The Tiger Claw (70 page)

A grab at her wrists and a string slipped around the right one. He stepped back, leaving a tag dangling from her wrist. Familiar-looking tag. Before she could examine it, she was shoved forward again.

Down another corridor slowly; swollen, raw ankles still feeling the weight of the absent chains. Another door. The guard signed another ledger here and took a lantern from the corner. An impassive orderly pushed open a heavy iron gate set in the wall.

Open air. Warm night. Crescent moon. Tiger-claw moon.

Was this freedom? What of the women she’d left behind? Freedom for herself alone felt like no freedom. This wasn’t real freedom—handcuffed hands folded on her breast.

Hollow boom of anti-aircraft fire in the distance. The rifle-butt jabbed her side, energizing fear. A swinging lantern light led away from the prison. She was pushed after it. Watery legs, knees wobbling.

Move uphill. Breathe
.

Slow burn of hope, no matter if disappointment lay in wait.

At the top of the ridge, rail tracks—source of the train sounds by which she had marked time. She wanted to lie face down, smell the earth. Instead, she stood motionless; her captor waited for something. Above her—stars.

A shriek filled the night. An engine puffed past and its carriages slowed to a stop before her though she saw no signal or station. Pain in her wrists crescendoing, smell of beer and sweat; the guard had looped his arm through her manacles and drawn her closer.

He extinguished the lantern, placed it on the ground and straightened. She was jerked and pulled down the length of the train to the very last carriage. A latch lifted, exposing a deeper darkness.

Jellied knees bumped the ladder. Hands grabbed her by the waist, lifted and tossed. She hit the carriage floor, went sprawling, then still. Straw grazed her face.

The guard climbed in behind her. A hollow thump—the door sliding shut. Then a low whistle.

She drew her bruised limbs close and squatted against the rough plank wall. The guard threw her a glance, said something unmistakably menacing. Leather boots strode past her into the next carriage. More slamming, steam built to energy and the carriage began to move.

Escape now, before the train picks up speed
.

She steadied herself against the side of the carriage and crawled to the door. Felt for the handle and used it to pull herself upright. Then, with her weight against it, tried to slide it back.

Locked from the outside. She slumped to the straw, panting. She dashed her sleeve across her eyes. She couldn’t help the tears overflowing; the sway and clash of the train said escape was impossible now.

Cold air on her face, dry breeze as from an air shaft. She found the slit that was the high barred window and stood with her eyes glued to the passing Black Forest. But to her mind’s eye, unbidden, came Vogel’s face with a fixed, sardonic smile, eyes blinking behind his spectacles.

The
quibla
at her heart’s compass said she was travelling east, closer to Mecca, deeper into Germany.

Abbajaan, ma petite, anyone—say a du’a for me
.

The tag still dangled from her wrist. So many hours spent threading tickets like this one, thinking the work useless, not knowing the purpose to which her efforts were directed. Thirty tickets an hour for eight, ten, sometimes twelve hours a day—an average of 300 tickets per day. Today was September 11, 1944, and she had been imprisoned from November 25, 1943. She had spent 292 days at Pforzheim. Say she had threaded tickets for 200 of those days—that came to 60,000 tickets threaded by her alone. Multiply by even a hundred women in this and other prisons for the same length of time and the number of tickets threaded went into millions.

Allah! How many had worn tickets like these to be sent to Germany? What were the Germans doing with so many people? Where were they putting them? There couldn’t be room enough in Germany for so many millions, there wasn’t food in Germany for so many, no matter if the entire harvest of France were sent there. And even if she couldn’t care about and didn’t know every single person sent to Germany, if Armand and Madame Lydia had been sent there, if Armand were deprived, she did care.

The ticket on her wrist was reality; the hours she had spent threading tickets was reality.

Émile was right: “Bravery requires that we deny reality.”

Pretend to be brave; refuse reality as long as you can
.

But there was no denying she had unwittingly contributed to the deportations. How could she have known? If she hadn’t threaded tickets to the guard’s satisfaction, she would have received no food.

Trust. Hope, as she had never hoped before, that Allah would forgive.

“Huwallah-ul-lazi la ilaha illa huw-ar-Rahman-ur-Rahim-ul-Malik-ul-Quddus-ul-Salam-ul-Mu’min-ul-Muhaimin-ul … al-Muhaiminu, al-Muhaiminu, je me souviens de toi, je me souviens de toi.”

The door between the carriages opened. A figure loomed above her, shook her bruised, aching arm.

“Rauss!”

Through the swaying corridor to the next carriage, a troop car with windows. Empty but for two German soldiers playing cards at the far end—they barely glanced up. But one of the three ragged creatures seated on an iron bench beside the door turned towards Noor. Blonde roots at the base of dark hair; it was a woman. So were the other two. A lift of a thin eyebrow.

That’s not Yolande. You don’t know her, you have no idea who she is
.

The guard pointed Noor towards the iron bench. Yolande moved to make room for her. Noor’s breath lodged in her throat—such a battered, gaunt Yolande, far from the strong, nimble woman with whom she’d raced up and down Glory Hill.

A fleeting shadow crossed Yolande’s face; Noor too must look very different.

A chaos of questions:
How, when, where? Who betrayed you?

At the opposite end of the carriage, the soldiers and Noor’s guard hunched around a table. The cards in a hand facing her: a three, an ace, a king, a
D
for a queen and B for a joker. The prison guard shuffled the deck “Hindu” style, inserting stacks between others without fanning. A soldier took a long pull at a bottle of Kupferberg, wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

Noor’s temple touched Yolande’s shoulder. Yolande rested her head on Noor’s and her hand found its way into Noor’s. Dot-dot-dot-dash, Yolande’s forefinger began to tap into Noor’s palm.

Concentrate. Feign sleep, but beware. Be aware
.

The train swayed, chugged on.

A greyish dawn broke over balconies and fenced gardens backed up against the railway tracks. Weathercocks turned on steeples. Mossy hillsides. Mühlacker station. Orange-brown roof tiles, no different from French ones. The train rounded the western edge of the Black Forest, moving northeast.

Bietigheim—Bissingen.

Garden sheds flattened—by bombs? Dandelions dared raise their heads.

Kornwestheim.

Beneath an arched bridge, into a tunnel, out of a tunnel. A clock tower in the distance read 08:35 hours. Tracks knitted, trains passed, indifferent to one another’s destinations.

Wooden watchtowers loomed over dark fields. Flowers clustered on graves.

A pond, fields, small canals, open sewers.

Low grain barns. A forest of steadfast pines. Now fields again, undulating. Weeping willows. Ivy-covered walls of larger houses.

Ulm.

Soldiers with Mausers slung over their shoulders stood on the platform—troops who had moved at night.

“Prost!”
said the prison guard, passing a bottle of Warsteiner.

One of the soldiers smacked his lips and said,
“Die Königin unter den bieren.”
She recognized the slogan from posters in Paris. He pulled a packet from his pocket, unwrapped it.

Odour of ham like a pain in each nostril. She might have killed for one bite of pork.

The prison guard unfolded a packet of cheese. A penknife passed between the men. A soldier took a large bite. The other women too gazed ravenously at the munching guards.

The game resumed, with only the occasional click of cards on the table.

The train rocked and pulled, thumping gently over the tracks, whistling past deserted stations. Noor stared from the smeared carriage window across the flat, dark German countryside. An occasional light peeped gently.

Morning light grew from stars. The tar ribbon of a road ran parallel to the track, ribs of earth bared by a plough. A palomino grazed at the edge of a bomb crater, and a single sheep grazed in a paddock. Two very thin cows.

The train pulled into Augsburg, slowed, stopped.

Minutes turned to an hour, perhaps more. Had it run out of coal?

Yolande’s tapped translation said the tracks were blown up—Noor thanked Kabir and his comrades, mentally—but the SS had ordered them to be repaired immediately.

Try to escape. With three Germans sitting before me? Yes. Try anything
.

Noor told Yolande she needed to use the WC and made a summoning gesture. Yolande explained to the guard in German, pointing at herself as well.

Yolande first. If anyone could find a way to escape, Yolande would.

But after a time Yolande came back, shaking her head a little.

Noor’s turn. Down the compartment corridor. She held out her manacles, but her guard unlocked only one, averting his face as he held her enleashed. One-handed, she crouched to use the toilet with the door slightly ajar.

Anything heavy to hit him with? Anything sharp to cut off her manacle? Or even her own hand?

But should she, by intervention of some
farishta
, cut herself from her steel leash, the stamp-sized window above the flush-pull wouldn’t allow exit.

Back with the others, seeing her own disappointment reflected in Yolande’s eyes.

At the very next station she’d jump up, run down the corridor, out of the train. And, if she didn’t take a bullet in her back, run right into the German soldiers on the platform…

The train slowed to a stop, and a large man in a singlet with suspenders opened the far door between cars and looked in. The guards started to their feet, guns in hand.

“Nein! Nein!”
came giggles from girls in the next car. The large man turned back. The door closed again.

Moving again; moment of escape escaping. It had been only a two-minute stop.

Air pressed on Noor’s eardrums as the train flowed into a long tunnel, emerged and continued its centipedal journey. A sign flashed by:
München
.

Munich.

From Laim, the train turned north. Slower now, dark puffs of trees framed by the carriage window. Tendrils of smoke from chimneys. At Obermenzing, houses grew more imposing.

Schlosses. German for mansion, château, haveli. This is no time to play multilingual parlour games
.

Allah, what can I do?

Crabapple trees turned stunted here, fields sped away behind her.

At Karlsfeld, more red roofs peaked from fields, and row upon row of greenhouses. How far she had come since that day in the greenhouse at Grignon, the greenhouse fragrant with the Prophet’s colour.

Do a zikr of them: Armand, Lydia, Prosper, Archambault, Monsieur Hoogstraten, Professor Balachowsky, Viennot … If you remember them, they still live
.

Dark brown slate houses now. Carriageways. A station of three-storey stone with a sign:
Dachau
.

The station passed.

Beyond a tunnel of foliage a woman walked arm in arm with a soldier—dark-haired, like Armand. A girl with a feather in her hat wobbled her bicycle to a halt and let the train pass.

Noor’s whole body thought of food, escape, food, escape.

The prison guard began to slap segments of the deck upon one another.

Breathe. Al-lah, Al-lah
.

The train jolted, nudging the cards out of his hands. They slipped, shot in all directions.

The guard let out a roar. He would take his eyes off her—she would run with the others. But his eyes didn’t leave her for a second as the soldiers began picking up the cards.

If she was dreaming like Alice, the cards should now fulfill
their purpose: the falling house of cards should be the signal that called her to wake.

A sudden rush of hope; she pinched herself.

It hurt.

This is happening
.

Ten minutes had passed, maybe fifteen. A smell, no, a stench unlike any other.

Sunlight poured through the carriage door. Hollow pulse of bloodhounds barking a few yards from the train. The soldiers rose.

“Rauss!”
They motioned her with the others following to the door.

Before Noor, letters wrought above an iron-barred gate inset beneath an archway spelled
ArbeitMachtFrei
. Perhaps the name of this place? The prison guard pulled her from the carriage, sending her sprawling to skin-searing gravel. He leaned over, unlocked her handcuffs where she lay. The soldiers were shoving the others out of the carriage, too.

On one elbow, to her knees, to her feet. Hands dropping to her sides, swinging free.

Awash in gratitude—abject gratitude.