and not only get away with it but be loved for it.
Muhammad seemed to have granted her license for
girlish mischief, as though he were a fond father
indulging a spoiled daughter, entranced by her sassiness
and charm.
Charming she must have been, and sassy she
deɹnitely was. Sometimes, though, the charm wears
thin, at least to the modern ear. The stories Aisha later
told of her marriage were intended to show her influence
and spiritedness, but there is often a deɹnite edge to
them, a sense of a young woman not to be crossed or
denied, of someone who could all too easily switch from
spirited to mean-spirited.
There was the time Muhammad spent too long for
Aisha’s liking with another wife, who had made a
“honeyed drink” for him—a kind of Arabian syllabub,
probably, made with egg whites and goat’s milk beaten
thick with honey, for which Muhammad had a
particular weakness. When he ɹnally came to her
chamber and told her why he had been delayed, she
made a face and, knowing that he was particular about
bad breath, wrinkled her nose in distaste. “The bees that
made that honey must have been eating wormwood,”
she insisted, and was rewarded when the next time
Muhammad was offered a honeyed drink, he refused it.
Other times she went further, as when Muhammad
arranged to seal an alliance with a major Christian tribe