Hiba Noor Khan on the Origins of Safiyyah's War

Safiyyah’s War is inspired by the true story of the miraculous, sophisticated, and largely forgotten resistance run from the Grand Paris Mosque against the Nazis during WW2. It’s a story of unthinkable bravery, of courage against all odds. It’s a singing of unsung heroes. A light shone on a shadowed moment from history, a moment so profound that it still takes my breath away. An ode to humanity, and everything that makes it rich, sacred, brilliant, and beautiful.

The rector and imam of the mosque risked their lives to shelter injured Allied soldiers, and provide forged Muslim identity documents to Jews. They hid Jews in the mosque, before smuggling them through the treacherous souterrain to safe passage in empty wine barrels on boats. It’s thought that close to 2,000 Jewish lives were saved by these means. The novel tells their story through the eyes of Safiyyah, animal-loving, map-obsessed, and at times a little fiery, she dreams of being an explorer, but her world collapses when her city falls to the Germans. The Nazis are suspicious of the mosque, and the adults are followed and arrested, so it falls to Safiyyah and her friend to run the errands in the city. She ends up playing a more vital role in saving the lives of Parisian Jews than she could ever have fathomed.

I was due to start writing the book at a very difficult point in my personal life, I’d experienced devastating loss and was struggling. I started having panic attacks, and even when not in the midst of one, life felt like a state of perpetual gasping for air. For a long while, no words came to me. Then all at once they arrived, and in allowing them to flow through me, I began to be saved. There are truths that run like a river through the story, that glow just as brightly today as they did almost a century ago. The central themes are just as applicable now as they were then because they are rooted in the human experience that transcends time, that at its core is shared, ancient and unchanging. I hope that readers can drink from these rivers just as I did. I set out to write a novel, but somehow it wrote itself, transforming me in the process. The characters taught me about healing through grief, picking up the scattered shards of self when they lay about you on the floor.

Before I had formed any of the plot of the story, I woke up in the middle of the night and could see the ending play out as clear as day. It was like watching a film, with the sounds and music accompanying the scene that was seamlessly unfolding in my mind. It hit me in the chest, beguiled and moved me, and I stayed true to it when it finally came to putting it into words. 

The rest of the story came more gently and gradually. Sometimes as softly and silently as the velvety fronds of a plant whispered to life by Monsieur Cassin, a retired botanist, both eccentric and exquisitely kind. He taught me the importance of having patience with my own heart, as well as the hearts of others. Sometimes, the story twinkled against a starless night, like Safiyyah’s cheeky, sage-like grandmother’s eyes. She showed me that hope will always prevail, and that it lives on in seemingly unlikely ways. From memories we wrap around our shoulders like shawls to help us be brave, to orange seeds that hold the promise of vibrant life within their tiny, unremarkable bodies. Other times, the story warmly flickered like the stubborn flame of a candle that refuses to be put out, this was the spirit of the mosque rector, ‘Ammo Kader’ (Abdel-Qader Benghabrit) and the imam, ‘Ammo imam’, whose name is unknown. They taught me what it means to truly be human. 

Then there’s Safiyyah. Endlessly curious and committed to courage. She showed me that deep empathy and sensitivity to those around us, are strength and power rather than weakness. 

They held my hand across the pages of the book, which will always hold my heart.

I studied WW2 history at school, and have read novels and watched films based on it, but had never come across the story of the Grand Paris Mosque. The book is dedicated to Benghabrit, who remains mostly unknown, despite his and his colleague’s life-saving heroism. Though their work has been erased from the mainstream narrative, absent from textbooks and memorials, their names deserve to be spoken, and it’s my great honour to be able to bring their story to readers. Other real-life figures who feature include Noor Inayat Khan, Hiram Bingham, and Adolfo Kaminsky.

While writing, I spent four days at the Grand Mosque and visited the resting place of Benghabrit. I prayed in the vast carpeted prayer halls and wandered the colourfully mosaicked courtyards. One balmy evening, I watched the moon rise beside the minaret from the jasmine-scented gardens, which inspired one of my favourite scenes. I was serendipitously joined by my amazing editor, Eloise, for a morning! Over cups of mint tea, we imagined and discussed Safiyyah’s world. From creepy catacombs to animal rescues, undercover imams to rebellious librarians, there’s adventure, mystery, healing, and hope (and fluffy cats!). 

Perhaps for the majority, any thought of Muslims and Jews together only evokes images of conflict and tension. Safiyyah’s War brings to life just one of countless instances in which the opposite is true. Now, perhaps more than ever before, societies are being fed reductive, polarising tropes at alarming rates and intensities, and my hope is that literature like this can be a humanising force. The novel challenges stereotypical paradigms at every turn, and as well as being a book about resistance, might also in and of itself be a form of resistance. 

This is my first foray into middle-grade fiction, and now I have realised it is a genre of wonder and of wonders, I hope it will not be my last!