Spy Princess

by Shrabani Basu

  London in the war years was a hard environment for the family. Having drawn capacity audiences in Moscow and Paris, Inayat Khan now faced half-empty halls for the first few months. Everyone was preoccupied with the war. Noor was to spend the first few years of her life in considerable poverty and hardship. Yet her father’s spirit, his calmness and meditative outlook, clearly imbued her with strength.

  In London, Inayat Khan sang for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and brought tears to his eyes. He sang for Indian soldiers who lay injured in hospital and at charity concerts to raise funds for war widows. In June 1915 the Royal Musicians of Hindustan played in the opera Lakme and got good reviews.9

  But though Indians backed the war effort, the British government was suspicious of Inayat Khan and kept a close watch on him. Once at a charity concert for Indian widows and orphans, Inayat Khan was overcome by emotion and started to sing patriotic Indian songs reminding his countrymen of their glorious heritage. He received thunderous applause, which made the British even more wary. The invitations to charity concerts died out and the family was left with hardly any income.

  Musharraf Khan, in desperation, started looking for menial jobs as a road worker and Maheboob Khan started giving private lessons. Mohammed Khan accepted music hall engagements singing European arias and ballads. Amina Begum found it hard to run the large household. Coming from an affluent family herself it was particularly difficult for her. She also discovered to her dismay the prejudice against mixed marriages in British society and got rid of her veil as she felt it aroused unnecessary attention. The family survived on a meagre ration of plain rice and daal every day. There were days when there was only bread on the table.

  Inayat Khan remained calm through these trying times. He practised his veena and sang to Noor every day. The family at this time moved to 86 Ladbroke Road in London and it was at this address that Inayat founded the Sufi Order in England in the autumn of 1915. The movement’s symbol was a winged heart inscribed with the star and crescent. Soon there was more reason to celebrate. On 19 June 1916, a son was born to Inayat Khan and Amina Begum. They named him Vilayat, meaning Chief. He was given the title of Pirzade (son of the Pir). Noor called him bhaijaan (brother dear).

  Little Noor adored her baby brother. He soon became her closest friend, and would remain so throughout her life. Though poor, the children were brought up in an atmosphere of loving warmth. Their earliest memories were of their father carrying them in his arms and singing them to sleep. Sometimes when they could not sleep at nights, he would sit down by their bed and sing to them. Often the children lay awake just to hear his songs. Inayat Khan believed that children of this age were so sensitive that they could feel the warmth of his music as he sang to them. He himself had been taught by Maula Baksh about the effect of music on the body and its role in maintaining health through resonance and rhythm.10 He would never allow the children to be woken abruptly and often sang softly to wake them up.

  Meanwhile, the war had a deep impact on Inayat Khan and he was very disturbed by the constant death and devastation. He tried to help people by simply talking about death and focusing their minds on prayer and brotherhood to make their suffering more bearable. In the difficult years in London, Inayat Khan became a murshid (teacher) himself, travelling and lecturing. Chapters of the Sufi Order were set up in 1916 in Brighton and in Harrogate in 1917. Gradually the halls started filling up as people sought spiritual answers during the war years.

  In 1917 the family moved into a large house in 1 Gordon Square financed by the Sufis. Over the years two more children were born to Inayat Khan and Amina Begum: Hidayat, a boy, and Khair-un-nisa, a girl. Inayat called his second daughter Mamuli (mother’s child). To Noor, Vilayat was bhaijaan, Hidayat was bhaiyajaan, and Khair was Mamuli or Mams. Noor, little more than a toddler herself, mothered them all.

  The family spent happier times in Gordon Square. Though money was still scarce, the house was buzzing with activity and the four children kept Amina Begum’s hands full. Noor was a delicate child, dreamy and sensitive. When she heard that children in Russia had nothing to eat she took it to heart, although she was only four. She began demanding chocolates from the adults, and as soon as she got one she would leave the room. Later her parents found she had a big box full of chocolates in her room, which she was collecting for the Russian children.

  Noor would play with Vilayat in the Square and believed that she had seen fairies there. She even told her family that she talked to the little creatures who lived in the flowers and bushes. They did not question her, but the children in the neighbourhood did. They laughed at Noor’s tales of fairies and it upset her so much that she stopped seeing fairies after that. Even when Noor grew up she loved fairies and would often sketch them in cards and write about them in stories.

  The children lived in a somewhat unreal world. The house was full of visiting Sufis and they were often left to themselves. One day a child came and told Noor and Vilayat that Santa Claus did not exist. This upset both children and they rushed to their father and asked him for the truth. Inayat told them: ‘When something exists in the imagination of anybody, you can be sure there is a plane on which it has real existence.’11 All of which probably meant nothing to the two children, but both felt they had been told something very profound and left feeling quite elated.

  As the guns of war were silenced in Europe, the family settled in to life in London. But the Home Office was still suspicious of Inayat Khan. The fact that Inayat Khan had met Mahatma Gandhi and nationalist leaders like Sarojini Naidu made them keep him under supervision. Nationalism was growing in the overseas Indian community at this time as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre12 in Amritsar had had a strong impact on all Indians. Inayat Khan’s friend, the poet Rabindranath Tagore, had returned his knighthood in protest.

  Some Muslim friends of Inayat Khan invited him to preside over the Anjuman Islam, a committee to bring Muslims and non-Muslims together. But a member of the society sent out letters to collect money for a charity for Muslim orphans without registering the society and the Anjuman Islam became the subject of a police investigation. It was eventually cleared of shady dealings but the ill-feelings remained. Inayat Khan’s house and movements were watched.

  A faithful mureed in Southampton, Miss Dowland, advised him to leave England. She sent him money to tide over the financial crisis. Another mureed in South Africa also sent them money to relocate and a third devotee offered them his empty summer house in Tremblaye, a village in France.

  In the spring of 1920, the family of Inayat Khan prepared to move once again. Vilayat was only four at the time. All he remembered was the small boat and how everyone was seasick.13 Noor was just six, clinging to her mother and her younger brothers and sister as the family crossed the Channel again. Inayat held his veena and looked out at the sea. The war in Europe was over. He wondered what the future would hold for his young family.

  TWO

  Fazal Manzil

  Noor and her family soon settled into their house in the small village of Tremblaye, north of Paris. Vilayat remembered it as a damp place with no heating and no food. Tremblaye was hardly a place to give Indian concerts and soon the family were once again in dire financial straits.

  Inayat Khan left his wife and children behind and travelled to Geneva where some Sufi disciples helped him with generous donations. By now Hazrat Inayat Khan was an established murshid and everywhere he went, his mureeds helped him set up centres. The family struggled through the winter alone but early in 1921 Inayat Khan returned to Tremblaye and took them to Wissous, another small town to the south of Paris. The family enjoyed better days in Wissous. The house belonged to a naval officer and stood on the edge of the village overlooking fields. Inayat would meditate in the garden early in the morning while the children played around him. Later, he would play the veena and sing. At Wissous, Hazrat Inayat Khan held a summer camp for his close followers. In the evening the mureeds would gather in the large living room. The brothers played t
heir instruments and there was an atmosphere of tranquillity.

  In the spring of 1922, one of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s devoted mureeds, a rich Dutch widow named Madame Egeling, offered to buy a house for the family. One day, as Inayat Khan and his disciples were walking in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, they decided to cross the river and climb the hill at Suresnes. Suddenly, a large house surrounded by trees caught Inayat Khan’s attention. ‘It must be here!’ he exclaimed.1 The house, luckily, was for sale. Situated a few miles from the centre of Paris, near the Longchamps racecourse, it was perfect for the family. From the upper windows one could see the lights of the city and the Eiffel Tower in the distance, and on a clear day there was a view of Sacré Coeur and the Seine winding down towards the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

  Inayat Khan called the house Fazal Manzil (the House of Blessing), and as far as Noor was concerned it would live up to its name, because she spent many happy years there. The house was surrounded by a walled garden and trees, and Noor specially loved sitting with her brothers and sister on the flight of stairs outside the house and gazing at the city spreading out below. Like Inayat when he had been young, Vilayat and Hidayat were naturally playful and loved climbing the trees around the house. If the mureeds expressed surprise at how naughty the boys were, Inayat Khan would say, ‘I was worse,’ remembering how he used to run wild in the house in Baroda.2

  The four children, their parents and their three uncles settled comfortably into the large house. In summer it would overflow with visitors as the Sufi summer school was held there for three months. Inayat Khan invited the elderly Madame Egeling to come and stay with them and she helped educate the children and looked after the house. She remained a faithful mureed till the end.

  Hidayat remembered on one occasion going to Paris with his father to buy yellow curtains for the living room. Inayat Khan would often buy an antique object that reminded him of the East: a lamp or a Moroccan rug. It was difficult for him to forget India and he filled the house with things that reminded him of the land of his birth. Though their mother was American, the children grew up very much in an Indian atmosphere. Noor would dress her brothers and sisters in Indian clothes and the four children would often perform short plays. She particularly enjoyed wearing a sari and dressing her brothers up in bright turbans. The children loved playing on the grounds of Fazal Manzil and the green in front of the house. At home the children spoke to each other in English. Since Inayat Khan and his brothers spoke to each other in Hindi, the children could follow some Hindi and Urdu as well.

  It was at Fazal Manzil that Inayat Khan started the practice of Universal Worship, a ceremony where all the religions of the world would be honoured. Inayat Khan always believed in the oneness of religions; as a child he had an equal fascination for both Hinduism and Islam and studied both. Now he formalised the belief. The service was held in the large living room of Fazal Manzil where candles and incense sticks would be lit. The children would sometimes listen to the service with fascination. The idea of tolerance of all religions would stay with Noor all her life and motivate her actions in the future.

  On Saturday, Inayat Khan would sit on the roof of Fazal Manzil and meditate all day. He would go into a trance and two men would have to support him to help him down. As a child Noor would watch, captivated. ‘Have you seen Abba’s eyes?’ she asked Vilayat one day.3 Her brother noticed that she would have tears in her eyes when she saw her father in a trance.

  Inayat Khan remained at heart a musician. He taught his children Indian music and often questioned them about the ragas. Noor always listened attentively and answered his questions. She also wrote down the words of the songs in both English and Urdu (she wrote the Urdu words in Roman script as she was not familiar with the Urdu script).

  Inayat found it difficult to scold his children, so he had his own way of disciplining them if they were naughty. He would hold court on the steps and would never allow the children to denounce each other.4 He would ask why they had been naughty and if they agreed that they had done wrong. He would then ask them if they thought they should be punished. The punishments involved running around the garden ten times or sitting in a corner, or not speaking for a few hours. Once a Dutch disciple related an amusing incident about the children. Some of them had been naughty and Inayat Khan called Noor to him and asked if she had been naughty too. She replied, ‘I wanted to, but my goodness prevented me’.5

  The family ate together at mealtimes but the children were expected to sit in silence. They felt the discipline was part of their father’s love for them and did not mind. After finishing work Inayat Khan would call the children to him, and they looked forward to these precious moments with their father.

  The children knew they had to share their father with the world. As Inayat Khan’s lecture schedules and engagements became more pressing, he hardly spent any time in Fazal Manzil except in the summer months when he was surrounded by his mureeds. He was a majestic figure with his golden robes and flowing beard, probably looking much older than his 40-odd years. The children would lie on the grass and watch him walk to the lecture hall. Vilayat said they could feel his presence reaching out to them.6

  Noor loved going to her father’s lectures. She remembered one at the Musée Guimet in Paris which impressed her very much, even though she was very young at the time. After the event, she threaded her way through the crowds to hear what people were saying about the lecture and then breathlessly recounted all that she had heard to her amused father.7 Her happiest moments were the ones she shared with him, listening to him talk or learning to sing from him. Then she would sit cross-legged in front of him, singing the notes after him as her father took her through the intricacies of Indian ragas.

  When he was not around, the children missed him a lot, but learned to live with it. Vilayat often wished he had a father like the other children in the school, but would soon dismiss the thought. Noor, on her part, would lock herself away in her own world, playing fantasy games and writing poems.

  When she was eight, Noor started school in the local Collège Moderne de Filles at Suresnes. School was not easy for Noor. The children did not know any French at this time (they spoke English at home). Now they had to take their lessons in French and converse with the other students. Hidayat remembers that it took a lot of courage to adapt to a French-speaking school.8 Some of the French students were not used to foreigners and the children faced problems on that score as well. Slowly they learnt the language and gradually became fluent in it, but even so the Inayat Khan family was always fairly conspicuous in the Paris suburb of Suresnes.

  Noor stood out from the other students because of her dark skin and hair. Slowly, she fought the isolation and made friends. She was always a quiet, dreamy child and soon endeared herself to the other girls. They even gave her a Good Comradeship award.9 However, coming from the background that she did, it was inevitable that she would be different from the other girls in both looks and manner. Though she played and chatted with them, she was in some ways more grown up and serious than they were.

  Later Noor’s younger sister, Khair, joined the same school and faced the same problems. She changed her name from Khair-un-nisa to Claire and preferred to be called this all her life. She was the quietest of the four siblings and, as the youngest, the most protected, so she suffered a lot in school when she was on her own.10 Noor, on the other hand, dealt with problems at school by living in her own world and creating a shell for herself.

  Despite her own troubles settling into school, Noor gradually made some good friends there. Her best friend at school was Raymonde Prénat, who remained close to Noor all her life. Raymonde was the second of three sisters, with a French father and a Spanish mother. Her family were neighbours of the Inayat Khans, and she and Noor spent a lot of time at each other’s houses. Madame Prénat developed a great deal of admiration for Noor, perceiving that she had enormous courage and determination despite her youth. On their birthdays the girls would give each other cakes d
ecorated with candles. Their birthdays were just six weeks apart and this made them closer still. Noor would always make a birthday card for Raymonde as well, and often wrote a little verse specially for her.

  As a child, Noor wrote poems and stories and made up little pieces of music which she would play on the piano to the amusement of her family. She had a high-pitched voice, which would become even higher when she was excited. Noor had learnt to read music from her father and started writing down Indian Sufi songs with western-style notation.

  She had always been creative. For their birthdays, her friends and family would get a card hand-painted by her with a little poem inside. She would write in both French and English (in French to friends like Raymonde and in English to her parents and siblings). At the age of eleven she wrote a poem in French called ‘La Violette’, which shows that at a young age she was already developing a certain style. The poem begins:

  Modeste et honnête

  Jolie petite violette

  Qui jette son beau parfum

  Dans mon petit jardin

  (Modest and honest

  Pretty little violet

  Who casts her lovely perfume

  In my small garden)

  Noor was a happy child, always smiling and ready to help others. Even at an early age, she always thought about those less privileged than her. In a Christmas poem written to Santa Claus, she wrote:

  Come bring bright shiny sunbeams

  To rejoice our happy home