armored canopy insulate her somehow from the
bloodshed? Did it dull the sounds of death? Was she deaf
and blind to suʃering, or bravely willing to die for her
beliefs? Then, as ever, which Aisha you saw depended
not on the facts but on politics.
There is no knowing how many more men might have
been killed holding the camel’s rein if Ali had not ridden
up to put a stop to it. He could see that any demand for
surrender was pointless; Aisha’s men were too caught up
in the heroics of self-sacriɹce to hear reason. Yet it was
just as clear that if this went on, Aisha herself would be
killed, and her death was the last thing he could permit.
Whatever he thought of her, she was still the leading
Mother of the Faithful.
“Hamstring the camel!” he shouted. “If it’s hamstrung,
it will fall, and they will disperse!” And the sudden leap
of reason spurred one of his men to slip through the
cordon of Aisha’s defenders and slash at the tendons of
the camel’s rear legs.
An agonized bellowing ɹlled the air. It took everyone
by surprise, as though after all the terriɹed trumpeting
of horses, the cries and howls of men on the attack or
falling to their deaths, the clash of steel on steel, the
unending stream of curses and taunts from the howdah,
the last thing they expected was to be rooted to the spot
by the maiming of a single animal. “I have never heard
a louder sound than the bellowing of that camel,” one