Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets — Page 213
MUHAMMAD : SEAL OF THE PROPHETS 213 not their scorn be worse than all? Haply the time may come and you may yet obtain your revenge. As for me, I will touch no oil, neither approach my wife, until I shall have gone forth again to fight with Muhammad. ’ It was this savage pride, which so long p revented their sending to Medina for the ransom of their captive kinsmen. A month elapsed thus and then they could refrain no longer. The wild cry of long - stilled grief burst forth at last from the whole city. In almost every house there were tears and wailing for the captive and the dead. This lasted an entire month. One house alone was silent. ‘Why sheddest thou no tears,’ said they to Hind, wife of Abu Sufyan, ‘why weep not for thy father Utba, thine uncle also, and thy brother?’ ‘Nay,’ replied Hind, ‘I will not weep until ye again wage war with Muhammad and his fellows. If te ars could wipe the grief from off my heart, I too would weep as ye; but it is not thus with Hind. ’ To mark her sullen sorrow, she forswore to use oil for her hair, or to go near the bed of Abu Sufyan, until an army should march forth against Medina. The blind and aged Aswad had lost two sons and a grandson in the battle. Like the rest of Quraish, he sternly repressed his grief; but as days rolled on he longed to give vent to his feelings. One night, he heard the wild notes of a female wailing, and he said to his servant, ‘Go see, it may be that Quraish have begun to wail for their dead; perchance I, too, may wail for my sons; for grief consumed me within. ’ The servant returned, saying that it was the voice of a woman lamenting for her strayed camel. On this the old man gave way to a burst of beautiful and impassioned poetry: ‘Doth she weep for her camel, and for it banish sleep from her