Spy Princess (7 page)

In the summer of 1937, when Noor was going through a particularly difficult period with her fiancé, Vilayat took her to Switzerland in the hope that a holiday would take her mind off her problems. In Switzerland, as with all parts of Europe, there were Sufi families they could stay with. They travelled to Geneva and Zurich, toured the Swiss lakes and mountains, went climbing and skiing and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Vilayat was pleased to see Noor having such an enjoyable holiday, and later recalled that it was probably the happiest time they had ever spent together.
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Brother and sister rented bicycles to explore the countryside. They would pause, lie on a mountainside, watch the clouds go by and talk about the future. Vilayat told Noor that he hoped she would finally break off her engagement and put the past behind her. He felt the relationship was draining her. Noor had come close to a breakdown – she was often tearful and could not cope with any stress or criticism. Vilayat tried to get his sister to take life a little easier, and warned her not to carry the burdens of the world on her shoulders. He felt this was sapping her of her vitality and creativity.

In Switzerland, Noor went rowing on the lake in Geneva. It brought back memories of her father. She understood how the peace and quiet of the lake must have inspired him to start a Sufi centre there. She met many of her father’s disciples and thought of his work and teachings a great deal. She even sang some of his songs to the children of other
mureeds
and was delighted to see how much it calmed them and put them to sleep. In the tranquil lakes and mountains of Switzerland she felt close to her father. She remembered how he would put her on his knees and say: ‘When Abba’s love is there, what fear is there?’
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She felt these words were like a consolation to her from him. Many years later, when she was incarcerated in a German cell, her father’s words would console her again.

The Swiss trip certainly helped cheer Noor up. Back home in Paris, she felt energised once again and now decided to take on another venture. She felt she was forgetting her Hindi and decided to relearn it. Vilayat and Noor began taking lessons at the Berlitz school and Noor also joined the École des Langues Orientales of the University of Paris, where she studied Hindi for two years. In the summer of 1938 she sat her exams at the university and got her
licence
(degree) in child psychology.

With university behind her, Noor had to decide what to do next. The decision was not as straightforward for her as it might have been for the typical student. The Inayat Khan family had not been brought up in the expectation that they would take up traditional jobs. So despite her qualifications, Noor did not apply for a teaching post or try to become a professional musician. She was still engaged to Goldberg, despite Vilayat’s attempts to get her to break off her relationship with him. Noor had a stubborn streak, in that she would only do what she wanted to do, and she still hoped that her family would come round to accepting her fiancé.

To visitors who flooded through the gates of Fazal Manzil for the summer school, Noor gave the impression of being a shy, reclusive girl. She never spoke at the meetings which were often chaired by Vilayat and sometimes went for walks by herself in the evenings. Often she could be heard playing the harp by herself.

The family friend Baroness van Tuyll, who had invited her for her first holiday, now made her a proposal. Baroness van Tuyll was an illustrator of children’s books and worked under the professional name of Henriette Willebeek le Mair. She suggested to Noor that she work on an English translation of the Jataka Tales, a collection of about 500 stories and fables about the previous incarnations of the Buddha, which had always fascinated Noor as a child. Noor got to work immediately and chose twenty stories from the book.

She began waking up at six in the morning and writing continuously till around nine. Producing the book gave her a new purpose in life and she immersed herself in the stories of bravery, loyalty and sacrifice that she was translating. Afterwards she would come downstairs and tackle the mundane household tasks with renewed energy. Once she had submitted the manuscript she went for a holiday to the van Tuylls again and spent the winter with them. She studied the Koran and the Bible. She also continued her Hindi lessons and wanted to learn the Devanagari script saying it would help her in learning Sanskrit. The baroness taught her to play the veena, the instrument that Inayat Khan had played, and Noor spent a few happy months practising it.
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Noor was becoming established as a writer. In 1938 she wrote for the children’s page of the
Sunday Figaro
and soon became one of their regular contributors. Her stories – usually about magical creatures and nature – were greatly appreciated by the paper. Noor had an endearing style that immediately drew in young readers.

‘Amongst the nymphs who lived on a high mountain slope was a little one who talked and talked and jabbered and chattered, even more than the crickets in the grass, and more than the sparrows in the trees. Her name was Echo,’ wrote Noor in her short story ‘Echo’. In another short story called ‘Perce-neige’ (Snowdrop) her protagonist was the daughter of ‘Great Sun’, a pretty little thing with ‘sun-ray hair and sky blue eyes’ who came down to earth to explore the big world. In both the stories, the bubbly characters spread joy all around, but were later called upon to make a sacrifice – a theme that seemed to run through many of Noor’s works.

Noor wrote prolifically, filling page after page with stories. She would always write in both English and French and often sketch as she went along. She wrote alone in her room, late into the night, and it seems that the fantasy world of her stories took her away from the troubles of Fazal Manzil and her unhappy engagement.

Noor’s stories and poems started taking on a happier tone, perhaps reflecting her pleasure in her newfound success as a writer. On the home front things began to improve as Amina Begum emerged from her phase of depression and the family began to settle down into a more regular routine.

In 1938, the poem Noor wrote for her mother’s birthday reflected her own sunny mood at the time. The poems also show her own childlike innocence, even though she was twenty-four by this stage.

A little fairy told me why the flowers wake in May

She said: ‘It’s for the birthday of a little Ora Ray

The sun, they say, is jealous of her lovely golden hair

The flowers look their sweetest just to try and be as fair.’

By the middle of 1939, Noor was at last beginning to realise that her relationship with Goldberg was going nowhere. A wealthy Dutch Sufi aristocrat, Peter Yohannes Eekhout Jonheer, had been showing an interest in Noor for some time. But Noor had rejected his advances because of her relationship with Goldberg. Peter Yohannes then entered the diplomatic service and left for India where he was based in Calcutta. Persuaded by Vilayat, Noor now decided to give the relationship with Peter Yohannes a chance. But they had no money to pay the fare to India.

Noor and Vilayat paid a visit to Mahmood’s grandmother, who was related to Peter Yohannes, and told her they would like to visit Calcutta. Madam van Goens was delighted at the prospect of them going to India and meeting her nephew, but did not realise that the brother and sister had actually come to suggest that she finance the trip as well. Vilayat and Noor were too shy to ask for money outright, so the matter was dropped, along with the chance of Noor accepting the proposal of Peter Yohannes, which may have changed the course of her life.
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Noor’s career as a children’s writer was flourishing by now. Her beautifully illustrated story ‘Ce qu’on entend quelquefois dans les bois …’ (What One Hears Sometimes in the Woods) received pride of place on the children’s page of
Le Figaro
on 13 August 1939. Noor’s stories were also broadcast on the Children’s Hour of Radio Paris, and received good reviews.

She wrote articles based on Indian and Greek legends, and articles about women singers like the Indian poet and singer Mira Bai and Emma Nevada and her daughter Mignon Nevada. Both the articles on Mira Bai and Emma Nevada were inspirational stories about devotion, love and sacrifice, themes close to Noor’s heart. She began adapting French and Nordic folklore and wrote stories about Emperor Akbar and Charlemagne, adding history, myth and legend to her repertoire.

Just as Noor was establishing herself as a writer, the threat of war was hanging over Europe. On 15 March 1939 Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. By May, Germany and Italy had announced their formal alliance and German designs over Western Europe were becoming uncomfortably clear. Noor’s book
Twenty Jataka Tales
, with illustrations by Henriette Willebeek le Mair, was published in England by George G. Harrap in 1939. Noor’s reaction to the publication of her first book was unexpectedly understated.
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She was probably thinking about her father at the time. Ever since his death, no parties or joyful celebrations had been held at the family home.

At the same time, Noor was enthused by her first publishing success. She came up with the idea of publishing a children’s newspaper, and worked on it with the famous journalist Alexis Danan of
Paris Soir
. She wanted to call it
Bel Age
(The Beautiful Age), and had collected some material for it including illustrations by her neighbour Madame Pinchon. Danan was fascinated by the dazzling engravings of trees and fairies and the accompanying text, which he described as a ‘genius of narration’. Noor’s story was an oriental legend for children with fairies and creatures of the forest.
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But events in Europe were soon to overtake the budding writer. On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland and on 3 September, Great Britain, France, New Zealand and Australia declared war on Germany (France did so rather reluctantly, being more or less dragged into it by Britain). The reaction at Fazal Manzil was one of complete panic. Noor was so involved with her writing and her brothers and sister so immersed in their studies and music school that they had not really been following the events in Europe. They never listened to the news on the radio and the political developments had passed them by. The thought of another war in Europe now filled them with gloom and anxiety.

The first few months of the war saw little change in Paris, hence it was dubbed the ‘phoney war’ or the
Sitzkrieg
(the sitting war) as opposed to the
Blitzkrieg
(the lightning war). Alexis Danan told Noor it would be impossible to go ahead with the children’s newspaper at this time. It was unlikely that there would be any interest in such a thing in the middle of the war. He was also concerned that the project she had in mind was so beautiful that it would be very expensive to produce and hence quite unaffordable by youngsters. All plans for
Bel Age
were stalled. Noor’s radio and newspaper work also suffered because of the war as there was less space for children’s stories.

To Noor, the ideology of the Nazis and their pogrom against the Jews was fundamentally repulsive and opposed to all the principles of religious harmony that she had been brought up with by her father. She was Muslim by birth but she had loved a Jewish man, and Noor felt the urge to do something to help the war effort. Her first thought was nursing, and she and Claire signed up for a training course in Nursing and First Aid with the Union des Femmes de France (the French Red Cross). Here the sisters learnt the basics of nursing and first aid so as to be able to help when the time came. When the war began, Noor and Claire remained at work till the hospital was evacuated and they were cut off from the unit.

At this time, Noor also made a significant decision about her personal life. After years of emotional conflict, she finally broke off her engagement with Goldberg. She told Madame Prénat, her closest confidante, that she did so because she wanted to be free to go into action or serve as a nurse on the front line if the need arose.
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On the afternoon of 4 June 1940, as the German guns pointed towards France, Noor and Vilayat sat down on a sofa near the big window in the living room of Fazal Manzil. Outside they could see Paris stretching out below them. They had to take an important decision.

They had been brought up as Sufis, with the principle of non-violence firmly entrenched in them. Inayat Khan had taught them about Gandhi and his methods of peaceful protest in the freedom struggle. Many of the
mureeds
thought their first responsibility lay towards the movement. But brother and sister were confused. On the one hand they knew that war meant death and destruction, on the other they had seen the Germans’ activities at first hand.

‘If an armed Nazi comes to your house and takes twenty hostages and wants to exterminate them, would you not be an accomplice in these deaths, if you had the opportunity to kill him (and thereby prevent these deaths) but did not do so because of your belief in non-violence?’ Vilayat asked Noor. ‘How can we preach spiritual morality without participating in preventive action? Can we stand by and just watch what the Nazis are doing?
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They knew that they could not stand by, and so they decided to act to ‘thwart the aggression of the tyrant’.
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Noor and Vilayat decided they would go to England and join the war effort. Vilayat would join the services and Noor would volunteer to help in whatever way she could, nursing or services. They went up to tell the rest of the family of their plans, feeling immensely relieved that they had come to a decision at last.

Hidayat was the only one who was married and he said he would take his wife and children to the south of France where he would help the Resistance. The uncles would also stay behind. Noor and Vilayat would take Claire and their mother with them to England. Hidayat would drive them as far as Tours. They decided they would have to leave at once since the roads would be thronging with other people getting out of the city.