Abstract
This chapter considers the exceptional life and perilous career of Noor Inayat Khan and the themes of perseverance and sacrifice that she developed in her works from 1934 until the time of her execution at Dachau in 1944. Noor operated as a spy in France on assignment for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), an intelligence unit created by Winston Churchill. Noor “writes resistance” both as a personal ethic of resilience in extremely perilous circumstances and in narratives featuring heroic females who shield their compatriots and communities from malevolent forces. A selection of her writings in this chapter includes adaptations of her tales, short stories, and unpublished letters, which frequently reflect the political and moral climate of wartime Europe, as well as the powerful influence of Sufism and the teachings of her father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, founder of the International Sufi movement in the West.
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- 1.
I attended the unveiling of the statue of Noor at Gordon Square, London, November 8, 2012. The majority of those in attendance were practicing Sufis.
- 2.
Robert Gardner, Enemy of the Third Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story (Baltimore: Gardner Films, 2014).
- 3.
On this commemorative issue, see Business Standard, https://tinyurl.com/y6pjlal3 (accessed on June 20, 2019). Press Trust of India, “Royal Mail Issues Stamp of WWII Heroine Noor Inayat Khan,” March 24, 2014.
- 4.
Susan Elia MacNeal , The Paris Spy: A Maggie Hope Mystery (New York: Bantam Books, 2017). Set in Paris during the Nazi Occupation of France, Macneal’s publication is loosely based on Noor’s experiences during the war.
- 5.
For more on Liberté: A Call to Spy, see Ashley Lee, “Female-Driven WWII Spy Thriller in the Works from ‘Equity,’ ‘Queen of Katwe’ Producers Exclusive,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 20, 2017, https://bit.ly/2rggomM (accessed on June 21, 2019).
- 6.
See Sarah Helms , A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII (New York: Random House, 2008). For additional information on the Special Operations Executive, see Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis, Shadow Warriors of World War II: The Daring Women of the OSS and SOE (Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press Inc., 2017).
- 7.
Archivist and editor Anne Louise Wirgman of the Nekbakht Foundation discussed this commemoration with me. The Foundation is located in Suresnes, France , and its function is to preserve the documents, books, and photographs of or related to Hazrat Inayat Khan , http://nekbakhtfoundation.org (accessed June 27, 2019).
- 8.
Fuller , Noor-Un-Nisa, Introduction.
- 9.
Nile Green , Sufism: A Global History (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 8.
- 10.
Ibid., 5.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
See Theo van Hoorn, Recollections of Inayat Khan and Western Sufism (Leiden: Foleor Publishers, 2010) for more on his memories of Hazrat Inayat Khan from 1924 to 1926 and western Sufism. Van Hoorn wrote the memoirs in Dutch and Hendrik J. Horn translated them into English.
- 13.
Noor Inayat Khan , “Unpublished Letters to Azeem Goldenberg (1934),” Courtesy of the Personal Archives of David Harper; Twenty Jātaka Tales (London: East-West Publications, 1939); Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, “Cinquante années de gloire!,” ed. Fuller , Noor-Un-Nisa Inayat Khan, 78–80; and King Akbar’s Daughter: Stories for Everyone as Told by Noor Inayat Khan (New York: Omega Publications, 2012). In the posthumous publication of King Akbar’s Daughter not all of the stories are dated. However, the three that were found in Noor’s wireless training notebooks were probably written while she was actively involved with the British and French Resistance .
- 14.
Le Mair , who adopted ‘Saida’ as her Sufi name, was a disciple of Hazrat during the early 1920s. In her letters to Goldenberg Noor describes the illustrations in the book taken from her paintings. Le Mair painted them from memory around 1930 and also chose the texts to accompany them.
- 15.
See letter #182 from the Personal Archives of David Harper for Noor’s correspondence.
- 16.
I am grateful to Sandra Lillydahl for sharing many of the stories with me prior to publication. Several reflect the influence of a diverse array of both Eastern and Western literary texts, notably brief narratives from Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Analysis of all of them would necessitate a separate study.
- 17.
She subsequently published it. Fuller , Noor-Un-Nisa, 78–80. To my knowledge , this essay is not widely accessible, nor is it mentioned in scholarship on her work.
- 18.
For more on the relationship between the Inayat Khan family and Emma Nevada, see Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 37. See also Fuller, Noor-Un-Nisa, 252–253.
- 19.
Noor Inayat Khan , “Escape from St. Nazaire (1940).” This completed unpublished story is part of the Personal Archives of David Harper. A segment of it was first published in 2011 in Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 129.
- 20.
Noor Inayat Khan , Aède of the Ocean and Land: A Play in Seven Acts (Richmond, VA: Sulūk Press and Omega Publications, 2018).
- 21.
It is not known when Noor wrote the play, but it clearly evokes the loss of Hazrat in 1927, at which time Noor was thirteen.
- 22.
Hazrat Inayat Khan “Ten Sufi Thoughts,” in Caravan of Souls: An Introduction to the Sufi Path of Hazrat Inayat Khan, ed. Pir Zia Inayat Khan (New Lebanon, NY: Omega Publications Inc., 2013), 12–14. This anthology of Hazrat’s writings is also a spiritual treatise. The articles it contains on Sufism relate mainly to the works of Hazrat Inayat Khan and his disciples.
- 23.
Hazrat Inayat Khan , Caravan of Souls, 11–21. For a direct reflection of the notion of self-realization , see Noor Inayat Khan’s Aède.
- 24.
Âyre Sûra, The Gâtakamâlâ, or Garland of Birth-Stories (London: Oxford University Press, 1895); Jātaka or Stories of Buddha’s Former Births (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1895–1913).
- 25.
Noor Inayat Khan , Twenty Jātaka Tales (London: East-West Publications, 1975), 20. The text was first published in 1939.
- 26.
Ibid., 21.
- 27.
This conversation is evoked in Leo Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker’s Story 1941–1945 (London: HarperCollins, 1998), 317–318. It is also depicted in Gardner’s film.
- 28.
Noor Inayat Khan , Jātaka Tales, 83–89.
- 29.
Ibid., 88.
- 30.
Ibid., 89.
- 31.
Marks, Between Silk and Cyanide, 82.
- 32.
Ibid., 45–52. Other than “The Monkey Bridge” and “The Two Pigs,” there are no direct references to other Jātaka Tales that Noor might have evoked in a similar fashion during her SOE training. According to Fuller , however, of the twenty tales, Noor deemed “The Fairy and the Hare” to be the most “sublime.” In this narrative a hare encounters a fairy who has transformed herself into a starving old male beggar seeking food in a forest. When the beggar approaches the Hare, the latter has nothing but himself to offer as food and therefore jumps into a fire to create flesh for the beggar to eat, whereupon the latter transforms himself back into a fairy, cooling down the flames so as not to burn the hare. The fairy exclaims: “The fire is not real, it is only a test,” thus saving the Hare’s life. Hence yet another example of the self-sacrificial theme prominent elsewhere in the Jātaka Tales. Among the tales is also “The Golden Feathers,” in which a fairy magically transforms a man into a goose with golden feathers. The man’s wife plucks the feathers, leaving him unable to fly. The fairy attempts to save him by reimplanting the feathers. In this tale as well as in “The Fairy and the Hare,” the fairy rescues the figure who has sacrificed himself for others.
- 33.
Noor Inayat Khan , King Akbar’s Daughter: Stories for Everyone as Told by Noor Inayat Khan , ed. Sandra Lillydahl, 198–205 (New Lebanon, NY: Omega Publications, Sulūk Press, 2012).
- 34.
Ibid., 199.
- 35.
According to the introduction of King Akbar’s Daughter , Noor wrote this story after having had a premonition of her own dire fate. Like Perce Neige held captive by Fog-Gloom, Noor was a prisoner of the Nazis, under the decree of “Night and Fog” (Nacht und Nebel), which was a designation given to some prisoners who were considered dangerous by the Nazi Regime. These prisoners’ names were to be erased from official records.
- 36.
Noor Inayat Khan , King Akbar’s Daughter , 203.
- 37.
Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four. On Noor’s use of pseudonyms, see p. 399.
- 38.
In Chapter 1 I evoked this notion with regard to her discussion of how Delbo creates her literary double in two of her plays . Magali Chiappone-Lucchesi . “Le témoignage théâtral de Charlotte Delbo: du double au testament,” Études théâtrales 51–52 (2011): 33–39. See also Marie Bornand’s Témoignange et fiction: les récits de rescapés dans la littérature de langue française (1945–2000) (Geneva: Droz, 2004).
- 39.
Claire Ray Harper notes that Noor wrote a long story about Poland’s plight in the notebooks containing the technical memos she had on hand while training as a radio operator. She adds that “it is also said that Noor had a romantic liaison with a Polish officer around that time” and cites the ending of “The White Eagles of Poland” in that regard. See Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 154.
- 40.
See “The White Eagles of Poland” in Noor Inayat Khan’s King Akbar’s Daughter , 197.
- 41.
Ibid., 197.
- 42.
Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 123–129.
- 43.
Ibid., 129.
- 44.
Noor Inayat Khan , “Escape from St. Nazaire (1940) (unpublished).” For more on France during the Nazi occupation , see Isabelle von Bueltzingsloewen, Morts d’inanition: Famine et exclusions en France sous l’occupation (Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005).
- 45.
Ibid., 1.
- 46.
Ibid., 4.
- 47.
Ibid., 4. Given that “Escape from St. Nazaire (1940) (unpublished)” reflects Noor’s own experience, it has significant biographical value. Although brief, it is nonetheless reminiscent of Irène Némirovsky’s posthumously published manuscript Suite Française , which also depicts the aftermath of German bombardment as the characters flee occupied France . According to Corpet and Marwell, given our knowledge of Némirovsky’s personal history and that she wrote Suite Française near the end of her life, fearing she would run out of paper and time, one is tempted to “search in this manuscript for clues to the context in which she wrote and to her emotional and mental state.” See Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and ‘Suite Française’, eds. Olivier Corpet and Garrett White (Montreal: Five Ties Publishing Inc., 2008). This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and Suite Française at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, September 24, 2008–March 22, 2009. Likewise, knowledge of Noor’s personal history might prompt us to search for clues in her text about the stressful situation in which she was writing.
- 48.
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 49–55.
- 49.
Ibid., 49.
- 50.
See “Princess Wanda ,” in King Akbar’s Daughter , 193–195.
- 51.
Ibid., 195.
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
Judith Butler , Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999).
- 54.
Ibid., 12.
- 55.
According to Sandra Lillydahl, the editor of King Akbar’s Daughter , these three narratives reflect Sufi themes and “illustrate certain ideals and principles that are not to be taken as literal history.” See Noor Inayat Khan , King Akbar’s Daughter , xvi.
- 56.
Noor Inayat Khan , King Akbar’s Daughter , 96–98. The writer allusively associates herself with Scheherazade, the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights ; otherwise there is no indication that this narrative derives from another source.
- 57.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan , Caravan of Souls, 11–12.
- 58.
Ibid.
- 59.
Zeb-un-Nisa was a sixteenth-century Persian poet. On women, religion, and literature and art of the Mughal empire, see Annemarie Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals, ed. Burzine K. Waghmar, trans. Corinne Attwood (London: Reaktion Books, 2004).
- 60.
Noor Inayat Khan , King Akbar’s Daughter , 84–87. As mentioned, Noor’s tales often culminate in some type of transformation. While this is a characteristic feature of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, it is also a frequent outcome in folktales , and Noor may well be reflecting that folkloric convention.
- 61.
Ibid., 88–95. Mira Bhai, an historical personage, was born during the late fifteenth century in Merta, Rajasthan. She was raised as a princess and chosen by the Rajput rulers to be the first Hindu queen of medieval North India. Her spiritual life was centered entirely on Lord Krishna. See Louise Landes-Levi, Sweet on My Lips: The Love Poems of Mirabai (Brooklyn, NY: Cool Grove Press, 1997).
- 62.
A vina is an Indian instrument that usually has four strings and a bamboo fingerboard.
- 63.
Hazrat Inayat Khan , The Caravan of Souls, 9.
- 64.
Fuller , Noor-Un-Nisa, 78–82.
- 65.
In their recent articles on Noor and gendered experiences of women of the SOE Juliette Pattinson and Shompa Lahiri consult SOE reports, biographies, oral testimonies, and observations by historians but overlook “Cinquante années de gloire!” This is surprising, given that Noor discusses music and feminine voices in relation to multiculturalism, which was a major part of her life. See Juliette Pattinson , “‘Playing the Daft Lassie with Them’: Gender , Captivity , and the Special Operations Executive During the Second World War,” European Review of History 13, no. 2 (2006): 271–292; Shompa Lahiri, “Clandestine Mobilities and Shifting Embodiments: Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan and the Special Operations Executive, 1940–44,” Gender & History 19, no. 2 (2007): 305–323.
- 66.
Fuller , Noor-Un-Nisa, 78.
- 67.
On the relationship between the Inayat Khan family and Emma Nevada, see Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 37. See also Fuller , Noor-Un-Nisa, 252–253.
- 68.
Fuller, Noor-Un-Nisa, 80.
- 69.
Noor Inayat Khan , “Escape from St. Nazaire (1940)” (unpublished).
- 70.
The Odyssey stems from oral epic poetry of the late seventh or early eighth centuries. Homer has been called the master poet of The Odyssey, though his background is unknown and whether or not anyone composed the poem with him is unknown. See Homer , The Odyssey, trans. Anthony Verity (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016).
- 71.
In the introduction to Aède, Pir Zia Inayat Khan explains the seven valleys in relation to the philosophical direction of the play in conjunction with the twelfth-century poem Mantiq at-tayr (The Conference of the Birds) by Farid ad-Din (1145–1221), Persian poet of Sufism. Mantiq at-tayr is based on avian symbolism representing mystics who visit the seven valleys: the Quest (talab), Love (‘ishq), Knowledge (ma’rifat), Detachment (istighna), Unity (tawhid), Bewilderment (hayrat), and Poverty and Nothingness (faqr o fana). He maintains that it would have not been unusual for Noor as a Sufi to read the Odyssey as a mystical fable. See also Sholeh Wolpé, Conference of the Birds (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2017). For the lecture on The Conference of the Birds, see Hazrat Inayat Khan , Complete Works of Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan, Original Texts: Lectures on Sufism, 1923 I: January-June, ed. Munira van Voorst van Beest (The Hague, The Netherlands: East-West Publications, 1989), 206–213.
- 72.
Pir Zia discusses this in the introduction to Aède. Noor was thirteen years old When Hazrat departed for India. On the circumstances of Hazrat’s pilgrimage to India and subsequent death or disappearance, see Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 81–94.
- 73.
Ibid., 93–94.
- 74.
For Claire Ray Harper’s account on the reports of the disappearance or death of Hazrat Inayat Khan , see Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 83–90. She discusses the depths of her mother Ameena Begum’s grief and her seclusion after he was gone. Several of her poems appear in her posthumous book; its cover reads “This Wee Book: each thought and word and line and verse, this wee book doth contain, burst from this bleeding heart I nurse, in loneliness and pain.” One poem addressed to Hazrat “A Birthday in Despair (1927),” marks the year of his death. See Ameena Begum Inayat Khan, Rosary of a Hundred Beads: By “Sharda” to “Daya”, 2nd ed. (Zürich, Switzerland: Edition Petama Project; Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2008). For the lyrics of Noor’s musical composition entitled “The Song of Majzub,” which she wrote at fifteen as a tribute to her father, see Fuller , Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, 51. For a heartfelt poem that Noor wrote in honor of both of her parents, “The Song of the Night,” see Harper and Harper, We Rubies Four, 233.
- 75.
See Achille Tedeschi, Ossian, L’Homère du Nord en France (Milan, Italy: Tipografia sociale, 1911). For more on the music and poetry of Sufism, see Carl W. Ernst, Sufism: An Introduction to the Mystical Tradition of Islam (Boston and London: Shambhala, 2011).
- 76.
For a biographical profile of Hazrat Inayat Khan , see https://inayatiorder.org/hazrat-inayat-khan/ (accessed on June 27, 2019).
- 77.
Noor Inayat Khan , Aède, 56–57.
- 78.
Telemachus and Eurycleia, the Old nurse of Ulys, tell Penelope that she has had a nightmare or that she is imagining the voice. Noor Inayat Khan, Aède, 56.
- 79.
Ibid., 64–65.
- 80.
Ibid., 65–66.
- 81.
Noor Inayat Khan , Aède, 41. In the introduction to the play Pir Zia alludes to Hazrat’s self-quotation from his own book entitled Moral Culture (Deventer: AE. E. Kluwer, 1937), 62.
- 82.
Noor Inayat Khan, Aède, 41–42.
- 83.
Ulys’s disguise as an aède sets Noor’s play apart from The Odyssey , in which his Homeric counterpart is disguised as a decrepit old beggar.
- 84.
Hazrat Inayat Khan writes that: “By the process of Sufism one realizes one’s own nature, one’s true nature, and thereby one realizes human nature. And by the study of human nature one realizes the nature of life in general. It is in self-realization that the mystery of the whole of life is centered.” Caravan of Souls, 8.
- 85.
Noor Inayat Khan , Aède, 43.
- 86.
In 1935 Noor herself taught Sufism to Sufi children on a regular basis at Fazal Manzil in Suresnes. Henriette (Yetti) Blanc Van Gool was her student when she was eleven years old. She writes that Noor encouraged her students to learn by heart “Moïse” by Alfred de Vigny (1797–1863). As a Christmas gift Noor offered Blanc Van Gool a copy of La Case de l’Oncle Tom (Uncle Tom’s Cabin), according to an unpublished letter that Blanc Van Gool wrote to David Harper on April 7, 2013. My thanks to David Harper for sharing it with me.
- 87.
Noor Inayat Khan , “Letters to Azeem Goldenberg.” Unpublished letters, circa 1934. Courtesy of the Personal Archives of David Harper.
- 88.
Enclosed in one of Blanc Van Gool’s letters to me is a “Get well” note from Goldenberg to Van Gool’s mother (Kalyani) in 1934, expressing concern for her young son Louis Van Gool (Louki), Van Gool, who was suffering from the measles. Goldenberg wrote that a “service de guérison” [Healing Service] had been scheduled for Louki that evening. Noor and her siblings signed this letter, as if all planned to participate in the ceremony. These details indicate that Goldenberg was involved with Noor’s family and their mutual friends. (Unpublished letter of Azeem Goldenberg, May 20, 1934).
- 89.
Citations from Henriette Blanc Van Gool’s unpublished letters to me of November 13, 2013, April 9, 2014, and May 14, 2014.
- 90.
I number each letter in the previously unpublished collection. Most are not dated, though in Document 167 Noor indicates that she is leaving Châtel-Guyon in the Auvergne for Spain, while in document 168 she is writing from Barcelona in October 1934 and will soon leave for the “Plage de San Salvador.” Noor Inayat Khan, Document 144. Unpublished letters, circa 1934. Courtesy of the Personal Archives of David Harper.
- 91.
In this letter Noor discusses Henriette Willebeeck Le Mair , who adopted “Saida” as her Sufi name. Saida had suggested that Noor write stories for an American journal on a monthly basis. Saida was also the illustrator of Twenty Jātaka Tales and a disciple of Hazrat during the early twenties. Noor Inayat Khan, Document 182.
- 92.
In one letter, Noor compares a beach she saw during her travels to a passage from the works of Alphonse de Lamartine: “…en regardent cette scène le chapitre si émouvant que Lamartine avait écrit pour raconter ses aventures dans la barque d’un pêcheur de Naples, comme ils avaient à lutter toute la nuit contre la tempête et comme le petit garçon était grimpé au mât tenant haut une torche enflammée pour que tous ceux qui verraient la torche de la côte puissent prier pour eux.” [(And I recalled) while looking at this scene a deeply moving chapter that Lamartine had written to recount his adventures in a Neapolitan fisherman’s boat, about how they had had to struggle throughout the night against the storm, and about how the little boy had climbed the mast, holding a flaming torch on high, so that everyone along the coast who saw the torch could pray for them.] Ibid., Document 162.
- 93.
Noor Inayat Khan, Document 159.
- 94.
Noor Inayat Khan, Document 173.
- 95.
Noor Inayat Khan , Document 170.
- 96.
In another letter to Goldenberg , Noor mentions Nadia Boulanger: “Si je ne fais pas l’harmonie avec Nadia Boulanger, je te promets que je le ferai avec toi, et au fond je préfère la faire avec toi.” [If I don’t harmonize with Nadia Boulanger, I promise I shall with you, and truthfully I prefer to do so with you.] See Noor Inayat Khan, Document 134.
- 97.
Noor Inayat Khan , Document 120.
- 98.
Pir Zia Inayat Khan , The Caravan of Souls, 19.
- 99.
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 49–51.
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Curtis, L.R. (2019). Noor Inayat Khan: Conceptualizing Resistance During World War II. In: Writing Resistance and the Question of Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31242-8_3
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