the future of the new faith seemed to hang on a teenage
girl’s reputation.
In the meantime, he banished Aisha from her chamber
on the eastern wall of the mosque courtyard and sent her
home to Abu Bakr. There she was kept indoors, away
from prying eyes and ears, while word was put out that
she had returned to her father’s house to recuperate from
a sudden illness. Not that the rumormongers were
buying it. Illness, indeed, they said knowingly; she was
hiding her face in shame, as well she might.
For the ɹrst time in her life, nothing Aisha could say
—and as one early historian put it, “she said plenty”—
could make any diʃerence. She tried high indignation,
wounded pride, fury against the slander, but none of it
seemed to have any eʃect. Years later, still haunted by
the episode, she even maintained that Safwan was
known to be impotent—that “he never touched
women”—an unassailable statement since by then
Safwan was long dead, killed in battle, and so could not
defend his virility.
A teenage girl under a cloud, Aisha ɹnally did what
any teenage girl would do. She cried. And if there was a
touch of hyperbole to her account of those tears, that
was understandable under the circumstances. As she put
it later, “I could not stop crying until I thought the
weeping would burst my liver.”