Free The Tiger Claw by Shauna Singh Baldwin

wasting away in gaol, held without trial for months now. The eldest gentleman asked if she believed Indians shouldbe armed. Yes, said Noor, for their own defence against the Germans and Japanese. If allowed arms, she said, India wouldn’t have to pay the British government tons of rice and millions in sterling for its protection. India had numerous brave men and women who could defend its borders.
    “They didn’t like what I said.”
    “You must have sounded like a red-hot radical,” said Miss Atkins. “As if you agree with those who say East Indians could govern themselves.”
    In fact, Noor’s reprieve from the depths of their disapproval had come with the next question. Asked what she thought of Messali Hadj, the radical Muslim agitating for Algerian independence from France, she expressed admiration for any man who would spurn an offer of release from Vichy and remain in a French gaol—an attitude more in keeping with those of men who despised Pétain’s Vichy government. She was warmly congratulated and passed.
    A question mark seemed to hover over Miss Atkins’s head.
    “Everyone is capable of self-governance,” said Noor. “Even Indians.”
    “Indians? Oh, don’t be silly, Nora. They’re not yet ready for freedom or democracy—haven’t a clue. Really, do try being a little more politic. It surprises me the board approved you. But I’ve long resigned myself to working with flawed material.” Her tone was turning ever more mocking. “Anyway, all your little outburst did was confirm Mr. Churchill’s convictions: the naked fakir and that Nehru chap should remain in jail. Now, if you’re going to take this assignment and survive, you must learn to lie, dear, lie convincingly about many things.”
    Noor could lie as convincingly as any other agent—why ever not? By the time she left France, she was skilled in the administration of a multitude of selves, not only her nafs, the base self that must be overcome. She could lie to her self as well as anyone else; had she not hidden her self from herself these many years? Thinking up excuses to circumvent Uncle Tajuddin’s restrictions,hiding, meeting Armand in secret because she didn’t want to disappoint or hurt her family. Once she imagined herself as she “should be,” the right responses flowed.
    “About your true identity, for instance,” Miss Atkins added.
    She was already lying about her true identity by calling herself Nora Baker instead of Noor Khan. She wasn’t the only Indian ever to take a Western name. Still, it was a cowardly accommodation to England—and a lie.
    As for cover stories, she’d be a veritable Scheherazade. How many consoling fairy tales she had created for Kabir and Zaib to explain Abbajaan’s absence. Buddhist tales she translated had even been published as a book. She retold Sufi teaching tales, wrote her own short stories, managed the children’s hour on Radio Paris. She could unfetter her imagination at will.
    Miss Atkins continued, “Diplomacy, war and interviews require a modicum of, shall we say, prevarication.” She paused to light a Players. “But I think you Indians have a native capacity for prevarication, so we shan’t have to worry about that.”
    Noor felt herself flush. Fortunately, she was spared having to respond to these remarks by the arrival of a plate bordered in indigo blue. She had what Yolande termed “the curse,” so she would eat, though it was Ramzaan. Besides, training exercises gave her a hearty appetite. Dadijaan, whose network of expatriate Indians extended into every nook of London, said, when serving small, tasteless rations after sundown, that so many in India were starving to support this war, everyone in England should be grateful for any food at all. But if the shrivelled island coated with cream sauce on the plate before her was pork, it would, taken with Miss Atkins’s remarks, surely turn her stomach. Well, at least it wasn’t soup.
    She tasted it—fish of some kind.
    It