Interesting Lives

After happening upon some sad news at the breakfast table the other morning, I sighed, folded my newspaper and gazed wistfully out of the window across the frost-pinched meadows of my native Debatable Lands. Beyond them lay the eternal hills; in front of me lay the obituary page of The Daily Fakeograph. I addressed my second-oldest son who sat opposite. “Many years ago, before you were born, back in my previous more interesting life when I had hair, teeth and twenty-twenty vision, the fates found me in South Kensington, Londonistan, on a day just like this.”

A sudden downpour coincided with a misunderstanding about the opening times of an exhibition of David Bowie’s underwear (or something of the sort) at the V&A. The kind of event a young man might attend on behalf of a friend in the days prior to this sorry age of couch-rotting and doom-scrolling on mobile phones. No matter, I found myself seeking shelter in the doorway of what I assumed to be another public building in the capital’s museum quarter.

The squall worsened. Those were more innocent days. Before security guards, quadruple deadlocks and metal detectors, a gentleman might step inside an unfamiliar edifice unchallenged. When doing so, I collided with a tall, dark-skinned man dressed from neck to ankles in a flowing white robe. One felt obliged to break the silence.

“Keeping out of the rain,” I ventured.

In a difficult to place accent, carrying more than a hint of the Red Sea, he replied, “We have a reading room, sir, no matter what the weather.” Following the direction of his outstretched arm, a moment later I discovered myself both warm, comfortable and reacquainting my rusty Arabic with an intriguing column describing a dispatch from Quetta. For I’d stumbled into none other than the near-new Ismaili Centre on Cromwell Road, SW7, a pale limestone-clad masterpiece which, as every Puffin knows, showcases the Middle Eastern geometric tradition through intricate traditional craftsmanship.

My only other companion was seated by the newspaper racks dividing his time between the previous day’s native-language editions of the Dar es Salaam papers and the (excellent) racing pages of The Morning Star. He was a stout man, dressed in an expensive suit. Jovial features showed beneath a mop of black hair parted by a high forehead. Again, one was obliged. Pleasant enough in small talk, my new friend and I spent an entertaining half hour or so conversing about the Turf and of the Indian Ocean port.

By coincidence, I once boarded with a boy whose expatriate parents lived in Tanganyika. Their import/export venture to Zanzibar not quite proceeding as planned, they became embarrassed by the school fees. However, after his premature return to East Africa, we kept in touch through blueys – those aerogrammes of yesteryear – which allowed me sufficient insight to hold my own in tittle-tattle regarding 1980s Dar es Salaam society.

Of that stranger, I thought nothing after the time. As soon as the rain cleared, so did I. After exchanging polite farewells, I headed for the V&A. Yet, all these years later, one thing this travelling gentleman realises – being in the intervening decades buffeted by the trade winds and fortified by the kindness of strangers – is that there is not one, let alone several, degrees of separation between people.

For in the photo supplement to that effusive obituary of a remarkable life well lived, I recognised my former reading room companion from all those years ago. Happenstance, weather and a misunderstanding of museum opening times had placed me in the same place at the same time as Prince Karim al-Hussaini Aga Khan IV, who passed away this month in Lisbon at the age of 88. Perhaps, after (not) reading an iffy review of BBC Question Time, His Highness once realised a similar coincidence of me? Then again, maybe not. But what we do know for certain is that the Aga Khan was a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad via the Prophet’s wife, Fatima.

Not quite of the thirst, sand and dust-storm branch of the family, Karim was born on 13 December 1936 in Geneva, Switzerland, and was to become the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. However, at birth, he was not next in line for the title. He would succeed his grandfather, Aga Khan III, bypassing his father and uncle as the incumbant believed a younger leader would be better suited to guide the community in a changing world.

Karim’s parents were Prince Aly Khan and Princess Taj-ud-Dawlah. Not her real name, the princess was originally Joan Yarde-Buller, the blue-blooded English daughter of British peer John Yarde-Buller, 3rd Baron Churston. A divorcée, her first husband had been Group Captain Thomas ‘Loel’ Evelyn Bulkeley Guinness, OBE, one of the banking Guinnesses.

The Ismaili sect, of which his grandfather was head, is numerous in East Africa so during the war Karim lived, and was taught by a private tutor, in Kenya. That grandfather was Sir Sultan Muhammed Shah Aga Khan III who was born in 1877 in Karachi. Of Persian royal blood, his ancestors fled to India in around 1838 following a failed rebellion against the Shah. In 1885 Sir Sultan succeeded his father, Aga Khan II, and was taken to England to be educated at Eton and Cambridge University.

Western education and travel, combined with his Eastern heritage, gained him a reputation as a “citizen of the world par excellence.” He owned no territory — his authority being somewhat similar to that of a hereditary Pope armed with the power of excommunication and the ability to inflict dreaded curses. His interesting life included meeting Florence Nightingale and taking tea with Queen Victoria. More interestingly, his followers tithed a proportion of their income to the Aga Kahn. Philanthropy benefited in part. Good living and a string of racehorses benefitting from the remainder.

While Karim was in Kenya, and after Italy entered the war, Aga Khan III was confined to Switzerland. In spite of which he won the St Leger in 1944 with a bay stallion called Tehran. After the war, Price Karim attended the Institut Le Rosey, a château at Rolle on the banks of Lake Geneva.

Reputed to be the most expensive private school in the world, its former pupils include Alexander Crown Prince of Yugoslavia, Ian Campbell 12th Duke of Argyll and Prince Edward. Not to mention, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (famous as the last Shah of Iran), Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy (a Prince of Venice), the Rockefellers, Rainier of Monaco, the King of Bhutan’s sons and Dodi Fayed. More than twice the price of Eton, annual fees run to six figures. Within ten days of passing the entrance exam, a £43,000 deposit is expected.

An hour-a-week music lesson costs more per term than the entire termly fees at a provincial English public school. A bargain, previous generations of pupils learning the fiddle found themselves tutored by none other than Yehudi Menuhin, after whom a memorial department is named inside the school grounds. As exotic locations are covered by parents during school holidays, term-time trips are modest. That said, the school charges £250 a head for a service bus day trip to poke around the shops in Bern.

Upon returning home one school hols, Karim discovered his father was divorced and his new stepmother was Brooklyn-born Margarita Carmen Cansino, better known as Holywood legend Rita Hayworth. After Le Rosey, Prince Karim enrolled at Harvard, but his time there stalled with the death of his grandfather in 1957 when the prince became Aga Khan IV as per the generation-skipping stipulation. At this point, life becomes even more interesting.

To be continued…
 

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