Spy Princess (6 page)

This poem Abba has written,

To console your heart,

His thoughts through his dear children,

To you he doth impart.

Each card was beautifully illustrated by her and has been carefully preserved by the family. Always the dreamy child, Noor wrote stories and poems about fairies and flowers and little creatures in the woods. An avid reader, she had access to the vast library of Inayat Khan and read books on subjects ranging from philosophy and religion to adventure and gallantry. Her favourite heroine was Joan of Arc and she loved stories of chivalry and sacrifice.
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At seventeen, Noor got her Baccalauréat certificate from the Lycée de Jeunes Filles. Throughout secondary school she had been rather lonely and had made few new friends.

Music always had a special place in the Inayat Khan household. Noor had learnt the basic Indian ragas from her father. She had taken piano lessons and composed her own pieces while at school. Now she decided to learn the harp. It seems she was attracted to this instrument because she had seen medieval paintings of angels playing the harp and it appealed to her feminine side.
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Noor’s inherited love for music took her to the École Normale de Musique de Paris in April 1931 where her teachers included the famous Nadia Boulanger. For six years Noor studied the harp, piano, solfeggio, harmonic analysis and harmony. At the same time she took private harp lessons from Henriette Rénie for two years and even played in a matinée performance at the Salle Erard during her second year, which was very well received.

All four of Inayat’s children played at least one or two instruments. Noor played the harp and piano, Vilayat the cello and piano, Hidayat the violin and piano and Claire the piano. Vilayat learnt under Stravinsky and Maurice Eisenberg, and Claire and Noor under Boulanger. Hidayat would become a composer basing his work on Indian ragas written for western orchestras. His moving composition for Noor after her death, ‘La Monotonia’, has been played in Paris, Munich, Amsterdam and other European cities bringing tears to the eyes of concert-goers. He also did the orchestration for one of Noor’s poems, ‘Song For the Madzub’.

Not content with just studying music, Noor registered at the Sorbonne, University of Paris, in 1932 to study child psychology. She was always interested in children and thought the course would help her to understand them better.

Her family and home life was in many ways conservative and traditional. After the death of Inayat Khan (who had always been very liberal), the uncles were in charge of the house. They concentrated more on Vilayat and Hidayat, the men in the family. It was widely thought that Noor and Claire would marry rich Indian men and live the life of high-society Indians. Both girls were encouraged to develop their musical abilities rather than their intellectual or academic ones. The emphasis was on preparing them for their future place in society and it was not even considered that they would have to go out and fend for themselves in the world. Praise and encouragement went to the boys and the girls were not taken seriously.
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The male-dominated Indian atmosphere of the house probably prompted an overwhelming determination in Noor to do more than her share for a cause she believed in.
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By her twenties she was already forging a stronger identity for herself within her circle of friends and activities in Paris, going to university and studying music.

It was while studying at the École Normale de Musique that Noor fell in love again. This relationship was to last for six years. His name was Goldberg
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and he was a fellow music student, and although the family did not approve they became engaged. Goldberg was a Turkish Jew who lived with his mother in Paris. The family came from a working-class background and his mother worked in a laundry. Goldberg struggled to pay his fees at the exclusive École Normale de Musique.
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The family felt Noor’s attachment to him stemmed initially from sympathy because of his deprived background. But the relationship lasted for years, despite the disapproval of the family and the Sufi fraternity. Between the Inayat Khans and the Goldbergs was a class divide. The Khans were of royal descent, even though they did not live an extravagant life. They were surrounded by western Sufi disciples, who were inevitably theosophists from the wealthy, leisured class. Goldberg was a rank outsider in this circle. Noor’s mother, Amina Begum, objected to her relationship with him, as did her brothers and uncles.

Goldberg visited Fazal Manzil regularly and was even initiated into the Sufi fold and given the name of Huzoor Nawaz. It was then that the larger Sufi fraternity learnt about his relationship with Noor and expressed their disapproval. To them Pirzadi Noor could not marry beneath her class.

The brothers had other reasons for objecting to the relationship. According to Vilayat, Noor’s fiancé was too overbearing and that distressed Noor.
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Goldberg would threaten to commit suicide if she left him and Noor never dared to test this threat. She believed he might actually try to end his life and that she could never forgive herself if he did so. Noor’s family felt that her relationship with Goldberg was putting too much pressure on her, while she felt they did not have any understanding of her situation.

It was true that Noor was under great strain, trying to balance her love for her family and love for her fiancé. For six years she struggled with her emotions, sometimes falling quite ill with the stress of it all.

Noor felt that her family underestimated her fiancé and never appreciated the fact that he was a fine pianist. She confided in her friend Raymonde’s mother, Madame Prénat, and told her: ‘He is a man in a thousand.’
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Strangely, Noor never told Raymonde, her closest friend, about her fiancé. Noor felt Raymonde was too young and innocent to understand the complexity of her relationship.

Noor’s emotional ups and downs are reflected in her poems from this time. In this one, to her mother, she apologises for her faults and the pain they may have caused.

How oft throughout life’s puzzling path,

Our feet have gone astray,

Ah! Dear Amma you will forgive,

Our endless faults this day.

Two other poems of the period, ‘The Song of the Ocean’ and ‘The Song of the Night’, are also very melancholy in tone. In the latter poem Noor wrote ‘Who has heard my painful cry, who has heard my sigh…’ reflecting all the emotions she was going through.

Musically, Noor was making good progress. She was particularly influenced by the guidance she received from Nadia Boulanger. Between 1930 and 1934, all four of the Inayat Khan children played in concerts at Fazal Manzil when the summer school was on. The audience consisted of visiting Sufis from all over the world, many of whom were also trained musicians. The instruments used by the Inayat Khan family quartet were the violin, cello, piano and harp.

The four siblings would often go to concerts at the Music School and the large Paris concert halls. The students received free tickets to these concerts and were encouraged to attend them. After the performance they would go and talk to the musicians and Noor, Vilayat, Hidayat and Claire had the privilege of personally meeting the great violinist Joseph Zigetti and the members of the Lener Quartet, besides others who had a great influence on them. The four Inayat Khan youngsters enjoyed these outings, and would often return late at night from the concerts animatedly discussing the merits of the performance. The four were totally immersed in their music studies and Sufi background and had few friends outside the family circle. It is not surprising that they were rather insular and other-worldly.

One of Noor’s early compositions during her École Normale days was ‘Song to the Butterfly’. Piano music for the piece was given by a Sufi disciple of Inayat Khan. She also composed ‘Prelude for Harp’ and ‘Elegy for Harp and Piano’ which were played at concerts in Fazal Manzil during the summer school to a very good reception.

When she was in her twenties, Noor took to a more European style of dressing and started using light make-up. She presented an image of a beautiful young lady, elegantly dressed, well mannered and gentle. Vilayat wore a black robe while in Fazal Manzil but in Paris he changed into normal western clothes. Claire, the quiet sister, had always preferred western clothes. The influence of the uncles in Fazal Manzil was now diminishing. Only one of them, Mohammed Khan, still lived there. Maheboob Khan had married the daughter of a leading Dutch family, the van Goens. Musharraf Khan too married a Dutch lady. The Sufi branch grew strong in Holland. The uncles disapproved of Noor going alone to attend classes and returning home late from concerts. But Noor, though always respectful of her elders, was determined to carry on and do exactly what she wanted to do.

Along with her music, Noor’s interest in creative writing continued. She always loved children and would invite the children of the neighbourhood to Fazal Manzil and tell them fantastic stories from the Indian epics the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Jataka. To the children she was an exotic creature – gentle and lovely – with magical stories to tell of adventures in faraway lands.

She continued to write poetry and never forgot to write her family a poem on their birthdays. For Vilayat, when he turned twenty-one, she wrote:

May every wish of yours come true

And every day be clear and blue

O! My brother dear, a man this day,

May joy come all along your way

On Amina Begum’s birthday, Noor would always try to bring a smile to her mother’s face. Her poem ‘The Birthday Man’ was typical of Noor’s childlike exuberance:

I saw the little birthday man,

Skipping ’long the way,

I stopped awhile and listened,

To hear what he would say.

He put his little finger

Upon his little head.

He blew the dandelions, and

Danced around and said:

‘Why, this is my best birthday,

For on this very day,

The storks brought down a girly

Whose name is Ora Ray.

‘I must put on my sweetest

And wear my golden crown.

I’ll take my happy knapsack,

And wear my grand new gown.

‘She has had cloudy hours

And many cloudy years,

And many hard adventures,

And many many tears.

‘Life has been very naughty

But I shall fight the wrong,

And make her whole life happy,

Just with my little song.’

The bond between mother and daughter grew over the years. Amina Begum herself penned some poems for Noor in which she said: ‘Thro’ all the stress and storms of life, She moves in quiet dignity … She has a gift that few possess, the gift of love’s sublimity.’

Once when Noor was in her early twenties, two of her father’s disciples, Baron and Baroness van Tuyll, invited her to spend some time with them at the Hague. Noor was reluctant to leave her mother alone but was eventually persuaded. The holiday (her first) was a fresh change for her. She toured the city’s art museums, read in the extensive library and even learnt to ride. The van Tuylls had their own stables and they found that Noor had no physical fear. She was not afraid of falling off her horse and simply carried on even if she did.

While she was at the Hague, she was told to give some piano lessons to her younger cousin Mahmood, son of her uncle Maheboob Khan. Mahmood (then 9 years old) remembered Noor as a ‘very pretty, delicate young lady’.
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Noor started teaching him the piano with a difficult Mozart piece. Since Mahmood was quite overwhelmed by the piece, she helped him along telling him stories about rabbits and hares and fairies and making sketches for him. He began to love her visits, which to him meant entering an imaginary world. He remembered with amusement that the next summer Claire, or Mamuli as they called her, came visiting and was supposed to give him lessons. But Claire was silent and withdrawn and suddenly there were no dancing rabbits for him. To the young Mahmood, Noor was a fairy-tale character, delicate and charming, with a determination and strength of character that he could sense even then.

Back home from the Hague, Noor had to take charge of Fazal Manzil again, a task that was never easy. Madame Egeling gave Noor 3,000 francs a month on which she had to run the household. It was not a large sum, as Madame Egeling, though very wealthy, was not one to indulge in luxuries. Every job – from making the beds to calling the plumber – was Noor’s responsibility. Claire began to help her with the washing and darning, following her about devotedly. Noor was apparently quite dreadful at sewing and Claire happily took on these tasks.

Adding to the pressures of domestic life at Fazal Manzil was Noor’s troubled relationship with her fiancé and she was often quite weepy at this stage.
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At one time Vilayat felt she was heading for a breakdown, but she pulled through. After years of mourning, her mother, however, was finally beginning to take some interest in worldly things. Her health improved and she even started going for little walks dressed in European clothes. It was a huge relief to the children.

Thinking an outing would be good for her, Vilayat encouraged the family in the summer of 1933 to go to the south of France where the weather was warmer. ‘We explored the Massif Central, the Alps and the Côte d’Azur from Monte Carlo to Marseilles – Royan – Rochefort, Deauville, Trouville, le Havre, Dieppe. All these travels in a sports car,’ wrote Noor.
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With Vilayat she travelled further to Spain. In 1934 they went to Barcelona and visited Pablo Casals in San Salvador. Noor was always closest to Vilayat and the two of them loved doing things together. The next year they went to Italy and toured Padua, Venice and Milan, attended operas and concerts, and Noor sent ecstatic letters home.

In one of her letters she wrote about the operas she had seen –
Aida
,
Rigoletto
,
Trovatore
and Puccini’s
La Bohème
. She wrote how in the middle of a performance of
Rigoletto
, someone recognised the Duce (Mussolini) and cried out ‘Il Duce!’ This led to pandemonium in the auditorium and on stage, with the actors swooning with emotion and the musicians almost dropping their instruments. Absolute silence fell, then a profound sigh of joy rose from the crowd and the opera was resumed. Noor and her brother were witnessing the early years of Fascism, but at this time Noor was clearly not politically conscious. The Duce, to her, was just a popular leader.