CHAPTER 10

Pforzheim, Germany
December 1943

WHEN MONIQUE TOLD ME about the Grand Rafle, my heart flooded with anger against the Germans who held Armand and your grand-mère Lydia in their grasp. Anger was the emotion with which I was least familiar.

When I was growing up, anger in a girl was almost haraam—forbidden. In its place I allowed myself to feel only hurt or sadness—cover-up feelings, the bomb shelters of the powerless. I never acknowledged my anger when Abbajaan left us in Paris and died soon after in India, when Uncle Tajuddin lectured on tolerance but would not tolerate my marrying Armand, or even when I could not become your mother, ma petite—you who would be little Babette’s age now.

But this time, when anger appeared on behalf of my beloved, I found my hands trembling with it, could even name it. Every moment of anger I should have spread over the years seemed to meet and knot inside me.

In the years before the war I was, like everyone in France, all acquiescence and conciliation and non-aggression. I admired Monsieur Gandhi, whose non-violence was shaming the occupiers of India, for he spoke of brotherly love and said that differences between Hindus and Muslims will be honoured in a free India. With other followers of Sufism, I performed namaaz and zikr, meditating to heal the planet. We prayed for the miraculous enlightenment of Fascists everywhere—German and French, Hindu and Muslim. At the time, Monsieur Gandhi had not yet grown feeble from imprisonment, and the future of Muslims in a Hindudominated India still held promise. And the dictator in my family, Uncle Tajuddin, still quoted Abbajaan and Rumi.

But where did conciliation and appeasement lead? First to losing you, ma petite, then to losing the one man worth calling husband.

And so, my first night back in Paris, I swore to Allah: I resist all tyranny. Know this, little one, when your spirit returns from hiding in Al-ghayab, the great beyond. Say no to all oppression, whether it rise from those you love or from an enemy, for the shame and self-hatred your mother carries for not resisting when I was younger are worse by far.

It was now too late for doubts. If I had wanted to be protected from the consequences of love and anger, from risk of pain and death, I could have stayed in London, remained a nurse or become a chauffeur in Fany, and no one would have said I hadn’t done my part for this war.

Abbajaan said the Sufi trusts his intuition, following it where logic cannot go. He said life’s events lead you to encounter your nafs, your base self, and you must surmount it to find your true self.

So I held my anger close that night, and by morning it had turned to renewed resolve: I would reach Armand and tell him to have faith. We will be together again soon.