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furtive meetings, the many lies. Many girls in Paris were less difficult to bed or marry than your mother, girls who might have converted to Judaism had he asked it, who would be better wives and mothers than I. Yet Armand—who could say when embarking on a new composition, “An artist can’t wait for someone to give him permission, he must just take it”—spent years waiting with me for Uncle or Kabir to give his permission for us to marry. Love is inexplicable, but he did say once that, when he was with me, he felt close to something sacred
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    The last time I saw your father, ma petite, was on May 2nd, 1940, two days before his thirtieth birthday. It was the last day of his leave, before he returned to the front
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    Everyone knew German boots were marching towards us. Once Hitler had taken Austria, invaded Czechoslovakia and betrayed France by signing a pact with that other shaitan, Stalin, Armand’s mobilization number was posted. By May 1940 he’d been with the 3rd Light Mechanized Division nine months, and was home on his second ten-day leave
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    On that May day before he returned to war, we met in the Bois de Boulogne under the locust trees. He had made arrangements, he said, to evacuate his mother, your grandmother Lydia, if the Germans came too close to Paris. Madame Lydia was born Catholic in Russia but converted to Judaism when she married your grandfather. People who were Jewish had more reason to fear the German invasion than anyone else—and they still do
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    “Just a precaution, Noor. The Germans aren’t very well equipped, I’m told. They won’t get all the way to Paris.”
    My uncle Tajuddin and Kabir were debating evacuation for our family each day, as both held British passports. I told Armand
I would remain in Paris waiting for him at Afzal Manzil even if my family left
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    He would not hear of it. A shadow played over his face. “I never thought I’d say this, but I agree with your brother,” he said. “We cannot be together without marrying—your reputation must be considered. And Noor, this is no time to marry a Jew. There can no longer be any promises between us. You are—you must be—free. Free to marry someone else.”
    He felt that what he was would harm me, that I would be safer without him. But he couldn’t foresee the consequences of our separation. There were bombs in London too
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    No one is safe from powerful men anywhere
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    I said, “I will remain with you, I must be with you now,” but he insisted
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    “Je t’aime, je t’adore.” He said those words as a reminder of all the love he had for me. He did say them. He held my hands to his heart, raised my lips to his, and we parted
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    Oh Armand, forgive me for saying adieu. How bitterly I rue the word!
    The next time Madame Lydia heard from Armand was on June 2, 1940—a telegram from Dunkirk urging her, urging all of us, to evacuate. The Germans had overrun most of northern France. It was a miracle Armand was alive to send that telegram and that it arrived at all; in two weeks France had lost ninety-two thousand men. All I cared was that it said Armand was awaiting evacuation along with his regiment from the dunes of Dunkirk to England
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    The Germans began bombarding Suresnes and the periphery of Paris the next day. In the morning there was no answer from Madame Lydia’s telephone. By noon Kabir had packed our Amilcar for Bordeaux, and Uncle had gone in a car full of other Indians heading to Marseilles
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    I thought Armand and I might, insh’allah, meet again in England, but when we got to London, I learned his unit had regrouped and returned to France
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    And as soon as Maréchal Pétain formed his Vichy government to sign the armistice with Germany, the news turned worse: anti-Semitic edicts, confiscation of Jewish property. I didn’t know if Armand was a German POW, or was in hiding, until a postcard from Cannes. For months preprinted postcards were the only communication the Vichy government would allow
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    When I was