The east wind continued to blow over the valley of Bakka, bringing each summer the dust of the red hills. Generations followed one another. Children were born under the same tents.
The old men told other stories. Little by little, the House of stone remained, but the voice that had raised it faded from memory. The trace of the building vanished from the songs, the pilgrims' gestures lost their meaning, leaving only the cold marble under the sun.
One day, a caravan chief named ʿAmr ibn Luhay took the northern road toward the land of Balqāʾ, in Syria. There, he saw men bowing before figures carved in rock. He returned to Bakka carrying on his mount a red stone statue named Hubal. He placed the idol at the heart of the empty temple.
Soon after, war divided the clans of the plain. Mudad ibn ʿAmr, the last chief of the , saw his warriors fall one after another under the arrows. His tents burned.
Before fleeing the valley under his enemies' arrows, he went to the Zamzam well.
He threw into the pit two solid gold gazelles, iron swords, and bronze armors. Then he rolled large limestone blocks into the chasm and leveled the red sand.
The water stopped flowing. The spring disappeared beneath the dry earth, and its location was forgotten by men. Three hundred and sixty statues of stone and wood surrounded the black Kaaba, their mute faces fixed on the empty courtyard.
Centuries later, a man slept in the sacred enclosure, in the shade of the wall. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib saw in a dream a silhouette pointing to the dry earth, between the two stone idols of the hill.
In the morning, he stood at that exact spot with his only son, al-Ḥārith. He drove his iron pick into the limestone mixed with sand. The metal struck a rigid obstacle.
He pushed aside the red dust. The two gold gazelles appeared, tarnished by the darkness of the earth, followed by the old swords. Beneath the precious metals, a dark and fresh mud moistened his fingers. Then clear water gushed forth again, filling the Zamzam well under the sun of Bakka.
The desert birds returned to drink at the hollow of the rock.
One winter night, silence enveloped the alleys of Mecca. In a small room with walls of raw brick, a woman named Āminah gave birth to a son.
The child was an orphan. His father, ʿAbdallāh, already lay beneath the sand of the north, dead before his birth. The mother took the newborn in her woolen arms. He was given the name .
Outside, the cold wind blew on the angles of the Kaaba. The constellations of shone in the black night, drawing their lines of fire above the mountains.
In the eighth year of the Hijra, a rumor of footsteps made the valley ground tremble. Ten thousand men entered the plain of Bakka under the morning light.
ﷺ advanced toward the temple on his white she-camel, al-Qaswāʾ. He held in his hand a polished wooden bow, his black cloak gliding over his shoulders. He circled the stone wall, then stopped before Hubal and the three hundred and sixty idols aligned in the dust.
He did not dismount. He raised his bow and pointed the end of the wood toward the chest of the red stone statue.
The statue wavered. For an instant, it seemed to resist on its limestone base.
Then it toppled, shattering on the courtyard slabs in a cloud of red dust. The man continued his gesture, pointing one by one at the painted wood figures and carved sandstone shapes. The statues fell one after another, shattering into pieces on the ground.
His voice rose, calm and clear in the plain:
"The truth has come," the man said. "Falsehood has vanished. For falsehood is bound to vanish."
Then dismounted. He crossed the wooden threshold and entered the empty House. Beneath the ceiling of dry beams, he raised his hands, his palms open toward the sky. The wind passed between the naked walls of the Kaaba.
The black temple was empty again. No stone face hid the wall built by and his son. The wind of the hollow entered without obstacle, sweeping the last debris of broken wood.
To the east, the newborn light struck the marker stone set in the angle. At the back of the courtyard, the clear water of Zamzam flowed in the stone basin.
The wind passed over the hill. No trace remained of the old footsteps.
Above the hills of Bakka, the same stars were already rising.
The words an old man had entrusted to the wind still turned in the ravines of Bakka.