Aisha accepted all this as her due, but on that long
journey back to the Hijaz mountains and the shelter of
home, she surely knew that she had suʃered far more
than a single defeat in battle. If Ali had accorded her
honor in defeat, his aides had been less inclined to
goodness. She would have many years yet to mull the
words of one of his cousins, who had marched uninvited
into the house where she was recuperating in Basra and
let loose with a torrent of vituperation.
It was she who had incited the people against
Othman, he reminded her. Brandishing the Prophet’s
sandal the way she had? That was an insult to
everything Muhammad had stood for. “If you had but a
single hair of the Prophet’s,” he said, “you would boast
of it and claim to beneɹt through it.” Worse, by inciting
Muslims to battle against other Muslims, she had
committed a crime against the Quran, the word of God.
But above all, how dare she challenge the Ahl al-Bayt, the
family of Muhammad?
“We are of the Prophet’s ɻesh and blood,” he said,
“while you are merely one of nine stuʃed beds he left
behind. And not the one with the ɹrmest root, or the
lushest leaves, or the widest shade.”
How horrible for the defeated Aisha to hear herself
described as just another of the Prophet’s wives, and in
such crude terms. For the woman who had always
insisted on her unique closeness to Muhammad, this was