The Tiger Claw

  Kabir never thought when Rivkin attended the first ceremony, in 1946, that he would come every year. But he did. Always entered just when Kabir was mentally preparing his eulogy. Always stood at the back, never took a chair. Always left early. Kabir hadn’t spoken to him since they met at the restaurant on the rue de Sèvres.

  “Why does he come?” whispered Zaib in his left ear, auburn hair licking the shoulders of her navy blue cloak. “Noor was never really going to marry him, for heaven’s sake.”

  “He thinks she was going to marry him,” said Angela in his right.

  Zaib sniffed. “If she had really wanted to marry him, wouldn’t she have done so years before the war?”

  Leave my sister alone—Zaib didn’t know about that. Zaib, younger than Noor and himself, could no longer imagine the times, sixty years ago, when it was his and Uncle Tajuddin’s duty to arrange Noor’s marriage. Since no one ever suggested an arranged marriage for Zaib, and Kabir had married Angela despite the explicit disapproval of every Indian family member including old Uncle Tajuddin, Zaib probably didn’t remember Kabir having anything to do with approval or disapproval of Noor’s fiancé. The very idea was anachronistic in modern Europe, an immigrant practice. And as for giving permission—why, many women of Noor’s station in India didn’t need permission to marry these days.

  Zaib, Kabir noted, had conveniently forgotten her own role in ridding Noor of Rivkin’s bastard.

  So long ago—why dig it up now?

  The annual commemoration ceremony was Kabir’s reparation to Noor; no one should mar it. Certainly not Rivkin.

  “Ignore him, he’ll leave soon,” he murmured to Angela.

  But he kept an eye on Rivkin as the ceremony began.

  The mayor of Suresnes drew aside a length of purple velvet, unveiling a plaque resting on an easel. He read, “Mémorial Noor. Ici habitait Noor Inayat Khan …” He dedicated the plaque destined to be mounted on the gatepost and placed a wreath beneath.

  Then came Colonel Buckmaster, spry at eighty-five. He solemnly placed another wreath and smiled for the clicking cameras.

  People like Buckmaster and the official historians of the SOE were excellent at what they were paid to do after the war: proclaiming that all 1,499 agents betrayed by Gilbert were deplorably lax in basic security, that the exigencies of war necessitated recruitment of agents like Noor, “not overly gifted with brains,” excessively honest, and unfortunately incapable of the basic quality required of spies—prevarication.

  Now came old Miss Atkins, who, despite her years, remembered to mention that Noor had been awarded the Croix de Guerre by President de Gaulle and the George Cross by England in 1948.

  While she spoke, Kabir’s memory sped away in reverse, to the envelope that arrived from Germany in 1975—twenty years ago now—addressed in a hand he did not recognize. Inside, a letter from the retired governor of Pforzheim prison. The prison was being repaired. A bundle of papers had been found squirrelled away between two walls, the same where he had shown Kabir Noor’s scratched words. The prison authorities had contacted the governor, the governor had remembered Monsieur Khan from Paris.

  Oh, the flaky lightness of those fragments of onionskin! Kabir had spread them over a table by the window and raised the blind. Faded, minute writing, situating itself carefully between invisible parallel lines, her f’s and q’s making quick forays over the baseline and back, downstrokes angled back as if dissenting. Vessels in Kabir’s fingertips constricted as he imagined Noor’s pressure on the pen, her leaning deep into the paper.

  Could he but tap into the psychic source behind the pen, interpret hidden signs, he might one day understand the fragments better. He tried to find some beginning, searching for his own name or initials among the fragments. Surely, if Noor wrote, she’d write to him? Reordering the fragments, searching again: Zaib’s name, Mother’s … ? Only initials. There was an “A,” but she didn’t seem to be writing to Rivkin.

  Wafer-thin strips threatened to disperse and recombine. He found the largest and began to assemble the others around it. Love was the first word he pieced together, and though it took him weeks, months, some fragments did fall together. A foolish thing to do; her life might have been even shorter if the Germans had found those papers. What strange things she wrote—a woman’s hallucinations.

  Hindsight impeded Kabir’s empathy, raising questions Noor was not present to answer. If he had been in her stead, he might have been less foolhardy, made more compromises. Been less trusting. But the SOE had made Noor a character in a story, and hadn’t Noor loved stories? She’d walked right into their hands and become aleph-null, the first number past infinity.

  He had read Noor’s papers every year since, but he never had understood the whole. But what happened happened. Kabir should have enough faith to believe it happened just as Allah willed.

  Oh, but go back further: Kabir should never have introduced her to that blackguard Nick.

  Nick. The mayor, Colonel Buckmaster and Miss Atkins standing on the dais before him hadn’t mentioned Nick. Or how Major Nicholas Boddington came to Gilbert’s trial by the Free French and testified on his behalf for acquittal. Allah had not acquitted Gilbert as easily, however, sending him to living cremation while flying for Air Opium in Laos. There wasn’t a more terrible way to die.

  And neither the Colonel nor Miss Atkins mentioned names like Prosper, Archambault, Phono, or the sacrifice of so many lives for the sake of misinformation.

  And for the sake of a free Europe, one might say.

  The ambassador of India was mentioning his great pride that an Indian woman had been of use to the French resistance, cementing “ancient ties” between their two countries, ties that went back to a French treaty with Noor’s ancestor, the great Tipu Sultan. He carefully omitted mentioning Noor was Muslim, for she might then inspire other Muslims fighting Hindu fascism resurging in India.

  Then the British ambassador emphasized his great pride that an Indian woman had worked loyally for the British. The phrase “example to Indian women” recurred. He omitted to mention that Madeleine was considered a British colonial at the time, and had, over these fifty years, inspired a few English women as well.

  Someone lent an arm to help him up from his chair. Pir Kabir’s turn to speak. He mounted the three steps of the dais. As in past years, he was intensely aware of Rivkin’s presence.

  “Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Dachau’s liberation,” he said. “My brave sister, the first Sufi saint in the West, was martyred there … We have no other date on which to mourn, no body or grave at which to pay our respects. She was as za, the rarest letter in Arabic. Were it not for women like Noor, whose very name meant ‘light,’ we would live in a world corroded by a constant darkness of the soul. Join me in prayer now …”

  He drew his reading glasses from the pocket of his kaftan and began with the Al-Fatiha, then led the recitation of Surah 36: “In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Ya Sin. By the Qur’an, full of Wisdom, Thou art indeed one of the apostles, On a Straight Way …”

  He came to the twelfth verse: “Verily We shall give life to the dead, and We record that which they send before and that which they leave behind, and of all things have We taken account in a clear Book of Evidence …”

  He looked up, across the garden to the grotto where Abbajaan had placed his mantle on his ten-year-old shoulders and initiated Kabir as his successor. It came to him as he recited: the fifty years he’d lived between the dream in which he saw Noor writing his deeds in the Book of Judgement had been years of another man’s life, a life charted by Abbajaan’s dreams. Kabir had asserted himself after the war, assuring Uncle Tajuddin he was appreciated but that Kabir, Mother and Zaib would run Afzal Manzil and the Sainah Foundation themselves.

  Too late to wonder what shape a life of his own design might have taken.

  He continued all the way to the comfort of the fortieth verse: “It is not permitted to the Sun to catch up with the Moon, nor can the N
ight outstrip the Day: Each just swims along in its own orbit according to Law.”

  The surah reassured; the path itself would lead him to overcome himself and experience the Almighty. Perhaps he would never outstrip Abbajaan as a thinker, leader or dervish, but at least he followed the same tariqah as his father, the Sufi way.

  Dadijaan, Uncle and Mother were long in their graves, and perhaps Kabir had created his own orbit, slightly modified for his own times, just as Abbajaan had modified his practice of Islam—validating all paths in hope of integrating East and West, skimming over the dire consequences to unbelievers mentioned in this very surah. He had even followed Abbajaan’s practice of including women as carriers of his message of tolerance, though it was equally difficult for them to practice. Noor’s story had made the Sufi school quite famous, sacrosanct in spite of the anti-Muslim rhetoric of conservative and fascist French politicians, notably Monsieur Le Pen.

  He continued to the end, the eighty-third verse: “So glory to Him in whose hands is the dominion of all things: and to Him will ye be all brought back.”

  The mureeds broke into muted clapping. A representative from the U.S. embassy said a few words and presented Kabir with a tri-folded American flag.

  Then Zaib spoke of how loving and gentle was her sister Noor. She quoted Noor’s favourite verses from Tagore’s Gitanjali and her favourite Sufi tale, the Wayward Princess. Strange-sounding remarks after other speakers had described Noor’s role in sabotage operations, how she had fearlessly killed two Nazi soldiers, evaded the Gestapo for months and survived six weeks at the avenue Foch and ten months confined in chains on minimum rations. Kabir strained again to believe all this of Noor, his sister Noor.

  The dignitaries entered the house to be served cardamom chai, saffron kheer, wine, cheese and petits fours. Kabir returned to the lawn; mureeds from many nations stood awaiting his blessing.

  He had become what his followers wanted him to be, and brought comfort where he could. No more solitary quests for confirmations of faith; the community his father left him to guide was his responsibility. A woman came before him from the queue and said her son committed suicide three years ago. He placed his hands on her forehead with confidence after all these years, the way Abbajaan used to, and turned to the next follower, a man who confided that his daughter was mentally ill.

  And there was still time. Time enough to make his private connection with the Divine before the Day of Judgement.

  A tall figure approached the memorial plaque. Rivkin hadn’t departed early this time.

  Long, slim fingers touched the embossed inscription, as if reading Braille. The hand that could no longer play the piano rested in Rivkin’s pocket.

  Fifty years … maybe silence can be, should be, broken after fifty years.

  Kabir motioned to his followers to go ahead. His ochre kaftan swept the lawn. “I’m glad you came,” he said to Rivkin. “You look well.” And almost added, “by the Grace of Allah.”

  The older man leaned his cane against a chair and took his hand from his pocket. “It’s time I showed you something,” he said.

  Misshapen fingers opened, revealing a packet of yellowed tissue paper.

  “You asked once how I survived when so many did not,” Rivkin continued, as if there had been no intermission between their conversation at the restaurant on the rue de Sèvres in 1945 and this moment. “Look. See this—”

  He unwrapped the packet and there, lying on the tissue, was a gold chain and a pale, curved charm, a tiger claw enframed in gold. That of his long-gone Dadijaan, the grandmother who so loved Noor. And it came—for luck and courage—from his ancestor, Tipu Sultan. And that chain—the one he bought for Noor from his first earnings as a pilot. The last time he saw Noor, in London, she was wearing them.

  He looked up at Rivkin.

  “Someone brought this to me in the camp at Drancy, the night before I was deported. I don’t know how or at what cost Noor sent it. I thrust it between the layers of bandages on my hand and held it close all the way to Auschwitz. Read it. Read what she wrote on the tissue.”

  Kabir put on his glasses and leaned closer to the faded ink. Je t’aime, toujours, he read. Beneath it, the word Adieu—struck out. And on the third line, Au Revoir.

  Maybe the Au Revoir was not from Noor. It could have been written by Rivkin himself, desire turning to fantasy. But no. The writing—definitely Noor’s. And Vogel had said Noor wrote to someone whose name began with “A.”

  “When I believed I had no one, nothing to live for, I felt her love, her spirit urging me to live.”

  Rivkin rewrapped the tiger claw. With that pendant in Rivkin’s hand, Kabir and Zaib could no longer say that Noor never loved him, that pity for a Jew had moved Noor to associate with him. Resting in Rivkin’s hand, it became instead proof of a love so great she would brave a world war to reach him, a love that had outlasted Vichy and the German Raj. Kabir had never given or received such love.

  Deep blue eyes, young in Rivkin’s gaunt, lined face, met Kabir’s.

  “I told you I would tell you someday.”

  Revenge by silence. For fifty years Rivkin had kept this trace of Noor to himself, for himself.

  “Why did you not show this to me all these years?” Kabir’s voice sounded accusing. But he had no right to be accusing. He hadn’t asked Rivkin for his interpretation of Noor’s papers or offered a glimpse of them in twenty-five years.

  “You might have asked it from me,” said Rivkin.

  This being true, there was nothing Kabir could find to say.

  Maybe the time had come to tell Rivkin about Noor’s papers, if only to share a memory of Noor.

  “Will you join us for tea?” he asked, as if a ritual cup of shared cardamom chai could help them begin anew.

  Rivkin shook his head and returned the tiger claw to his pocket. “It’s a little late for that,” he said.

  Light faded over Mont Valérien.

  Nothing finishes, thought Kabir. It’s fifty years and he hasn’t forgotten.

  But then, how can he?

  Rivkin hadn’t shared the tiger claw with Kabir; Kabir wouldn’t share Noor’s papers with him. Yes, it really was too late now—Rivkin’s stooped figure was already receding, crippled fingers hidden in his coat pocket.

  In these fifty years, explanations of Noor’s actions had multiplied, amoebic in their overlappings. Myths were stretched to clothe the first skeletal narrations: Noor was the colonial spy fighting bravely for the mother country. Then Jeanne d’Arc on a mission to crown de Gaulle her king. After Renée Garry’s trial she became a female Jesus, betrayed for ten thousand francs without the Judas kiss. Later still, after half the SOE files were destroyed in a fire, some information surfaced: she was a doomed spy, an innocent, slaughtered for the unworthy cause of imperialism; very naive, extremely idealistic. People debated in print and Parliament if Madeleine was braver than other agents or a trusting, unwitting pawn. No wonder Noor had been captured, they said—she had ignored security procedure by returning to Suresnes. They tut-tutted that she had been captured with her code books, as if no other wireless operator was ever arrested with code books in hand; that she’d asked for her valise from Madame Aigrain’s home and caused the arrest of Émile Garry, as if no other agent took a suitcase to prison. That salaud Vogel, now a retired bank clerk in Munich, was asked his opinion, interviewed several times to answer if Noor had failed as a soldier or had succeeded by failing.

  The whole damn war of competing nationalisms was the first failure.

  If Mother were still alive, she would have invented a common version of Noor’s story and assigned it to her children for the telling—but she was not, and Kabir had spent years speculating about Noor’s possible motivations at every step. Today, Rivkin had presented proof Kabir could not refute, proof that changed Noor’s story yet again.

  The actress Odile Hoogstraten and her husband Louis de Grémont were sitting under the trees deep in conversation with Josianne Prénat and her fourth
husband. And there was Monique, survivor of Ravensbrück, whose husband, Émile Garry, had been executed yet who came every year to commemorate Noor.

  Monique brought Renée Garry to mind. Renée Garry, whose husband Guy had returned in time for the shock of attending his wife’s trial. By the time Kabir found it in himself to meet the acquitted Renée, she was a grandmother of ten, but having learned of Noor’s Indian heritage during her trial, spent the entire meeting lecturing Kabir about overpopulation in India. When she heard Kabir now had two sons, she began lecturing on Muslim overpopulation in France. And she who had run a safe house for resistants had become proud to mention she’d voted for fascist Le Pen.

  Renée Garry must live with her deeds, Kabir with his.

  Other guests had gone inside, so Kabir followed. Thanks to Zaib, every corner of Afzal Manzil was decorated with vases full of Noor’s favourite forget-me-nots and burning scented candles.

  In Abbajaan’s recital room, guests greeted him, bowing. A woman took her seat cross-legged on a carpet, drew a veena before her. Her zikr rose over the drone of the veena as if she were breathing through sound. Zaib’s idea too, no doubt—it wasn’t his.

  Too reminiscent of Noor.

  More would happen. What was yet to be written would supplement the spoken stories, the spoken would bring sound to the written, and memory would twine itself about the stronger of the two. Truth was buried somewhere in and between the scraps of Noor’s words, truth as only she knew it. But Pir Kabir Khan would tell the story of Noor the rest of his days. Re-create Noor that she might live on in the world’s memory.

  Imagine that.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE SUPPORT and contributions of many people brought this book into being.

  In France, I thank members of the extended family of Noor Inayat Khan for their hospitality, hours of discussion, and correspondence. To Anne Freyer of Editions du Seuil France, my gratitude for her encouragement, travel companionship to Le Mans and guidance as the book matured. My thanks to Florence Libert for her coordination of travel and research interviews, and translation assistance. Thanks for the kind assistance of Madame Semence, librarian at L’École Agronomique de Grignon, the personal memories and research of Madame Vanderwynckt, the guidance of Monsieur Trouvé and the memories imparted by Monsieur de Ganay.