bedouin, almost a humiliation. He was only a listener, never a speaker, and listeners win no glory.
“I told the angel I could not recite. You see, even though I was in awe, my mind kept working. I realized that this had to be a dream or a trick of the demons. A notion came into my head that if I talked reasonably to this ghost or jinn, a way of escape would show itself. The angel grew in size and brilliance. Twice as forcefully he ordered, ‘Recite!’ Before I could respond, he threw his arms around my chest and embraced me, to prove that he was no apparition. I cried out, thinking that I would faint—his arms wound around my chest like iron bands. Three times I tried to resist, and three times he seized me in his arms.”
You will well believe that my father couldn’t remain composed while telling us about the angel. His agitation was strong, and Fatimah began to cry. My mother sent her away with a nurse before Fatimah could plead again, “Where is my papa? I want him back.” We heard her wailing die away as the nurse, enfolding Fatimah in her skirts, rushed to the far corner of the house.
“Was that your victory of the soul?” asked Zaynab, who seemed determined to let her doubts speak for her.
“Not yet. I was still too troubled to think,” said my father. “When the angel finally released me from his grasp, I dashed out of the cave. My deepest wish was to rid myself of this horrifying burden. To be God’s messenger belonged to any other man in the world but me. My heart pounded, and my only thought was to throw myself off the mountain. I beg your forgiveness. In my distraction I failed to think of my family, and the fate that awaited you all if I died. At the summit of Mount Hira I stood on legs as weak as a kitten’s, staring down at the rocks below. The angel hadn’t followed me out of the cave. That much was a relief. It gave me a few seconds to breathe. Then I looked at the sky, and he was there. The angel towered over me as high as thunderclouds piled up to heaven. I turned around, and he was there behind me, and to every side. I knew at that moment that the form of the angel I saw in the cave was infinitely smaller than his presence. It was an image suited to human sight. The real angel, who came from Allah, lives in Allah. He must be infinite if he is real.”
“What do you call this one who came to you?” asked my mother soberly.
“Gabriel. He told me to call him that,” my father said.
Now I spoke up. “You haven’t told us if you obeyed him. Did you recite?”
My father’s eyes gleamed. “That’s the miracle, my dear. A humble man whose tongue has no more eloquence than shoe leather suddenly spoke.”
My father closed his eyes and held forth:
Recite! In the name of your Lord,
who created human life from congealed drops of blood.
Recite, for your Lord is ever bountiful,
he who teaches by the pen,
who taught mankind what was not known before.
As he spoke, my father was transformed. His face glowed; he seemed transported to Paradise. And the verse. I can’t explain to strangers how beautifully it fell on the ear, like liquid song. Such precious words couldn’t have been his. Where did they come from?
Zaynab broke the spell by suddenly fleeing the room. I looked at my other sister, Umm Kulthum, who had been playing absent-mindedly with her braided hair, the way an infant might pet a doll. “How beautiful,” she murmured.
The moment was over. My mother ran down the corridor calling for Zaynab. My father came back to his usual self with a small cough and asked Umm Kulthum if she was all right. A servant ran in to announce that Abu Bakr was at the door.
“Tell him I’m just coming,” said my father, adjusting his robe and looking around for his slippers. He wouldn’t greet a respected friend in his bare feet.
As he was leaving the room, I grabbed his arm. “Tell me, Papa, what has really happened to you?”
“There is an inner man that nobody sees,” he replied. “Now he is on the outside, and the outer man, who is seen by everyone, he is gone forever.”