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.

The defeated old woman skulked away and left the tent, her head bowed. I should have stayed inside by my husband’s side, but something in my heart compelled me to step outside, to see for myself the final end of my greatest nightmare.

Hind was already past the guards who had been placed at the perimeter of the Messenger’s tent when she suddenly stooped and turned. Her yellow-green eyes met mine and for a second I saw a hint of the pride and dignity that she had always carried. The old crone hobbled over to me and looked at me closely. My face was hidden behind my veil, but my golden eyes shone forth unmistakably.

“You are the daughter of Abu Bakr,” she said, with an unnerving smile, the look of a cat as it plays with a mouse it has caught in its paws.

“Yes,” I said, suddenly regretting my decision to come outside.

“I always liked you, little girl,” Hind said in a raspy voice that still tinkled with seduction. “You remind me of myself.”

I felt my face flush at her words and my pulse pounded in my temples.

“I seek refuge in Allah that I should ever be like you!”

Hind smiled broadly, revealing a row of cracked and blackened teeth.

“Even so, you are,” she said with a laugh that lacked any joy. “There is a fire inside you that burns very bright. They can cover you with a hundred veils and it will still shine through. But know this, my dear. The fire of a woman’s heart is too hot for this world. Men will fly to it like moths. But when it burns their wings, they will snuff it out.”

I felt the hair on my arm standing up and chills ran through me. I turned to leave, when Hind reached forward and took my arm in her bony grasp. I tried to pull free, but her fingers were like the jaws of a lion, crushing down on my bones. And then she put something in my hand, something that sparkled under the evening stars that were slowly taking possession of the sky.

It was her golden armlet, the band of snakes intertwining until their jaws met to encase a glittering ruby.

I stared down at this strange and awful symbol of Hind’s power, a totem that she was now passing along to me as the sun of her life set into the horizon of history. It was a gift with terrifying implications, and one that I had no desire to accept.

But when I raised my head to protest, Hind was gone.

It was my husband’s distinct tragedy that soon after each victory he was given in his mission, God always exacted a terrible price from among his loved ones. Shortly after we returned to Medina and the city was alive with rejoicing at the final victory of Islam, the Messenger’s infant son, Ibrahim, fell ill and began to waste away.

Despite the desperate prayers of the community and the efforts of those who were skilled in medicine, the poor boy deteriorated rapidly, his tiny form ravaged by the camp fever that few grown men could survive.

I watched through eyes reddened by tears as Muhammad stroked his dying son’s curly hair in farewell. A steady flow of tears ran down his face, causing one of the men present, a Companion named Abdal Rahman ibn Awf, to raise his eyebrows in surprise.

“O Messenger of God, even you? Is it not forbidden?”

The Prophet spoke with some difficulty, his eyes never leaving the face of Ibrahim as the flow of life seeped out from the child.

“Tears are not forbidden,” the Messenger said softly. “They are the promptings of tenderness and mercy, and he who does not show mercy will have none shown to him.”

And then my husband leaned close to the little boy, who was looking up at him with dreamy eyes as his soul began to detach from this valley of sorrow.

“O Ibrahim, if it were not that the promise of reunion is assured, and that this is a path which all must tread, and that the last of us will overtake the first, truly we would grieve for you with even greater sorrow. But we are stricken indeed with sadness for you, Ibrahim. The eye weeps and the heart grieves, but we say nothing that would offend the Lord.”

I felt my heart quiver in grief as Ibrahim smiled up at his father, his tiny hand wrapped around the Messenger’s finger. I saw the little boy squeeze one last time and then his eyes closed, and Muhammad’s son passed away into eternity.

WHEN WE HAD WEPT all the tears we could, the Messenger covered Ibrahim’s face with a sheet and stepped outside to address the agitated crowd. I looked up in the heavens and saw that the sky was dark, and realized that the sun was in eclipse and the stars were shining in the middle of the day.

The Muslims were gazing up in wonder at the thin crescent where the sun had been only moments before, and I heard a man cry out.

“Behold! Even the heavens weep for the Prophet’s son!”

I did not doubt that this was a sign from God for the poor, innocent child who would never have a chance to experience the joys of life and love in this world.