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formalised the belief. The service was held in the large living room of Fazal Manzil where candles and incense sticks would be lit. The children would sometimes listen to the service with fascination. The idea of tolerance of all religions would stay with Noor all her life and motivate her actions in the future.
    On Saturday, Inayat Khan would sit on the roof of Fazal Manzil and meditate all day. He would go into a trance and two men would have to support him to help him down. As a child Noor would watch, captivated. ‘Have you seen Abba’s eyes?’ she asked Vilayat one day. 3 Her brother noticed that she would have tears in her eyes when she saw her father in a trance.
    Inayat Khan remained at heart a musician. He taught his children Indian music and often questioned them about the ragas. Noor always listened attentively and answered his questions. She also wrote down the words of the songs in both English and Urdu (she wrote the Urdu words in Roman script as she was not familiar with the Urdu script).
    Inayat found it difficult to scold his children, so he had his own way of disciplining them if they were naughty. He would hold court on the steps and would never allow the children to denounce each other. 4 He would ask why they had been naughty and if they agreed that they had done wrong. He would then ask them if they thought they should be punished. The punishments involved running around the garden ten times or sitting in a corner, or not speaking for a few hours. Once a Dutch disciple related an amusing incident about the children. Some of them had been naughty and Inayat Khan called Noor to him and asked if she had been naughty too. She replied, ‘I wanted to, but my goodness prevented me’. 5
    The family ate together at mealtimes but the children were expected to sit in silence. They felt the discipline was part of their father’s love for them and did not mind. After finishing work Inayat Khan would call the children to him, and they looked forward to these precious moments with their father.
    The children knew they had to share their father with the world. As Inayat Khan’s lecture schedules and engagements became more pressing, he hardly spent any time in Fazal Manzil except in the summer months when he was surrounded by his mureeds . He was a majestic figure with his golden robes and flowing beard, probably looking much older than his 40-odd years. The children would lie on the grass and watch him walk to the lecture hall. Vilayat said they could feel his presence reaching out to them. 6
    Noor loved going to her father’s lectures. She remembered one at the Musée Guimet in Paris which impressed her very much, even though she was very young at the time. After the event, she threaded her way through the crowds to hear what people were saying about the lecture and then breathlessly recounted all that she had heard to her amused father. 7 Her happiest moments were the ones she shared with him, listening to him talk or learning to sing from him. Then she would sit cross-legged in front of him, singing the notes after him as her father took her through the intricacies of Indian ragas.
    When he was not around, the children missed him a lot, but learned to live with it. Vilayat often wished he had a father like the other children in the school, but would soon dismiss the thought. Noor, on her part, would lock herself away in her own world, playing fantasy games and writing poems.
    When she was eight, Noor started school in the local Collège Moderne de Filles at Suresnes. School was not easy for Noor. The children did not know any French at this time (they spoke English at home). Now they had to take their lessons in French and converse with the other students. Hidayat remembers that it took a lot of courage to adapt to a French-speaking school. 8 Some of the French students were not used to foreigners and the children faced problems on that score as well. Slowly they learnt the language and gradually became