enemy their enemy, they thought that divisiveness was
at an end. Ali was the one who would reunite Islam.
There would be no more greed, no more self-
aggrandizement, no more corruption. The stranglehold
of the Umayyads had been broken, and a new era
dawned. Under Ali, they would return to the true path of
the Prophet.
Yet even as they celebrated, as the drums were beaten
and the children danced and the women’s ululations
lifted joy into the air, that bloody shirt and those severed
ɹngers were on their way to the pulpit in Damascus.
And Aisha was in Mecca, planning her own course of
action.