From the road, Inayat encouraged Noor to develop her interest in writing poems. Most of the poems she sent him were about fairies—Noor had a vivid, personal relationship with these small creatures. She knew what to do if you met one:
. . . behave in courteous fashion, show respect—
lest their great powers find some defect . . .
. . . should a radiance in your sight appear,
Be sure that some Good Fairy must be near.
And if they appeared out of nowhere:
Fairies of an enchanting sphere,
Whisper your secret in my ear.
And if they came at night:
Take me gently by the arm,
When I’m in dreamland . . .
Take me to your land of charm.
Inayat took Noor’s fascination with fairies seriously. He believed that whatever we imagine exists in the physical plane or in our minds. This was especially true for children, whose imaginations were wild and fertile. What a child believes, “it believes seriously,” he said. Therefore, it is “a real belief. If that belief is destroyed, it is a great pity and a great loss.” At the same time, the imagination could be dangerous. If, for example, a child decides Santa is a myth, he won’t trust anyone who tells him Santa is real. On the other hand, Inayat said, telling the child that Santa isn’t real could destroy a child’s faith in his own imagination. Inayat preferred a middle path—saying Santa lives in a world that is distinct and parallel to ours, not quite with us and not quite apart. Eventually, Inayat was certain, all children learn the truth about Santa for themselves.
. . .
Inayat was away more than ever, crisscrossing the United States and Europe for months on end to further Sufism. He was also away to find relief from Fazal Manzil, where there were too many disputes and not enough peace. His brothers were impatient with Ora, whom they found distant and stubborn and determined to raise her children as Westerners as well as Sufis. And some of Inayat’s students, especially those who were financing his Sufi organization, wanted Inayat to be more than a teacher. They wanted a messiah, and that wasn’t his way.
No matter where he was and sometimes every day, Inayat continued to write to his family and, especially to Noor. But letters and promises to take her out in his new “motor car” when he returned home did not satisfy her. “Peace,” Noor wrote in a notebook, “is harmony. . . . Peace is beauty. . . . Disharmony is illness. Disharmony is the curse of life. Harmony leads to perfection. Harmony unites love and beauty. Harmony attracts all human beings.” Noor wanted harmony. She wanted her father.
Under one roof in Suresnes, then, were three cultures (Dutch, Indian, and American); two elders (Inayat and Mrs. Engling); several purists (Inayat’s brothers) who were not happy with Western modernity and who intensely disliked their sister-in-law; one frustrated mother (Ora) who was adrift from the country of her birth, disowned by her brother, and increasingly reliant on her husband (who was rarely around) and on her four children (who were just getting their bearings in life). While the arrangement may have been the only way Inayat was assured that his “little ones are sheltered from heat and cold under a roof,” the shelter came with a price.
Noor found some relief from the tensions at Fazal Manzil by visiting her best friend, Raymonde Prenat, who lived around the corner on rue de l’Hippodrome. The two girls were six weeks apart in age, in the same classes at school, and always made birthday cakes for each other, bringing them to the other’s home with candles and good cheer. Noor also brought a homemade card with an original poem, like the one she wrote on Raymonde’s twelfth birthday which celebrated their “dear past” and anticipated their “joyous future.” Noor’s poems never failed her.
At school, a seven-minute walk from her home, Noor’s grades were good and, being shy and reserved, she was neither disliked nor exceptionally popular though she was apparently respected: one year, she received the Good Comrade prize. Noor stood out in other ways, like her faith, and her family, and her accent—a blend of British, French, Indian, and American inflections. Noor was an anomaly in a Suresnes that was almost entirely made up of French-born Catholics, farmers, factory workers, and vintners. This wasn’t a town of mystics and spiritual seekers (except when Inayat’s students descended on the town for his summer school: most stayed at a large building around the corner from Fazal Manzil that had been purchased as their dormitory). Yet, one Christmas, Noor was as French as her friends. At midnight on Christmas Eve in 1925, Noor and her brothers and sister tiptoed down the stairs in Fazal Manzil to the Oriental Room, the most special room in the mansion. Their parents—Ora in a light-blue sari, Inayat in an apricot-colored kurta—were waiting for them, standing proudly in front of a Christmas tree, the first at Fazal Manzil. The decorations dangling on the tree—fairies, deer, bells, angels—reflected the light coming from the tiny candles that were lit throughout the room. The children marveled at the tree and the candles and the decorations before returning to bed, their way guided by the kerosene lights that were brightening the stairwell and not really caring that, ordinarily, Sufis didn’t have Christmas trees. The “incandescent glittering treasure,” as Claire, Noor's sister, called it, had enthralled them, and that was all that mattered.
In the summer of 1926, Inayat announced that he was returning to India for a sabbatical. His declining health (he had suffered from pulmonary difficulties for several years), worsening relations between his brothers and Ora, and his annual swings through the United States and Europe had worn him down. He was also exasperated by followers who were determined to anoint him a Messenger of God or were pressuring him to make his organization less Islamic; Inayat had never hidden that he, and Sufism, had their roots in Islam. “My ancestors were Muslims,” he said many times. For him, as for all Muslims, there was one Messenger—the Prophet Muhammad. To share that title was blasphemy. While Inayat had threaded Muslim terms and concepts throughout his writing and talks since his early days in the West, he had also reiterated many times that his spiritual home was everywhere: “I have no religion. All places of worship are one to me. I can enter a Buddhist temple, a mosque, a church or a synagogue in the same spirit. Spirituality is the tuning of the heart.” In Inayat’s heart, he was a Muslim—a mystical Muslim. To make inroads in the West, he had significantly softened Sufism’s connection to Islam. But he could stretch his faith only so much.
Returning to India was overdue. “I’m often homesick,” Inayat told friends. He missed India’s traditions and rituals, its colors and its smells, and had never been completely comfortable in the West with all its rushing about and its hustle and bustle: “I would have been most happy sitting with my vina in my hand in some corner in the forest, in solitude. . . . But for my music, the soil of India was necessary.”
Inayat planned his departure carefully. A few days before leaving, he initiated Vilayat, who was only ten, as his successor. Inayat’s brother, Maheboob, would direct the Sufi order until Vilayat was old enough to lead it, or until Inayat came home. Inayat also laid down the rules for Sufi chivalry, a modern version of the gallantry Sufis had originated in the eighth century, a mode of living that required generosity, courage, ethics, and steadfastly ignoring the faults of others. Sufi chivalry championed a goodness and decency that never wavered, even when least expected. During the Battle of Khandaq near Medina in the seventh century, a son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad was about to kill an enemy soldier when his foe spat in his face. Instantly, Ali ibn Abi Talib dropped his sword.