The Tiger Claw Read Free

and the survivors was indestructible; it had demanded of all of them that they survive these terrible years.
    If Noor hadn’t survived, he would never forgive himself. If she was wounded or worse because of his bombs—Damn it, why had he bragged about Noor to Boddington? It was Kabir who introduced Noor to Nick Boddington—a journalist, so he’d thought—whom he met perusing
The New York Times
in the circular reading room at the British Museum Library. How anxious he’d been then to prove his loyalty to Britain, how anxious for Noor to prove hers too. It was 1942—must have been June, for it was shortly after Premier Laval said “I desire Germany’s victory” and broadcast his latest madness, a program to exchange six French workers for each French POW held in Germany. One of Noor’s stories for childrenwas to be broadcast over the BBC, and he’d mentioned it to Boddington over a pint at the Café de Paris in Trafalgar Square. Surrounded by a babble of languages, including the halting, lilting English of refugees from all over Europe ordering themselves into old hierarchies, he’d enumerated Noor’s accomplishments: multilingual, children’s writer, pianist, qualified nurse, wireless telegraphist. Impressed, Boddington wondered out loud if his sister might be amenable to doing a little “liaison work” for King and Country—“very hush-hush and all that, could bring in a bit more pocket money, if you get my drift.” And Kabir said, “Yes, of course, but of course,” and gave friendly Nick Mother’s address where Noor could be reached.
    And just why was he so anxious for Noor to take any position Boddington offered? Admit it now: was it that Boddington’s very hush-hush job brought in a few pounds more than a telegraphist’s pay, more than any nurse or secretary in London earned, and those few pounds more would help him support Mother, Dadijaan and their young sister Zaib? No, no, that wasn’t all. Admit the real reason: he meant to spare Noor the remotest chance she might be ordered to clean bedpans, swab blood, tend strange men. War be damned, at the time, he couldn’t stomach the idea that if Noor became a nurse on active duty, she, his sister, his unmarried sister, would touch, hold, bathe men’s naked bodies—unrelated men.
    He could imagine Noor, gentle Noor, as a wireless operator for the Nursing Yeomanry, as Mother, Dadijaan and Zaib believed, but not as a secret agent. He couldn’t imagine his sister flying the Channel to France tucked in the gunner’s end of a Lysander.
    Because Kabir still thought in French, preferring the solid logic of its verbs to the exception-dense mutt-quality of English, he could have asked to be assigned to the no-less-dangerous path of the Lysanders carrying guns, ammunition and operatives like Noor into France; bilingual pilots were in high demand. But like some other RAF men, he thought the Lizzies a mere bus serviceand remained with Bomber Command. When his bombardier released the four-thousand-pound cookies that stung the distant surface, none of them knew if the bombs had found their targets. Wind and speed affected their downward trajectory, and Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris and his officers at Bomber Command had to wait for aerial reconnaissance photos taken in daylight, and coded dispatches from wireless operators like Noor, to determine the extent of enemy damage. Noor had sent such damage reports, reports on enemy strength, troop and supply movement, arsenals, artillery the Allies would encounter across northern France and beyond.
    Brother and sister are tethered at the ankle, always running together in a three-legged race, striving to match one another’s stride, leaning on one another even as they pull away. Younger by two years, he’d leaned on Noor from the time he was ten and his father, Abbajaan, went “home” to India and never returned. All of them—Mother, Dadijaan and Zaib—had relied on her; so he was, well, affronted that she