It was my fear that the baby would look half like Muhammad and half like my husband.I didn’t want to tell him I was pregnant. So I rejected being intimate with him – I kept saying I wasn’t feeling well, that there wasn’t enough time or that someone might hear us. Finally Muhammad lost patience and told me Ibn al-Mutazz would never have accepted my excuses. Nervously I asked who Ibn al-Mutazz was. A famous Arab poet, he replied, who wrote, ‘Enjoy your beloved every day, for you never know when distance will separate you.’When he recited this line, I felt as though my hand was being amputated! How could he possibly imagine we’d ever be separated?‘But you don’t belong to me,’ he said. ‘Now or ever. You’re a married woman.’My heart collapsed. In my mind, I was on a ship taking me to a land called Muhammad, far away from fear and trouble, from Ibrahim and my husband. But now suddenly the ship had capsized and I was drowning.Muhammad tried to comfort me.Holding me tightly, he vowed, ‘Death before I’d ever abandon you.’He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and read what he’d written on it:I love the path you walk on and the bed you sleep in.
