When the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was born in Makkah, there was a custom among the families of the city. They would send their babies to live for a while with kind mothers out in the desert, where the air was clean and fresh, and where children grew up strong and learned to speak the most beautiful Arabic.
Every year, mothers from the desert tribe of Banu Sa'd would ride into Makkah to each take home a baby to care for. The city families would pay them, and that money helped the desert families, who were often poor.
That year, a gentle woman named Halima came with the other mothers. Times were very hard for her family. When the women heard about baby Muhammad ﷺ, they also heard a whisper: his father had passed away before he was born. An orphan baby, they thought. His family will not be able to pay us much. So one by one, the mothers passed him by. One by one, they chose other babies. Soon every mother had a baby in her arms, except Halima. And the only baby left in all of Makkah was Muhammad ﷺ.
Halima did not want to ride home with empty arms while all her friends had babies. And her husband said something wise and kind: take the orphan. Perhaps Allah will bless us through him.
So Halima lifted the little one nobody had chosen, held him close, and carried him home to the desert. And do you know what happened? The blessings began at once, like rain after a dry summer. Their old goat, which had stopped giving milk long ago, suddenly gave milk again, plenty of it! Their tired old riding animal became the fastest in the whole caravan. Everywhere this baby went, goodness followed, because Allah was with him.
Halima loved him so much that when it was time to return him, she asked his mother again and again: please, let him stay a little longer! And so the little Prophet ﷺ grew up for a while in the desert, under the wide open sky, playing with Halima's children, including her daughter Shaima, who carried him on her back like a big sister does.
Now, here is the part that might make your heart glow. Many, many years later, when the Prophet ﷺ was a grown man and leader of the believers, an old woman came walking to see him. He looked up, and he knew her at once. It was Halima. And what did he do? He stood right up for her, took off his own cloak, and spread it on the ground for her to sit on, like a throne for a queen. The baby nobody chose had become the most beloved man in Arabia, and he never, ever forgot the woman who chose him when no one else would.
He remembered Shaima too. When they met again after many years, he welcomed his desert sister with honor and gifts and sent her home happy.
So tonight, remember little Muhammad ﷺ, sleeping under the desert stars, watched over by Allah the whole time. And remember Halima, whose one act of kindness came back to her, soft and warm as a cloak spread upon the ground.