The Tiger Claw

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  The bike sputtered and fired back to life. The sergeant exchanged three full jerricans for the empties in Kabir’s sidecar, handed Kabir a few K-rations and diverted the children by tossing a K-ration packet across the street. A brown hand engulfed a darker one briefly, warmly, before the Jeep swung away down the alley.

  The motorbike thundered away from the village milling with woeful, bargaining refugees, and headed in the direction of Munich.

  Kabir placed a trunk call to Zaib from the Messerschmitt factory at Gablingen Kaserne, now a U.S. military base. He’d been in this area in 1942—one of his first operational raids, and against a military target, the Augsburg MAN plant. In daylight, at very low level. Seven of the twelve Lancasters in his squadron were shot down, his own severely damaged.

  It was soon after these early raids that city centres became Sir Arthur’s targets. City centres were all one could see and hit at night—was that Kabir’s fault? Harris called it terror bombing. Rays from searchlights criss-crossed as his plane screamed over them, and the cities became caskets of jewels as his bombs exploded.

  Banish the image.

  “Dr. Zaib-un-nisa Khan, please.”

  Zaib might be the very first doctor in their family. Definitely the first woman to become a doctor. Still unmarried—probably touching unrelated men, wounded soldiers, every day.

  Her voice, so much like Noor’s, kindled a painful ringing in his inner ear. “I’ve been on the telephone all day, talking to the Central Tracing Bureau of the Red Cross, the War Office, Miss Atkins. No one seems to know anything. They keep mentioning the Official Secrets Act and all that.”

  “And Boddington? Did you talk to Boddington?”

  “Yes. He says he last met Noor in Paris in July.”

  “July? This is July. Or did he mean last year, before the liberation of Paris?”

  “Non, non, Kabir. Écoutez! July of ‘43.”

  Two years ago! Information like starlight—it told you the star was alive light years ago, but was that star still pulsing?

  “Did you ask if she sent any letters? Any that may not have been forwarded to us?”

  “Of course I did. He said there were none.”

  “And then?”

  “He was vague after that. I got the impression he wasn’t at liberty to say.”

  “Damn it, Zaib, the war is over. Why the secrecy now?”

  “Don’t swear. Where are you now?”

  “Augsburg. On my way to a refugee collection centre at Munich. How’s Mother?”

  “She doesn’t eat much. Dadijaan isn’t even arguing with her. The two of them are sitting together in the drawing room.”

  “Together?”

  He couldn’t remember Mother and her mother-in-law, Dadijaan, ever sitting together voluntarily, not since Dadijaan first arrived in Paris in 1938. When Mother married Abbajaan in 1913, she received a Muslim name, and it was assumed she would uphold her husband’s religion and traditions. So whenever there was a chance of Kodaks and photo bulbs, she dressed up in a sari. Abbajaan would send the resulting family photo “home” to Dadijaan in Baroda. And all through Mother’s sole two-year visit to India as Abbajaan’s widow, she had worn saris. And so Mother completely and unwittingly misled Dadijaan to believe she wore saris every day, all day, as did Dadijaan. In Paris.

  The discovery, on arriving in Paris, that her daughter-in-law, her son’s widow, Rukhsana Begum née Aura Baker, habitually bared her legs beneath a dress evoked Dadijaan’s deep and abiding suspicion. From that moment, Mother, American though she was, began to personify the East India Company, the British Raj, the marauding West and all its depredations. Mother remained oblivious, continuing to wear dresses every day and saris as fancy dress in Paris, and then not at all in war-tossed London. Dadijaan’s distrust had never abated. And it didn’t help that Mother often forgot namaaz if she was working or the cinema beckoned.

  Zaib gave a small laugh that turned into a sniff. “Yes, together. And it’s Sunday, but Dadijaan hasn’t gone to Hyde Park.”

  For two and a half years Dadijaan hadn’t missed Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park on Sunday, not to listen to speeches in English, which she understood perfectly well, but to make her own passionate denunciations of Mr. Churchill, in court Urdu mixed with Gujarati. Standing on a box six inches above English soil, she could shout what she knew: that Churchill was denying rice to the hungry, denying boats to fishermen, that his policy was to starve His Majesty’s subjects in India into submission for the English war. That it had no effect was Mother’s main objection; she liked actions to have quick and measurable outcomes.

  “I told Dadijaan the Khans are a hardy lot. Right, bhaiya? I said, see how many missions Kabir flew, and he’s still alive.”

  “Subhan-allah. Did it help?”

  “Oh yes, she told Mother all about the Tiger of Mysore again.”

  Kabir allowed himself a small laugh.

  Damn brigand Tipu Sultan—not an exemplary ancestor. Tiger or not, he still wound up dead, his children taken hostage by the Brits. Mother needs stories with better endings.

  “Mother never understood a word,” said Zaib.

  “Poor Mother,” he said. “You’d think she could comprehend elementary Urdu by now.”

  “She doesn’t have to.”

  Zaib had never learned Urdu or Hindustani for the same reason—she didn’t have to. Like Noor and Kabir, she could read Arabic enough to read the Qur’an, but learning other languages had to be linked either to sticks or carrots; she didn’t feel anything was worth learning for itself. If Zaib had known Abbajaan, and hadn’t come of age when Uncle Tajuddin ruled at home, and then during a war, she’d be different.

  All of us would be different, but for the war.

  “Zaib, before I left Paris, I called U.S. Military Command several times and asked if any of Noor’s names—Noor Khan, Nora Baker, Anne-Marie Régnier or Madeleine—appear in files from Gestapo headquarters at the avenue Foch. I thought perhaps the Nazis didn’t have a chance to destroy them before they fled Paris. Call them again.”

  “I did. They said the Americans have the files. The ones from the avenue Foch and the rue des Saussaies.”

  “Where did they take them?”

  “Top secret, they said. They’re going to find all the Nazis in Germany and try them. Don’t want the same chaps in power again. Determined to replace the entire bureaucracy of Germany with new people. Prescription for anarchy, if you ask me.”

  “I’ll call you soon.”

  “Allah hafiz.”

  As he replaced the black earpiece on its hook, a wave of anger welled up so high that his hands trembled.

  Why is it Noor? Why not Zaib?

  Dreadful thought! And about little Zaib, their baby sister. Zaib, who didn’t barge through society’s norms like Noor but worked at helping people cope with them. Daily, Zaib encountered pain and disease to be healed; she left philosophy, symbols, spirits and significance to Kabir. But she could be relied on to keep up appearances. And she was as determined as he to find Noor.

  Noor. Abbajaan’s favourite.

  Abbajaan was open and warm with Noor in a way he never was with Kabir, teaching her the veena, allowing her to massage his feet when he returned from touring, serve him warm salt water for gargling after a day of speeches. But then, Noor loved Allah and worshipped easily and naturally, whereas Kabir could see beauty in the poetry of the Qur’an, but …

  Long after Mother had put him and Zaib to bed at night, young Kabir listened for the periodic clink of chess pieces, Abbajaan’s childlike laugh, then Noor’s low murmur to see if they would embark on another game. By the time he was old enough to play chess, his Abbajaan was gone.

  Once, when Kabir was fourteen and Noor sixteen, he dreamed Noor was lying on the grass. And in the dream, he, Kabir, was glad at her dream-death. Glad! The self-knowledge released by that dream still filled him with horror. How could he resent so beloved a sister at one and the same time as he felt himself willing to die in he
r stead?

  Envy? Noor was the only one in the family who could join Abbajaan in the loneliness of his experience of India, the experience Abbajaan never could communicate to Europeans. The only one who could play the veena with him. When Mother, desperate for money, moved the family to Baroda for two years after Abbajaan’s death, Noor absorbed India naturally, as if born there, whereas young Kabir was painfully aware that though he knew his Qur’an better than any of his Indian cousins, he wasn’t Indian enough; the cousins all dubbed him a lousy batter and an even worse bowler.

  And he didn’t need Mr. Freud to tell him what the dream meant: hatred for the part of Noor that was most like himself. Yes, it had taken Kabir years to name it, but he knew it now. It was the shared part that was “too damn Indian.” Today he could even name the source of his gladness as a child wandering in that dream: with Abbajaan gone and without Noor, his family would now be European, look European in every way.

  It was just a dream; he could also refuse to remember it.

  And besides, even if Noor was older, Kabir was the eldest son, the son on whom Abbajaan bestowed his mantle. Abbajaan chose him to bridge the gulf between earth and heaven for his followers. Of course, that choice followed the Sufi silsila tradition, but the memory of his initiation ceremony was still comforting.

  Kabir searched the K-rations for a vitamin biscuit—a “cookie.” He replaced the chocolate bar, chewing gum, cigarettes and lima beans in the sidecar. Perhaps he could barter them for information in Munich.

  Large drops wet his jacket like spit from the sky.

  He mounted the Triumph and took to the road again.

  On his way to the U.S. Office of De-nazification in Munich, Kabir rode right through the ground floor of a shattered building, unable to see any difference between the scarred outside and the building interior. Stalagmite shapes loomed over roads reclaimed by grass and the buzzing of insects. The reverberation of a single scream might bring every brick and stone to knee level.

  The cathedral was completely gutted. A place referred to as the Brown House was damaged badly but not destroyed, and the priceless collections in the Pinakothek had received a direct hit on a date matching an entry in Kabir’s flight log. Everywhere, clearing crews of Nazi prisoners and large-boned women in scarves were loading rubble from gargantuan fallen monuments at a steady pace, but anyone could see it would take years to restore what bombs had destroyed in an instant.

  A peddler jiggled the tray suspended from his neck, calling, “Eggs, eggs!” as Kabir approached the Rathaus, the richly ornamented town hall in the Marienplatz. The mechanical clock began its glockenspiel performance as he climbed the stone stairs inside. Soon he was shifting his weight on a hard wooden chair sized for a child, in a modest room with the scrawled label U.S. Office of De-nazification. There, a very young-looking captain from Chicago to whom he’d been referred by Zaib listened to his story without comment, then laughed with a cynical timbre that placed him closer to Kabir’s own age.

  “Find her in three weeks? Christ! Lieutenant, you sure set yourself one helluva task.”

  But if Kabir didn’t leave Munich tonight, he couldn’t report for duty in Paris on schedule. Upper echelons would believe he’d delayed or even deserted, fearing confrontation with the Japanese. It would match their prejudices against Indian men and confirm their worst opinions of refugees from France.

  So he must, he had to, return on time to Paris.

  “Know how hard it is to find a single person?”

  “I know,” said Kabir.

  The captain’s eyes were bloodshot from sleeplessness or drinking or both. Kabir knew his own eyes had the same crazed look from days of filling in international tracing requests, quizzing forced labourers, former POWs and other refugees at the Deutsches Museum, sending telegrams and telephoning Zaib from the American base.

  “You’ll need months of leave, buddy. Maybe years. Tell me, how many camps can you go to? How many prisons? How many mass graves can you search?” The captain rose and turned to the map of Europe on the wall behind his desk. “You saw the buildings of Natzweiler, right? Wasn’t that discovered by the French? The Russians came upon this place—here.” A forefinger alighted on a single, tiny red push-pin. “It’s called Auschwitz. You wouldn’t buh-lieve me if I told you what they found. And you Brits liberated Buchenwald and Belsen in April. Then we stumbled over the horrors of Ohrdruf.”

  Jab, jab, jab.

  Kabir had seen photographs in the newspapers: piles upon piles of skin-and-bone dead. But he could not, would not, believe Noor was among those people.

  “Then Dachau. And Dachau wasn’t just a camp for Jews; it was for anyone the Nazis disliked—Poles, Russians, Gypsies, Catholic priests, homosexuals, and dissidents of any kind. It goes on and on … For three months we’ve been uncovering primary concentration camps, sub-camps and work camps, and prying folks out of civilian prisons.”

  Kabir leaned closer. The entire map of western Europe behind the captain’s desk was prickled with a constellation of tiny red and blue push-pins. He sat back, stunned.

  “We’re just trying to clean out the Nazis in Munich, but there’s too many of them and we’re awful undermanned.”

  “I was told your office has the files captured at Gestapo headquarters in Paris.”

  “I haven’t received any. Pleased to know I can expect some, though.” He paused, then continued in a kinder voice. “Look, pal—flight lieutenant, I mean. If your sister was an agent for the British, the Nazis would have labelled her ‘Nacht und Nebel.’ That’s a ‘Night and Fog’ prisoner. She could be anywhere in Germany. God forbid the Russians have moved her to one of their camps. There were many—no, I’d say mostly—French and Italian Jews among the prisoners liberated from Auschwitz, and many of those are still DPs and haven’t arrived home yet, coz guys like you did such a great job bombing bridges, railroad tracks and stations across Europe. Or they can’t find rail cars or … I dunno, there’s always some darn Limey, Frog or Russkie excuse.”

  Kabir’s arms and shoulders felt like rock, ready to attack this destroyer of hope. The captain tore the wrapper off a pack of Lucky Strikes and propped a cigarette in Kabir’s direction, as if to soften the impact of his words. Kabir raised a hand, refusing on principle.

  “Some DPs aren’t well enough to travel, two months after liberation. If she’s still alive, Lieutenant Khan, she might be in a prison, in a camp or under medical care. You don’t know, do you? You can’t know.”

  It wasn’t “if” Noor was alive—she must be, she must be. But if she was, surely she would contact him, send word to him in care of the RAF? A Red Cross message, a phone call? The captain’s words rang true. Kabir rested his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands at moustache level, desperate to unite thoughts and body.

  The captain continued in a kinder tone. “The Nazis weren’t ordered to keep records of Night and Fog prisoners, but that don’t mean squat. Amazing how much the bastards wrote down ‘bout what they did and to whom. Always afraid some bigger bastard might raise questions, accuse them. Here—” He pushed an index card across the table at Kabir. “Fill it in. I promise you, if we find anyone matching her description, or anyone who can tell us about her, I’ll contact you personally. Immediately. Best I can do.”

  The captain was asking Kabir to acknowledge and accept powerlessness in the face of chaos. Passivity. Fate.

  Hope crumpled beneath the weight of reality, then turned unaccountably to anger.

  Noor, you brought this on yourself; you are responsible.

  Noor wasn’t his only obligation. He had three women to support on his pay: Dadijaan, who sent all the house money she could get her hands on to Muslim charities for the millions starving in India; Zaib, for whom he should arrange a marriage with some Muslim who could be persuaded to overlook her tending unrelated men—and soon, or she’d follow Noor’s example and ally herself with some totally unsuitable man and commit the same mistakes; and Mother, who, since the letter from the W
ar Office saying Noor was missing, had lost her legendary organizational efficiency, energy and optimism.

  If only he could be all places he was needed at once.

  Kabir managed to fill in the card, shake the captain’s hand, salute and mumble thanks that sounded grateful. Outside the captain’s office, he threaded his way between desks. Shoulders cradling telephone receivers each bore the flaming crusader sword insignia of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. Outside, their businesslike, optimistic drawls yielded to the calls of street peddlers vying for attention from passing hausfraus. A Rosenthal lamp, a dinner jacket, a music box—scavenged and looted goods to be bartered and sold. Even fresh eggs, here and there. Shirts, shoes, a pair of patched trousers. One hawker balanced a lone tomato on his palm, loudly boasting its matchless beauty.

  Survival of the fittest often means survival of the loudest, the most bumptious.

  Neither term described Noor.

  What more could he do but report for duty on schedule? He’d call Zaib, Mother and Dadijaan on his way back to Paris. He would say: Noor must be alive, insh’allah she’ll return home to Paris, she’ll telephone, she’ll write. He wouldn’t wonder if Noor might write to someone else if she was alive—to her friend Josianne Prénat, or that Jew Armand Rivkin.

  He would try not to remember the meeting with the Jew, five years ago, that meeting he hadn’t mentioned to Zaib. Climbing to Rivkin’s apartment on a cold spring day, a weight in his pocket. Just before the May invasion, before the battle of northern France, before the fall of Paris. Holding that envelope out, saying, “Leave my sister alone.” Try not to remember the packet of money that never changed hands. He couldn’t imagine where Rivkin was now.

  Zaib wouldn’t give up, of that he was sure. She’d continue writing letters and telegrams of inquiry.

  Of course, if Kabir was sent to the Far East, he’d go. But if, insh’allah, he was demobilized, there was Afzal Manzil to be reclaimed in Paris. He would restore it, bring his family home from London. After that, he would decide whether to reopen the school. Could he muster enough faith to preach Abbajaan’s beliefs? Perhaps. That is, if any in Europe would pay to learn again about tolerance and love.