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Messenger, do please lend a

careful ear. Your monophilia ,

your one one one, ain’t for Jahilia .

Return to sender .

“They mock us everywhere, and you call us dangerous,” he cried.

Now Hamza looks worried. “You never worried about their opinions before. Why now? Why after speaking to Simbel?”

Mahound shakes his head. “Sometimes I think I must make it easier for the people to believe.”

An uneasy silence covers the disciples; they exchange looks, shift their weight. Mahound cries out again. “You all know what has been happening. Our failure to win converts. The people will not give up their gods. They will not, not.” He stands up, strides away from them, washes by himself on the far side of the Zamzam well, kneels to pray.

“The people are sunk in darkness,” says Bilal, unhappily. “But they will see. They will hear. God is one.” Misery infects the four of them; even Hamza is brought low. Mahound has been shaken, and his followers quake.

He stands, bows, sighs, comes round to rejoin them. “Listen to me, all of you,” he says, putting one arm around Bilal’s shoulders, the other around his uncle’s. “Listen: it is an interesting offer.”

Unembraced Khalid interrupts bitterly: “It is a tempting deal.” The others look horrified. Hamza speaks very gently to the water—carrier. “Wasn’t it you, Khalid, who wanted to fight me just now because you wrongly assumed that, when I called the Messenger a man, I was really calling him a weakling? Now what? Is it my turn to challenge you to a fight?”

Mahound begs for peace. “If we quarrel, there’s no hope.” He tries to raise the discussion to the theological level. “It is not suggested that Allah accept the three as his equals. Not even Lat. Only that they be given some sort of intermediary, lesser status.”

“Like devils,” Bilal bursts out.

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