Spy Princess (5 page)

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.
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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 decorated 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

Give each child their sweetest dreams

Then amidst sweet fairies roam

Then go to the poor shanty

To gladden each weary heart

Where everyone is hungry

Put on the table a tart.

When she was twelve, Noor fell in love for the first time. The object of her affections was Floris van Baron van Pallandt, the 17-year-old son of Dutch Sufi disciples who lived in Suresnes. The boy’s family were very close to Inayat Khan, and Noor’s father soon noticed that she would rush down the stairs to open the door whenever they came calling.
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Then the two youngsters would stand in the hall and talk. Floris was equally attracted to Noor but the relationship was not to last. The Inayat Khan family was a very conservative one and disapproved of Noor running down to open the door for guests. This job should properly be done by the staff in the house, and Inayat Khan reminded Noor about these formalities. Floris overheard him scolding Noor and took it to mean that Inayat Khan disapproved of the relationship. Following this misunderstanding, Floris withdrew his affections and the romance was soon over.

After the break-up with Floris, Inayat Khan started planning a match for Noor. Arranged marriages were the norm in Indian families. Inayat Khan wanted Noor to marry Alladutt Khan, the son of Ali Khan and grandson of Maula Baksh, who lived in Baroda.
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Though a cousin of Inayat Khan’s, Alladutt was much younger than him. Inayat Khan now encouraged Noor to write letters to his family. It would be improper for her to write directly to Alladutt, so she wrote to his parents. Slowly Noor began to accept the idea of marrying Alladutt when she came of age. The match was important for Inayat Khan in more than one way. Alladutt Khan, being the sole male heir of Maula Baksh, was very wealthy. His finances would have helped the Sufi movement and made Inayat Khan less dependent on his western
mureeds
. Also, it would give him the satisfaction of bringing all his brothers and cousins to the West, since Alladutt was the only one still residing in India.

Meanwhile Inayat Khan was still heavily involved in building the Sufi movement. While the children settled down to life in Paris, he travelled widely, establishing groups of disciples in England, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia and the United States. In 1925 Inayat Khan fell seriously ill on a trip to England. Though he was only forty-three, the strenuous travelling was taking its toll on him. After a trip to the USA in 1926, he felt that Sufi centres had been established successfully all over the West from Britain to the US and in many countries in Western Europe. Though he was detached from most things, Inayat Khan’s only worldly attachment was to the land of his birth. He had always missed India and now he decided to go back to the country he had left over a decade previously, even if it meant leaving behind his wife and children whom he loved deeply.

Noor was just twelve when Inayat Khan began his preparations to go to India. There was an air of finality in the preparations and somehow everyone knew he would not come back. Vilayat recalled later how he had a dream that he had to take his father to the train, but he lost him. He screamed in his sleep and woke up, and Inayat Khan rushed in to console him. ‘It’s all right,’ Inayat told his son.
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Vilayat begged him not to go. An astrologer had told Inayat Khan that the end of January 1927 would be a very dangerous period. Vilayat again pleaded with him to postpone his journey for a year. Inayat Khan took his son for a quiet walk in the garden, and told Vilayat that he would like him to follow in his footsteps.

That summer Fazal Manzil seemed to be shrouded in an atmosphere of gloom and foreboding. Noor watched as her father paced up and down in the garden alone. Noor too had a dream at this time. She dreamt that their baker was flying away in an aeroplane. She tried to call him back but he didn’t return. The next day she related the dream to her father and he looked at her and said, ‘Yes Babuli, the bringer of bread will not return.’
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On 13 September 1926 a small ceremony was held in the garden of Fazal Manzil. The foundation stone of a temple to be called L’Universelle was laid, and manuscripts and coins from all the countries with Sufi centres were buried beneath it. Inayat Khan then put a ribbon around the neck of 10-year-old Vilayat (dressed in a sailor suit) and asked him to lead a procession of his disciples. The significance of the ceremony was not lost on anyone. Vilayat was designated as the head of the Confraternity of the Message. Inayat laid the foundation stone and walked slowly down the long path back to the house, lifting his hand as if in blessing and in farewell.

The next morning Inayat said goodbye to his family and left Fazal Manzil. Amina Begum and the children were heartbroken but they felt they had to let him go. Inayat went to India, travelling to Varanasi, Agra and Jaipur. He then went to Delhi and visited the mosque of the Sufi saint, Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia. The Pir of the mosque, Khwaja Hassan Nizami, showed him around the area. He took him to a watchtower on the roof of his own house. From there Inayat Khan looked out at the village of Nizamuddin in the heart of Delhi and saw the small alleys and crowded lanes where Hindus and Muslims had lived peacefully for 600 years. Close by were the gardens and domes of Delhi’s elegant Mughal monuments. It filled him with peace and he told Hassan Nizami, ‘Here I would like to stay.’
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Inayat had to make a final pilgrimage. He returned to Baroda to the house of his grandfather, Maula Baksh. But his uncle Pathan was away and he was saddened to see the ruined state of his childhood home. He fell ill on his return to Delhi and on the night of 4 February 1927 lost consciousness. On the morning of 5 February Hazrat Inayat Khan died. He was buried the same day in a plot of land opposite the watchtower from where he had looked out over Nizamuddin village.

Back in Suresnes the same day, Hidayat heard his father’s voice calling out, ‘Babuli, look after the little ones.’
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The next day they got the news of their father’s death.

Amina Begum collapsed in grief. The burden of looking after the family now fell on Noor’s tender shoulders. She was just thirteen.

Three months later, the family went to India to visit Inayat Khan’s tomb. It was Noor’s first trip to the land of her father’s ancestors and it had a profound effect on her. For the first time she saw the colours of India, the early morning mist over the Ganges and felt the warmth and affection of the people. They went to the Dargah of Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer, one of the holiest Sufi sites, and then to the house of Maula Baksh in Baroda.

The state of neglect of the ancestral home affected them as it had Inayat Khan. Noor was moved to see the affection shown to her by the children of the retainers who had smuggled Tipu Sultan’s granddaughter Casimebi. One of the sons of the retainers, Shabaz Khan, was in charge of Maula Baksh’s vast library and showed Noor around. Another old lady told her she reminded her of Inayat Khan. For Noor, the trip to India reconfirmed her roots and her royal ancestry. In Baroda she also met Alladutt Khan, who Inayat Khan had hoped she would marry. The two youngsters took an immediate liking to each other and spent a lot of time together listening to music and old records.
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Inayat’s uncle Pathan, who was now established at the court of the King of Nepal, suggested that the children stay behind with him and continue their education in a good school in Kathmandu. But Amina Begum objected, not wanting to relocate the family, and after a brief fall-out the family decided to return to France. They left India in June 1927. Noor was only thirteen and heartbroken for the second time as her planned marriage to Alladutt was called off.

It was a difficult time for Noor. In the space of a few months, her life seemed to have changed completely. Her mother was still frail and unable to look after the affairs of the house. Amina Begum retired to the upper floor of Fazal Manzil, darkened the room, and remained in mourning – seldom seeing anybody apart from her immediate family. Sometimes Noor would take her friend Raymonde up to see her mother. The day-to-day running of the house fell entirely to Noor. If her brothers or sisters fell ill, she would nurse them and give them their medicine. She would order the provisions for the large house and supervise the housework. Visitors were touched by her dedication to her family.
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In October that year, Noor transferred to secondary school at the Lycée de Jeunes Filles in St Cloud. Her favourite subjects at the time were literature, French and English. She also studied German and Spanish and enjoyed sports.
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Noor now had to balance her life between her household chores, looking after the family and coursework. Madame Egeling started taking the service at Fazal Manzil every day and the uncles presided over the summer school. But the children could not help noticing that the apricot tree under which Inayat Khan used to sit had died. They believed this was an omen, but they kept their pain to themselves because they did not want to upset their mother. Fazal Manzil was still a busy and open house and Noor, now a teenager, found solace in her room. Here she buried herself in books and wrote several poems and stories. The death of her father had a profound influence on Noor and she entered a new phase in her life. On one hand was the despondency brought on by the death of her father. On the other hand she wanted to cheer up her mother and draw her out into the world again. One way in which she tried to do this was through her poems, which demonstrate a selflessness rare in a teenager. In 1929, two years after Inayat Khan’s death, the 15-year-old Noor wrote this poem for her mother:

TO
OUR
AMMA

Beloved! Ah! Beloved Amma,

A treasure stored deep in our heart,

’Tis flowers of our gratitude,

A treasure that n’er will depart.

Behold! For their petals are carved

With Allah’s own heavenly art,

Their beauty on this longed for day,

To you and Abba we impart

Through life’s struggle and through life’s strife,

May we treasure as our life’s gem

The seed in our heart, you have sown,

Ah! quote in the sacred Nirtan,

And always remember this:

The path of the heart is thorny,

Which leads in the end to bliss.

Noor would never forget to include her father, Abba, in her poems to her mother at this stage. In 1930, she wrote:

Lo! His thought so deep

In sparks are manifest,

To console your heart,

Throughout life’s painful test.

Noor wrote the poems on behalf of all the four children, trying to cheer up her mother and letting her know that their father was always with them. Amina Begum would often feel that she had somehow been abandoned by Inayat Khan. She had given up a wealthy lifestyle and cut off all links with her family to come and live with him, but Inayat had left her and the children and returned to India.

Amina Begum’s self-imposed isolation made life harder for the children. Though she took an interest in her children’s education, Amina could not be persuaded to leave the house. Noor and her brothers were particularly upset that their mother would not even attend prize-giving day at the school. In the end Maheboob Khan’s mother-in-law, Madame van Goens, who lived in Suresnes, felt sorry for the children and went with them to this important event.
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Noor, however, felt no bitterness towards her mother. She simply accepted the fact that she had to take care of the children and manage the house. In 1931, at the age of sixteen, she wrote: