spy story

one cold morning on september 12, 1944, at the dachau concentration camp outside munich, four young women were taken from their cells and unceremoniously shot. they were english special operations executives, murdered by the schutz staffeinel (ss) for spying on germany. of the four, one was noor-un-nisa inayat khan, great-great-great-granddaughter of tipu sultan. her codename: madeleine. she was posthumously awarded the george cross five years later.

and a legend was born.

one other morning, 56 years later, the author shauna singh baldwin happened to pick up a biography of inayat khan by jean overton fuller. she was, one assumes, intrigued. at the same time, she was confronted by questions that demanded answers, gaps that needed filling in.

connecting both mornings were a few eerie coincidences. inayat khan was born in the soviet union, raised in england and france, spent a short time in india, and was eventually a spy in germany. shauna singh baldwin was born in montreal, brought up in india, and happened to be running a spy-themed restaurant in milwaukee. if there was someone equipped to fill in those gaps, she was the one. it was this need to complete the picture that gave birth to her novel, the tiger claw.

“several books have been written about other soe agents,” says singh baldwin. “noor’s story has been told by writers who have exoticised, eroticised, blamed and glorified her. what attracted me to her was her hybridity, and that, like me, she was a second-generation diasporic indian with strong emotional ties to india.”

the novel opens with noor’s imprisonment in 1943, when she begins, in secret, to write about what led to her incarceration. it traces her life in detail – her upbringing, the death of her father, her uncle’s ideas of propriety, her clandestine romance with a jewish musician, their separation, and the search for him that compels her to become a spy. the other voice in the tale belongs to her brother kabir, who scours europe’s prisons after the war, trying to find his sister.

in retracing inayat’s path, singh baldwin did some scouring of her own, stopping by noor’s jail cell and her residence in london. she even found herself at a sufi ceremony honouring noor’s nephew in india. then, in the midst of her research, the twin towers collapsed. sikh cab drivers in new york were attacked because their turbans were confused with osama bin laden’s attire. suddenly, the historical fiction didn’t seem far removed from her time. overnight, noor’s story was transformed into a twentieth-century metaphor.

“i don’t believe the world changed dramatically on 9/11,” says baldwin. “that crime, committed by mostly saudi men, gave an excuse to those who wished to seize the opportunity to redefine the very basis of morality. it gave president george w bush an excuse to invade two countries for their oil, label minorities and immigrants ‘terrorists’ and ‘sleeper spies’, lock them up or deport them.”

the exploration of injustice has long been singh baldwin’s trait, one that has led to some much-fêted writing. her first novel what the body remembers focused on how women were often predetermined by culture. then came english lessons and other stories, tales about women from india to north america. she is averse to calling this a recurrent theme though. “if i started out saying to myself, ‘now you’re going to write a story about the effect of culture on female protagonists’, i think i’d have writer’s block in a minute. but if i hear a voice in my head and ask, ‘who are you?’ and ‘what is your story?’ i end up with a short story, maybe even a novel.”

at times like these, when the world is in turmoil, writers and artists have traditionally taken on the role of seers, pointing to light in the darkness. i ask singh baldwin about that role, and whether she sees herself playing it. “fiction writers continue to play the role we have always played,” she replies, “we tell the lies that tell the truth. i find it’s the paradox of my life as a writer that if i yearn for tolerance, i have to write about the effects of intolerance. to demand justice, i find i must explore injustice.”

while noor inayat khan has long held on to the mystique surrounding her, singh baldwin may have just managed to part that veil. “it is for readers to judge if i came close to understanding her,” she tells me. i point to a suggestion that the novel be made into a film, with aishwarya rai or jennifer lopez playing the lead. “i can't picture either one as noor,” says singh baldwin, “but great actresses can play any role.”

interestingly, despite the world war ii setting and the author’s many accolades – the tiger claw was a finalist for the prestigious giller prize -- publishers in the us and uk have not been keen on touching it. does this have something to do with a deep-seated fear of ‘the outsider’? “it is true that us and uk rights have not yet been sold,” says singh baldwin. “i'm hopeful that will change when the political climate changes. perhaps the tiger claw has the same problem as its protagonist and its writer -- no single country can fully claim it. perhaps it's a new genre: global lit. but i'm proud that my canadian, indian and dutch publishers see the global dimensions of the story, and its relevance.”

can it really be looked at as a critique of imperial powers? the author believes, quite vociferously, that it can. “read it as a great adventure story, or as a comparison of colonialisms. read it as a tale of how a woman can do a great job and end up saving france from fascism while being a believing muslim wearing a headscarf -- oh yes, in france. read it as a tale of love and betrayal, or a tale that says we must love so deeply and fiercely that love will outlive our bodies,” she says. “read it in many ways.”

i think a great many will.