The Tiger Claw (5 page)

Actually, the few English girls he knew would do what their mothers never dreamed of. Especially Angela. She listened to Kabir, loving his strangeness—his dark, wiry moustache, slim hands with tapering fingers, his straight white teeth. Angela listened as he vowed, when the war was over, to return to France and spend the rest of his life like a travelling curator, exhibiting Abbajaan’s Sufi ideas: peace, love, tolerance. Above all, tolerance—the simplest idea, the most difficult to teach.

And damned difficult to learn.

“No,” he replied. “But it made no difference to my girl.”

“You got a picture?”

Kabir snapped the catch of the locket on his watch, showed him Angela’s rose-touched, dreamy smile. Angela’s coquettish eyes, so unlike Noor’s direct gaze. Kabir could all but see those lashes fluttering. Fine rippled locks—light grey in the photo, but the sergeant had made a mental correction to gold.

“She gonna marry you, sir?”

Kabir closed the locket with a broad smile. “Haven’t the faintest idea, sergeant. I’ll ask her when I return to London.”

The sergeant grunted sceptically. Kabir jumped off the Jeep as it slowed to a stop. The sergeant heaved his bulk out and took his tool kit from the back. He squatted and stared solemnly at the motorcycle engine.

“Just think, sir,” he said, “you and I gotta go to all this trouble because a bunch of Kraut, Eye-talian and Jap white folks wanted to take over the world from the other white folks.”

Kabir nodded, though he’d never thought of the Japanese as white. And the war with those chaps was far from over; the U.S. fleet had just begun bombarding the main islands of Japan. In three weeks’ time Kabir would have to report for duty and could be sent to the Far East to bomb Japan. At least he wasn’t a fighter pilot who’d be called on to intercept those suicidal lunatics strapped into their bomb-loaded planes. What did they call themselves?
Kamikazes
.

His view of the war was rather different from those of his fellow officers. As a colonial, born in Britain of a father from an Indian princely state subservient to the Raj, he felt Britain’s historic lust for power and its rule in countries it occupied to be only slightly less virulent than Germany’s, and scoffed internally at the English view of themselves as being less racist, more humane than Hitler. Over the last four years more than three million Indians—many Muslims like himself—died of starvation in British India, thousands in the streets of Calcutta, from deprivation far worse than any he had witnessed riding through the villages of France or Germany, many times worse than privations in blitzed and bombed London. After the bombing of Chittagong and Calcutta, Churchill’s “Rice Denial policy” and “Boat Denial policy” diverted rice from the people to war-related industries; and in London, when only the tiny expatriate Indian community had protested and shouted “Famine!” it was Churchill, demigod to Kabir’s fellow officers, who refused to extend
UNRRA
’s war relief to His Majesty’s brown subjects. So Hitler caused the deaths of yet-uncounted millions by his actions, Churchill by inaction.

Was there a difference
, Kabir wondered,
excepting opportunity and method?

A ragtag band of blond-haired waifs gathered around the Jeep, the youngest about five, the oldest fifteen. Holding hands, whispering. He didn’t have to know German; they were debating what could be filched or begged.

The will to survive is amoral
.

These children and every other survivor had a tale. Stories the newspapers could not know. They’d tell them someday, in pubs and bistros, in beer gardens and boarding houses, to anyone who would listen.

Kabir was as responsible as Churchill for the rain-filled craters in German cities. Somewhat responsible for the lost stares of these children. But now that he was on the ground, on the Continent, a single line from Mr. Gandhi’s prison cell resonated louder in Kabir than all the stentorian speeches of Churchill. When asked
his opinion of Western civilization, Gandhi said, “It would be a good idea.”

Small errors compounded. The German interpretation of Darwin, and the loss of faith all over Europe, that loss of faith of which he too was guilty. Errors hardened into assumptions that clogged the arteries of intelligence, scarred the sensitivity of synapses, till European minds travelled only pre-grooved pathways. Infidel armies were drawn into battle, each fighting for their collective hallucinations and territories.

Kabir’s family had the misfortune of being caught between them. Hitler first outlawed Sufism in Germany, whether practised by Muslims or anyone else. Then, when his armies swept through Holland, the Sainah Foundation at The Hague was raided by the Gestapo and Abbajaan’s followers were arrested, thrown into camps. Before that happened in France, Kabir and his family escaped, and soon he and Noor found themselves fighting “for England.”

The motorbike stood motionless, and Kabir, in a fever to be on his way, paced the alley. Children followed like dogs sniffing at his ankles. Eventually, the sergeant, using wrenches, spanners, swear words and new spark plugs, completed surgery.

Some other time, what my Indian half shares or cannot share with the heritage and experience of this helpful, generous black man must be discussed. But now I can only ask Allah’s blessing upon him and hurry on, for Noor’s sake
.

The bike sputtered and fired back to life. The sergeant exchanged three full jerricans for the empties in Kabir’s sidecar, handed Kabir a few K-rations and diverted the children by tossing a K-ration packet across the street. A brown hand engulfed a darker one briefly, warmly, before the Jeep swung away down the alley.

The motorbike thundered away from the village milling with woeful, bargaining refugees, and headed in the direction of Munich.

Kabir placed a trunk call to Zaib from the Messerschmitt factory at Gablingen Kaserne, now a U.S. military base. He’d been in this area in 1942—one of his first operational raids, and against a
military target, the Augsburg MAN plant. In daylight, at very low level. Seven of the twelve Lancasters in his squadron were shot down, his own severely damaged.

It was soon after these early raids that city centres became Sir Arthur’s targets. City centres were all one could see and hit at night—was that Kabir’s fault? Harris called it terror bombing. Rays from searchlights criss-crossed as his plane screamed over them, and the cities became caskets of jewels as his bombs exploded.

Banish the image.

“Dr. Zaib-un-nisa Khan, please.”

Zaib might be the very first doctor in their family. Definitely the first woman to become a doctor. Still unmarried—probably touching unrelated men, wounded soldiers, every day.

Her voice, so much like Noor’s, kindled a painful ringing in his inner ear. “I’ve been on the telephone all day, talking to the Central Tracing Bureau of the Red Cross, the War Office, Miss Atkins. No one seems to know anything. They keep mentioning the Official Secrets Act and all that.”

“And Boddington? Did you talk to Boddington?”

“Yes. He says he last met Noor in Paris in July.”

“July? This is July. Or did he mean last year, before the liberation of Paris?”

“Non, non, Kabir.
Écoutez!
July of ‘43.”

Two years ago!
Information like starlight—it told you the star was alive light years ago, but was that star still pulsing?

“Did you ask if she sent any letters? Any that may not have been forwarded to us?”

“Of course I did. He said there were none.”

“And then?”

“He was vague after that. I got the impression he wasn’t at liberty to say.”

“Damn it, Zaib, the war is over. Why the secrecy now?”

“Don’t swear. Where are you now?”

“Augsburg. On my way to a refugee collection centre at Munich. How’s Mother?”

“She doesn’t eat much. Dadijaan isn’t even arguing with her. The two of them are sitting together in the drawing room.”

“Together?”

He couldn’t remember Mother and her mother-in-law, Dadijaan, ever sitting together voluntarily, not since Dadijaan first arrived in Paris in 1938. When Mother married Abbajaan in 1913, she received a Muslim name, and it was assumed she would uphold her husband’s religion and traditions. So whenever there was a chance of Kodaks and photo bulbs, she dressed up in a sari. Abbajaan would send the resulting family photo “home” to Dadijaan in Baroda. And all through Mother’s sole two-year visit to India as Abbajaan’s widow, she had worn saris. And so Mother completely and unwittingly misled Dadijaan to believe she wore saris every day, all day, as did Dadijaan. In Paris.

The discovery, on arriving in Paris, that her daughter-in-law, her son’s widow, Rukhsana Begum née Aura Baker, habitually bared her legs beneath a dress evoked Dadijaan’s deep and abiding suspicion. From that moment, Mother, American though she was, began to personify the East India Company, the British Raj, the marauding West and all its depredations. Mother remained oblivious, continuing to wear dresses every day and saris as fancy dress in Paris, and then not at all in war-tossed London. Dadijaan’s distrust had never abated. And it didn’t help that Mother often forgot namaaz if she was working or the cinema beckoned.

Zaib gave a small laugh that turned into a sniff. “Yes, together. And it’s Sunday, but Dadijaan hasn’t gone to Hyde Park.”

For two and a half years Dadijaan hadn’t missed Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park on Sunday, not to listen to speeches in English, which she understood perfectly well, but to make her own passionate denunciations of Mr. Churchill, in court Urdu mixed with Gujarati. Standing on a box six inches above English soil, she could shout what she knew: that Churchill was denying rice to the hungry, denying boats to fishermen, that his policy was to starve His Majesty’s subjects in India into submission for the
English war. That it had no effect was Mother’s main objection; she liked actions to have quick and measurable outcomes.

“I told Dadijaan the Khans are a hardy lot. Right,
bhaiya?
I said, see how many missions Kabir flew, and he’s still alive.”

“Subhan-allah. Did it help?”

“Oh yes, she told Mother all about the Tiger of Mysore again.”

Kabir allowed himself a small laugh.

Damn brigand Tipu Sultan—not an exemplary ancestor. Tiger or not, he still wound up dead, his children taken hostage by the Brits. Mother needs stories with better endings
.

“Mother never understood a word,” said Zaib.

“Poor Mother,” he said. “You’d think she could comprehend elementary Urdu by now.”

“She doesn’t have to.”

Zaib had never learned Urdu or Hindustani for the same reason—she didn’t have to. Like Noor and Kabir, she could read Arabic enough to read the Qur’an, but learning other languages had to be linked either to sticks or carrots; she didn’t feel anything was worth learning for itself. If Zaib had known Abbajaan, and hadn’t come of age when Uncle Tajuddin ruled at home, and then during a war, she’d be different.

All of us would be different, but for the war
.

“Zaib, before I left Paris, I called U.S. Military Command several times and asked if any of Noor’s names—Noor Khan, Nora Baker, Anne-Marie Régnier or Madeleine—appear in files from Gestapo headquarters at the avenue Foch. I thought perhaps the Nazis didn’t have a chance to destroy them before they fled Paris. Call them again.”

“I did. They said the Americans have the files. The ones from the avenue Foch and the rue des Saussaies.”

“Where did they take them?”

“Top secret, they said. They’re going to find all the Nazis in Germany and try them. Don’t want the same chaps in power again. Determined to replace the entire bureaucracy of Germany with new people. Prescription for anarchy, if you ask me.”

“I’ll call you soon.”

“Allah hafiz.”

As he replaced the black earpiece on its hook, a wave of anger welled up so high that his hands trembled.

Why is it Noor? Why not Zaib?

Dreadful thought! And about little Zaib, their baby sister. Zaib, who didn’t barge through society’s norms like Noor but worked at helping people cope with them. Daily, Zaib encountered pain and disease to be healed; she left philosophy, symbols, spirits and significance to Kabir. But she could be relied on to keep up appearances. And she was as determined as he to find Noor.

Noor. Abbajaan’s favourite
.

Abbajaan was open and warm with Noor in a way he never was with Kabir, teaching her the veena, allowing her to massage his feet when he returned from touring, serve him warm salt water for gargling after a day of speeches. But then, Noor loved Allah and worshipped easily and naturally, whereas Kabir could see beauty in the poetry of the Qur’an, but …

Long after Mother had put him and Zaib to bed at night, young Kabir listened for the periodic clink of chess pieces, Abbajaan’s childlike laugh, then Noor’s low murmur to see if they would embark on another game. By the time he was old enough to play chess, his Abbajaan was gone.

Once, when Kabir was fourteen and Noor sixteen, he dreamed Noor was lying on the grass. And in the dream, he, Kabir, was glad at her dream-death. Glad! The self-knowledge released by that dream still filled him with horror. How could he resent so beloved a sister at one and the same time as he felt himself willing to die in her stead?

Envy? Noor was the only one in the family who could join Abbajaan in the loneliness of his experience of India, the experience Abbajaan never could communicate to Europeans. The only one who could play the veena with him. When Mother, desperate for money, moved the family to Baroda for two years after
Abbajaan’s death, Noor absorbed India naturally, as if born there, whereas young Kabir was painfully aware that though he knew his Qur’an better than any of his Indian cousins, he wasn’t Indian enough; the cousins all dubbed him a lousy batter and an even worse bowler.

And he didn’t need Mr. Freud to tell him what the dream meant: hatred for the part of Noor that was most like himself. Yes, it had taken Kabir years to name it, but he knew it now. It was the shared part that was “too damn Indian.” Today he could even name the source of his gladness as a child wandering in that dream: with Abbajaan gone and without Noor, his family would now be European, look European in every way.