Seeking truth in the hidden depths of life
Hiba Noor Khan’s creative journey began with a love of words and a deep- rooted curiosity about the world. This desire to question and look beyond the obvious has enabled her to shine a light on lost truths. Shortlisted for this year’s Yoto Carnegies Medal for writing, she talks to Rob Green about what inspires her to write.
WHAT lies beneath is often more important than the surface that we see. The hidden depths in life are where the real interest is, and so it is with Hiba Noor Khan’s Carnegie shortlisted Safiyyah’s War.
The tale is grounded in a real-life story of heroics and danger set in Paris during World War Two, yet unlike many similar deeds this one has largely remained obscured. It is fitting that Paris’ deep network of catacombs provide a setting for Safiyyah’s War – depth on many levels; hidden and out of sight for too long. The story of the Grand Mosque in Paris and the role of the people who worshipped and worked there during the time of the German occupation of France is truly inspiring… and yet it is not widely known. Hiba says that despite her own Islamic faith she was not aware of how Muslims in the City helped their Jewish neighbours escape Nazi persecution. And so, when she first learned about the bravery of the Mosque’s Rector Sidi Abdel-Qadir Benghabrit, plus the countless other people who were involved – including the Imam whose name is lost, she could scarcely believe that she had never heard the story before. She says: “I had never heard this story. I had studied World War Two in school, I’d read the novels, watched a lot of films and thought I knew what went on. But when I came across this story three years ago for the first time, I thought ‘is this real?’ I began to research it and as I discovered more, I just sat at my laptop and wept for 15 minutes. I was so awed and inspired, but also so surprised that I hadn’t heard this story. I went to all my friends and family, and no one had heard it. I have met maybe one person who knew it.” So, what exactly was the story that had been buried? Hiba explains: “Safiyyah’s War tells the real-life story of the effort s and resistance of the people in the Grand Mosque in Paris and their commitment and bravery saved the lives of hundreds and maybe thousands of Jews.
“The book features various real-life figures. One of the main characters is Sidi Abdel-Qadir Benghabrit,
Autumn-Winter 2024
who the book is dedicated to. He was the rector in the mosque and the main man behind it all. Along with the Imam who we don’t actually know what his name is. Together, and with their community, they would bring Jews into the mosque and provide them with false identity papers that showed them to be Muslim. The Muslims weren’t being persecuted in the same way at that time because of the politics around Hitler and the colonies in North Africa that he was planning on taking over.
“They had the authority to issue identity documents as leaders in the Muslim community, and they were doing this and distributing them. As things got worse, they would bring Jews into the mosque and they would hide children amongst their own children. They had 10 apartments in the mosque for staff members and the adults would be able to hide children around the mosque.” “The mosque was located above the Subterrain in Paris, the miles and miles of tunnels that run beneath the city. So, they used these tunnels to smuggle many Jews out through the basement and through the tunnels where they would come out near the river and smuggled out of the city on boats.” Hiba adds: “I felt this immense sadness and sense of anger that this has been forgotten and swept away because it doesn’t fit in with the convenient narrative.” Current affairs play out in the telling of this 70-plus- year-old story today. There is no escaping the division that is being spread both at home and in the wider world. Often it is too easy to accept the predominant narrative, and there needs to be deeper exploration to get to the truth.
The war in Gaza feeds into a notion of Muslim against Jew, and Jew against Muslim – yet there are countless counter narratives that dispel this simplistic world view. Safiyyah’s War is just one of those many stories, and Hiba says: “It has been very strange in the sense of the timing with everything going on in Gaza. It feels very painful – I wrote in the dedication ‘for every child of war, may you be the last.’ It’s a
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