In this unsettled house, Noor always wrote a birthday poem to Ora. When her brothers and sister were young, she signed the poems with their names and hers. When Ora was taken to a friend’s house in Paris to recover from an illness, Noor sent her a drawing she had made of herself and her siblings. And when Ora needed a boost, Noor wrote her another poem:
Even if the whole world,
Would serve us and help us e’er,
Still it would not equal
Your tender motherly care.
The level of Noor’s devotion to her mother was what was expected if Inayat Khan was your father. He provided a detailed roster of dos and don’ts for his children: Never interrupt a conversation. Never contradict your elders. Never desire something if that would deprive others of that same thing. Never frown or be blunt or angry. Never interrupt others’ enjoyment by asking to join them. And never, in the presence of others, ask your parents for something they could not give you. Doing that only made someone who overheard your request feel they were obliged to give it to you. Inayat also dispensed a few “always”: Always deprive yourself of something instead of asking someone to do a favor for you that would satisfy your desires. Always tell the truth. And always be more devoted to your mother than even to your own prayers.
Constantly, Noor’s “first and most sacred duty” was to Ora. God, Inayat said, did not hear prayers from children who ignored their mother or didn’t give her the attention she deserved. “Heaven,” Inayat taught, “lies at thy mother’s feet.” Noor should never forget to express her gratitude for Ora’s “selfless love and devotion and constant sacrifice.” Noor was obliged to do this even if that meant not joining in games or amusements that gave Ora “the least displeasure.” In Inayat’s catechism of proper behavior, not much was left to chance: everything Noor did was another element in her devotion to her mother, the one human being she should never forget, the one from whom all blessings flowed.
During most of the year, Noor waited for Inayat to return from his latest trip. Usually it was a long wait. In 1923, Inayat was in the United States for five months. He spent most of that time—six weeks—in San Francisco. The next year was less demanding—about fifteen days in Holland, and most of October and November in Sweden, Germany, Norway, and Denmark. The pace picked up after that, with extensive stays in Switzerland, Italy, and Germany during the first third of 1925, followed by a six-month tour, December 1925 through May 1926, of Denmark, Norway, and the United States—lecturing, teaching, meeting scientists (Luther Burbank) and moguls (Henry Ford), embracing America as if it were the New Jerusalem, “nursed,” he said, “with the milk of . . . ideal brotherhood from its infancy” and noting that other countries watched the United States “with anxious eyes . . . , eager to take up whatever progressive movements America may start.” In this most spiritually awakened of all nations—“America sets the example for the world”—even its women “respond more quickly to spiritual principles than others I know.”
Every June through August, Inayat stayed home, devoting himself to the Sufi “summer school” that was held at Fazal Manzil. With the endless stream of visitors, he was less of a father and husband than he was everyone’s father—to his children and to the Sufis who overran the house and the field across the street where they held meetings and classes. On most days, Noor managed to be with her father during his private audiences with devotees, serving tea silently and unobtrusively.
Every morning when he was home, Inayat gave each of his children a theme for their day—virtues like patience, tolerance, forgiveness, kindness, humility. That evening, to prove they had done their “homework,” the children told Inayat what they had done to advance the topic they had been assigned. If any of the children had misbehaved, they had to decide on their own punishment—a way to instill responsibility about their own conduct. If Inayat suspected a child had been up to trouble, but lacked proof, he asked if they had been naughty, hoping their conscience would loosen their tongues. When Inayat asked Noor about her behavior one day, she answered, “I wanted to be bad, but my goodness prevented me.”
The children were both proud and ambivalent about being insulated from the rest of the world. “We were brought up in such a way,” Vilayat later said, “that we could not be like other children. The whole atmosphere was rarefied. . . . It was as though we looked at life through stained glass windows.” When Inayat was home, he began his mornings with breath exercises, a small breakfast, vocal exercises while accompanying himself on the piano, and two hours of private meetings with students. He lectured in the afternoons, gave initiations, and dictated teachings and sayings for books. His evenings were devoted to lectures or private meetings with advanced students. At the end of the day, his family sat around him cross-legged on the floor of the Oriental Room in Fazal Manzil, meditating and reciting prayers and the names of God.
This was not how most children were raised in Suresnes. Inayat knew that, and he wanted them to feel connected to the rest of the world. Out there, he told his children, was a world where people suffered, fought, starved, and killed. To help them appreciate their duty toward others, Inayat relied on their ancestor, Tipu Sultan, the eighteenth-century ruler who had fought several wars to keep the English out of India. “You are royal,” Inayat reminded his children. “Nothing in the world can take that away. Do not be afraid to hold up your heads in any court in the world.” Between their royal heritage and their Sufi legacy, the children were obligated to be compassionate, to lift up others spiritually, to help anyone who was in pain or doubt. Inayat didn’t give his children much leeway about this. “Keep burning the fire I have lit . . . ,” he encouraged. “The fuel needed is your every thought, your faith, your prayers, and your sacrifices.” Noor never forgot about her faith or her prayers. She also never forgot about sacrifice. This would be the prevailing motif in her life, the fulcrum that supported everything else, and without which her life was vacant and purposeless.
Always dutiful, Noor never strayed.
Wherever he went, Inayat wrote to his family. But he wrote more to Noor than to the others, sometimes on letterhead from hotels where he stayed (the Waldorf Astoria in New York, the Copley Square in Boston), sometimes on postcards with photos of the local sights (canals in Venice, the Spanish Steps in Rome, the Japanese tea garden in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco). In almost every piece of correspondence, Inayat reminded Noor to help Ora “every night and every morning when you go to bed and when you get up” and to never be “a naughty girly.” Once from New York, he suggested that Noor and her siblings could benefit from knowing about a five-year-old’s table manners he had observed during a dinner where he had been a guest. She “sat with dignity” and said “good evening” when she entered the dining room, and she said “thank you” when food was placed on her plate, and she said “excuse me” when she left the room. “I wish,” he told Noor, “our little ones would know this.” (Inayat was fairly strict during meals at Fazal Manzil. If a child spoke without an adult first speaking to him, Inayat immediately asked, “What are the rules of the table?” The garrulous child would then be silent until he or she was invited to enter the conversation.)