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Postwar Years with Friends and Family

NEVER in my long life -- I may say with complete honesty -- have I for an instant been bored. Every day has been so short, every hour so fleeting, every minute so filled with the life I love that time for me has fled on far too swift a wing. A mind that is occupied, in health or in sickness, with things outside itself and its own concerns is, I believe, a perpetual source of true happiness. In ordinary prayer, as we in Islam conceive it, adoration of the beloved fills up every nook and cranny of the human consciousness; and in the rare, supreme moments of spiritual ecstasy, the light of Heaven blinds mind and spirit to all other lights and blots out every other sense and perception.

In recent years, since the end of the Second World War, I have had a great deal of illness -- enough, I suppose, in its content as in its prolongation in time to have depressed me. I have undergone three major internal operations, two of them with what is ordinarily considered a fifty-fifty chance of survival. I have been laid low for months with severe heart trouble. Yet I have never been depressed. I can honestly say that my mind has constantly been occupied with things outside myself. There has been, for example, a great increase in Ismaili activities throughout the Islamic world with a swirl of new ideas and new schemes, with which I have been closely and actively associated. I have read a great deal; I have voyaged in my reading eagerly into the exciting new realms opened up by scientific discovery. The moment that I was well enough I went back to my old love -- golf; and golf has brought me a renewal and an extension of the friendships and acquaintances that have meant much to me over the years. I think in this connection of the golfers whom I have known: the genial, warmhearted, openhanded Castlerosse, for example, with whom I played often in the years before the war -an able journalist, a witty and intensely entertaining conversationalist, at all times and on all occasions a boon companion; or my good and wise old friend, J. H. Taylor, who used sometimes to travel with me, who was often my guest at my home, whose pupil I was over many weeks and months -- what a wonderful personality his is, with a mind ever open to delight in life and to curiosity about it -- it is good to know that he is in excellent health and enjoying his well-earned retirement in his home at his native Westward Ho! I shall, incidentally, always be glad that among the game's professionals I came to know many men like J. H. Taylor, who were of sterling worth and in every way examples to all who met them.

Travel is another pursuit which, since the end of the Second World War, my wife and I have resumed with especial zest and joy -- all the keener perhaps because it was denied to us in those dark years. We have returned to familiar places, discovering fresh charm and fresh beauties in them; and we have found delights hitherto unexplored. In Egypt we have tasted again the pleasure of Cairo that united, under its bright and limpid sky, so many civilizations, so many worlds; Luxor with its monuments; Aswan with its especial beauties of air and light; and Alexandria, the ancient and seductive, where memories of Greek and of Ptolemaic civilizations mingle in and alongside a big bustling modern Eypto-Levantine city and port. In India we have rediscovered the infinite beauty and wonder of that immense land -- the high hill station of Darjeeling, for example, with its incredible sunsets and sunrises of rose and pink over the immense snowclad peaks of the Himalayas. And there is Lahore, whose mosques and other buildings are often so curiously ignored in favor of Delhi and Agra, even by those who know a great deal about Moghul and Indo-Saracenic history and art. In Europe, Rome the majestic and Venice the elegant and sophisticated, though they are both cities that I have long known and loved, have of late revealed to me new secrets and new enchantments in light, color and architecture.

All my life I have been a constant theatergoer, and, as I remarked in an earlier chapter, a devoted lover of the opera. Whenever I can, wherever I am, I go to every good opera within reach. One ray of light illumined for me the long, dark years of the war when I was confined in Switzerland and deprived of almost all contact with the outside world: the Municipal Theater in Zurich had a series of wonderful operatic seasons. Every year Kirsten Flagstad -- the supreme singer among women as Caruso, to my mind, was the supreme singer among men -- came to give her magnificent renderings of her great Wagnerian roles. Some of the best Italian singers too -- Gigli and others -- came each year to Zurich. There was an almost unique pleasure about these memorable seasons: the concentration of talent and genius in one city, the sensation of this beauty's enduring and surviving in the midst of so much that was barbarous and horrible, and the contrast of this intellectual and sensuous feast with our deprivations.

There are friends of mine, old and new, with whom I share this zest for life, this complete freedom from boredom. There is Elsa Maxwell, the mention of whose name brings a bubbling sense of happiness. Hers is a friendship, hers is a kindness, which I profoundly appreciate, for which I am ever grateful. She possesses a true exuberance, a boundless joy in living; to others she gives perpetual pleasure, and she is happy because she makes them happy. Elsa Maxwell, the best of friends and the most forgiving to her enemies -- if such there be -- stands out as an example and an encouragement to all who believe that social intercourse should be accepted and appreciated as one of God's good gifts to mankind, and not as a dreary obligation to be shuffled through when necessity arises.

A couple of friends whom I cannot forbear to mention here -since they have come so much closer to us since the war -- have been my old racing trainer, Frank Butters, and his delightful, courageous wife. Their annual visit to us in the south of France was something to which, every autumn, we grew to look forward as one of the chief pleasures of next year's spring. Now alas, his health has so completely broken down that, though we go on repeating our annual invitations, Mrs. Butters has to refuse them. Greatly do we miss them both, but this sadness has not impaired our affection for two of the best human beings we have ever known.

A new good, kind friend made in the years since the war is Mr. Charles Grey, a member of the staff of the United States Embassy in Paris, a man of sweet and sunny temperament, gay, gentle and ever helpful. He is the embodiment of the French saying "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner." No one could be a better companion in joy or sorrow than Charles Grey, for he is another who realizes that friendship and social life are God-given, and that we ought to be thankful for them and accept them with joy and gusto and not with resignation or boredom. Elsa Maxwell, Charles Grey and I share one quality which I sincerely believe to be enviable: we don't know what boredom is.

During the 1953 Cannes Film Festival I met Miss Olivia de Havilland, the distinguished actress, a woman of subtle and interesting personality who seems to me to be in her own way, if I may say so, a seeker after truth. I believe that she is one of those fortunately gifted people who have an artistic and personal life of their own, full, busy and successful, and who are yet -- in and through this active day-to-day life -- sharply and constantly aware of the fundamental issue and problem of our world today, the enormous power that man has attained over physical nature contrasted with the still somewhat primitive limitations of his emotional and spiritual existence.

Another new friend -- one of the few truly great individual and creative artists of our time -- who is in his fashion a similar seeker after truth and a pilgrim in search of a reconciling wisdom amid the contradictions of today is Mr. Charles Chaplin, whom I first came to know in 1953. He and I have talked long and far into the night -- of the dreams that lie near our hearts, of the puzzles that afflict and sadden us. That Chaplin is a rebel goes without saying -- a rebel against the folly of modern society's impotence in the midst of such overwhelming material aggregations of power.

I will cite an example of the sort of thing which drives a mind like Chaplin's to distraction. A recent report of the World Food and Agriculture Organization stated, without equivocation, that the vast majority of human beings still live far below the hunger line, with consequences in waste, suffering, reduced productive capacity and shortened expectation of life too enormous to measure; and, as the report pointed out, at the same time the world's present ratio of food production (let alone the results of any improvements that would follow better methods of soil conservation, fertilization and farming) is sufficient to ensure a perfectly adequate diet for every human being alive if it were properly distributed.

Now if only some of the enormous capital investment all over the world which every year goes into totally unproductive and potentially violently destructive armaments could be expended in a single major productive project -- let us say water conservation, in building dams and artificial lakes and providing irrigation schemes for the huge empty and desert areas of the world -- the over-all agricultural output would be vastly and rapidly increased and the ordinary standard of living be raised thereby. This, which is a topic about which I have thought a great deal, I drew to Mr. Chaplin's attention, to discover that his views on it were just the same as mine.

His detractors have in the most unmeasured terms accused Mr. Chaplin of being sympathetic to communism. I discovered one aspect of communism which horrified him. Communist propaganda, as we all know, proclaims loudly from time to time Moscow's view that our two worlds, our two economic and social systems, can live peaceably side by side and maintain a system of exchange, not only economic but intellectual and cultural. Yet, as Chaplin argued fiercely, the communists have established the Iron Curtain, which prevents any real free exchange of ideas between the two worlds, banning utterly as it does a free interchange in writing and the other arts, unimpeded free and uncontrolled travel by students and tourists, and all the ordinary ways by which the people of one country or civilization get to know and comprehend the people of another. The only method, said Chaplin, by which the co-existence of our two systems would be possible, or could offer a natural and healthy solution of humanity's troubles and problems, would be to open all frontiers to travelers, with the minimum of passports, currency control and restrictions and with a free and full interchange of literature -- academic, journalistic and popular as well as technical and scientific -- from one end of the world to another, such as existed in the far-off, happy days before 1914.

Mr. Chaplin is interested in certain psychical and nonphysical phenomena, such as telepathy and its various derivatives. He quoted to me Einstein's demand that ten scientists should witness at the same time, and under precisely similar conditions, every case of this kind submitted before he would consider these manifestations proved. He and I agreed that the imposition of this kind of test would make all psychical research and experiment impossible, for these phenomena -- and the laws under which they occur -- are simply not at the beck and call of human beings.

I consider it a real privilege and pleasure to have met Mr. Chaplin and his beautiful and accomplished young wife. She comprehends and fully sympathizes with his ideals, with his mental and spiritual aspirations and satisfactions, and with the real suffering that the contradictions of our time cause him. I, who by the grace of God's greatest gift, am myself blessed with a wife who fully understands the joys and the sorrows of my mind and my spirit, can well appreciate the happiness which he finds in a domestic life very similar to my own.

For a time a famous and beautiful young star of the screen was my daughter-in-law -- Miss Rita Hayworth, my son Aly's second wife. She is the mother of my granddaughter -- whom I have seen only when she was a new-born baby.

Aly's first marriage -- to Mrs. Loel Guinness, a young Englishwoman of beauty, charm, wit and breeding, born Joan Yarde-Buller, the daughter of Lord Churston -- had had my full and affectionate approval. They were married in 1936, when Aly was twenty-five; I took my daughter-in-law, Joan, to my heart; and I had, and still have, a great affection for her. She bore Aly two fine sons, my grandchildren; these boys are now at school and in due course they will go to universities in America -- the elder, Karim, who shows promise in mathematics, to M.I.T., we hope, and Amyn, probably to the Harvard Law School.

Their marriage remained perfectly happy until the end of the war. They were both in the Middle East, first in Egypt and then in Syria; Aly was in the Army and Joan was one of the many officers' wives who, at that time, were grass widows in Cairo. After the war they returned to Europe and Joan spent a year or two in East Africa with the children. However -- and to my real sorrow -- they drifted apart. Differences developed between them and they separated.

Not long after this, Aly went to the United States on business and there met Miss Hayworth. They were seen about a good deal together -- and a blaze of sensational publicity enveloped them, with endless gossip and speculation. They came to see me at Cannes, and I asked them if they were really devoted to each other; they both said that they were, so I advised them to get married as soon as possible.

As soon as their respective divorce formalities were completed, they were married -- but in circumstances of clamorous publicity such as we had never before experienced in our family. My own first wedding in India had been elaborate, yet its festivities were simple and unostentatious, but this was a very different matter. This was a fantastic, semiroyal, semi-Hollywood affair; my wife and I played our part in the ceremony, much as we disapproved of the atmosphere with which it was surrounded.

I thought Miss Hayworth charming and beautiful, but it was not long before I saw, I am afraid, that they were not a well-assorted couple. My son Aly is an extremely warmhearted person who loves entertaining, who loves to be surrounded by friends to whom he gives hospitality with both hands. Miss Hayworth was obviously someone who was emotionally exhausted with the strain of her work, which had absorbed her almost from childhood, and she therefore looked upon her marriage as a haven of peace and rest. Certainly for two people whose ways of life were thus dramatically opposed the collapse of their marriage was inevitable.

However, I must say that instead of tackling the matter frankly and openly, Miss Hayworth somehow got it into her head that either Aly or I myself might try to take her daughter away from her, indeed kidnap the child. Therefore taking the child with her, she ran away from my son in rather extraordinary circumstances.

Had Miss Hayworth taken a little care and trouble, she could have found out what in fact are the Ismaili religious laws and the code which governs all my followers and my family in these matters. Under this code the custody of young children of either sex rests absolutely with their mother, no matter what the circumstances of the divorce. Unless we were criminals, therefore, we could not even have contemplated taking the baby, Yasmin, from her mother. When they are seven, boys pass into their father's custody, girls into their mother's until puberty when they are free to choose. This code surely offered Miss Hayworth ample protection.

I was in India and Pakistan when the final crisis in my son's domestic life was developing. The moment I got back to Cannes -that very same night -- Miss Hayworth, without having let me even see the baby, took her and ran away to Paris and then from Paris back to the United States. She has since, I understand, come back to Europe; but she has not brought the child to show her to her father's family.

The day that she was leaving with the child, a busybody in my employ telephoned to tell me what was happening and to ask what she should do about it. I answered at once that it was no affair of ours and that Miss Hayworth was fully entitled to take the child wherever she wished. She could surely have delayed her departure for Paris from Cannes and have let me see the baby.

Friends of mine and my lawyers have always maintained that I might have made a trust settlement or taken out an insurance for my small granddaughter's future. Their arguments, though wellintentioned, are mistaken. They have not realized that under Islamic law the custody of a female child, until puberty, rests absolutely with her mother. They have also forgotten that there is no way under Islamic law by which a child can possibly be disinherited by his or her father. Were my son Aly to die, he is not allowed to will away from his legal heirs more than one third of his property; two-thirds must go to his heirs, of whom his daughter Yasmin is one, and he cannot interfere with this provision in any way. Nor does Muslim law allow a testator to benefit one legal heir at the expense of another. Therefore, whatever happens to my son Aly, the child Yasmin is bound to get her proper share of any estate which he leaves. So long as capitalism and any system of private property survive, it is unlikely that Aly will die penniless; consequently, there is no particular urgency about making financial provision for his daughter.

A system of dowries and of marriage settlements is, I understand, developing in the United States, and doubtless when the child is of an age to contemplate marriage, either my son or I will arrange a reasonable dowry for her, in relation to the circumstances of the man she marries.

In conclusion, I can only hope that when next Miss Hayworth comes to Europe, she will bring her small daughter with her so that her father's family can see her and have the pleasure of making her acquaintance.