Desert Queen
Page 1
Janet Wallach
Desert Queen
Janet Wallach is the author of Seraglio and Chanel: Her Style and Her Life, and coauthor, with her husband John Wallach, of three previous books on the Middle East: The New Palestinians; Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder; and Still Small Voices: The Real Heroes of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. She lives in New York City and Connecticut.
BY JANET WALLACH
Seraglio
Chanel: Her Style and Her Life
Desert Queen
Arafat: In the Eye of the Beholder
(WITH JOHN WALLACH)
The New Palestinians
(WITH JOHN WALLACH)
Still Small Voices:
The Real Heroes of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
(WITH JOHN WALLACH)
Anchor Books Editions, July 1999, 2005
Copyright © 1996, 2005 by Janet Wallach
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Nan A. Talese, an imprint of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1996.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wallach, Janet.
Desert queen : the extraordinary life of Gertrude Bell, adventurer, adviser to kings, ally of Lawrence of Arabia / Janet Wallach. — 1st Anchor Books ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York : Doubleday, 1996.
1. Bell, Gertrude Lowthian 1868–1926. 2. Women Orientalists—Biography. 3. Colonial administrators—Great Britain Biography. 4. Colonial administrators—Middle East Biography. I. Title.
DS61.7.B37W35 1999
956′.02′092—dc21
[B] 99-24297
eISBN: 978-0-307-74436-4
www.anchorbooks.com
v3.1
To John, David and Michael,
who surround me with love
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Maps
Prologue
Part I
A Victorian
1 OF GREAT AND HONORED STOCK
2 A MAN’S WORLD
3 AN ILL-FATED MARRIAGE
4 FLIGHT
5 FIRST STEPS IN THE DESERT
6 A DIFFERENT CHALLENGE
7 THE DESERT AND THE SOWN
8 WOMEN’S RIGHTS
9 LAWRENCE
10 DICK
11 TOWARD HAYIL
12 PRISONER IN ARABIA
13 RUMBLINGS OF WAR
PHOTOS
14 A TRAGIC END
15 ESCAPE TO THE EAST
16 A REMARKABLY CLEVER WOMAN
Part II
The Khatun
17 A MESSY SITUATION
18 AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN
19 BAGHDAD
20 DISARRAY
21 PARIS AND THE ARAB QUESTION
22 THE ARAB MOOD
23 A CHANGE OF THINKING
24 DESERT STORMS
25 A TASTE OF ENGLAND
PHOTOS
26 THE CLASH
27 AN UNPLEASANT VICTORY
28 COX RETURNS
29 THE CAIRO CONFERENCE
30 RESISTANCE
31 FAISAL
32 THE KING
33 KEN
34 FAREWELL TO COX
35 TROUBLES
36 TO SLEEP
Epilogue
Afterword to the Anchor Books Edition
The Hashemite Family of Sharif Hussein of Mecca
Glossary
Endnotes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Gertrude Bell first came to my attention more than twenty years ago when, reading one of her books on the Middle East, I was struck by the courage of this bold Victorian woman. As I was about to travel to that part of the world for the first time, any fears that I had were diminished; indeed, my curiosity was piqued by her descriptions of journeying alone in the early 1900s, surrounded only by Arab men, speaking almost no English, sleeping in tents, riding camel or horse through dangerous regions, risking robbery and even death. I put the book back on the shelf, but the spirit of that intrepid traveler stayed with me.
It wasn’t until the Gulf War in 1991 that references to Gertrude Bell popped up in newspapers, books and periodicals. Seeing her name reminded me of her book and my admiration for her. Learning of her importance to the modern Middle East, and in particular her crucial role in Iraq, she seemed to me an ideal subject for a biography. Little did I know just how marvelous a subject she would be.
Gertrude Bell was keenly aware of the importance of her work, often reminding her parents that her letters were a record of history. Thousands of those letters and diary entries are now preserved in the Robinson Library of the University of Newcastle, where I did much of my research. I have tried to be as true to them as possible; where I used conversation and dialogue in Desert Queen, the quotes were taken directly from that material or from the letters and memoirs of Gertrude Bell’s family, friends and colleagues. Any changes in spelling, particularly of Arabic words, were done to make the book more unified and the reading a little easier.
One of the bonuses of writing about Gertrude Bell was the opportunity to travel in her footsteps. I spent time with the Bedouin in the desert and with archaeologists, diplomats, writers and historians in England, Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Amman and, most intriguing of all, Baghdad. I spoke to dozens of people who had heard about her from family and friends and to at least a dozen people who had actually known her themselves (including one who claimed to have been her lover). Some could still recall the authority of her voice, the severeness of her gaze, the exuberance of her dress. Others I spoke with helped me understand the mood of the places, the attitudes of the Arabs, the position of the British, the importance of the tribes, the impact of oil, the role of India. I am grateful to the many people who were so generous with their time, their memories and their knowledge.
I could not have gone to Baghdad without the enormous help of Ambassadors Nizar Hamdoon and Sadoon Zubaidi. Bahnam Abu al Souf, an ebullient archaeologist, and Mohammed Ghani Hikmat, Abdul Razaq Al Hassani, Muayad Sayid Damevji, Esman Gailani, Yousif al Gailani, Amin al Mummayiz and Ali Salah all gave me rare glimpses into Iraqi culture and history.
In Amman, I was fortunate to meet with Prince Raad, Souleiman Moussa, Talal al Patchachi, Abdul Aziz el Dhourie and Qais al Askari, who all had thoughtful insights into the monarchy and the tribes. Marwan Murwasha was, as always, a generous friend. In Cairo, Leila Mansoor helped me find old photographs. In Jerusalem, Val Vester recalled not only “Auntie Gertrude” but Hugh Bell, Florence Bell and Valentine “Domnul” Chirol. Amatzia Baram of Haifa University is an enthusiastic teacher who, undaunted, ploughed through hundreds of pages of manuscript and willingly shared his enormous knowledge.
In London, Roger Hardy of the BBC, Lamya Gailani, Renee Kabir, Nazha Akraui, Salma Sati el Husari and Naha Rahdi were a great help in reconstructing Baghdadi life. My thanks to Caroline Barron for permission to use the papers of her grandfather David Hogarth and at St. Anthony’s College at Oxford, my special thanks to Lady Plowden and to the Trustees of the Trevelyan Family Papers. In Newcastle, Lesley Gordon helped with the Bell papers in the Special Collection of the Robinson Library at the university; Jim Crow steered me through the six thousand photographs taken by Gertrude Bell.
Lynn Ritchie gave me excellent advice and Robin Gard kindly served as guide around Newcastle. Jane Hogan helped me in the Palace Green Section of the Durham University Library. At the Oriental Institute at Oxford, Jeremy Johns answered dozens of questions on archaeology and more. Sally Chilton talked fascinatingly about her father, Philip Graves.
In New York my thanks to Selma Rahdi for her help with archaeology and to Linda Fritzinger, a soul mate and scholar on Valentine Chirol. In Boston, Suhair Raad al Mummayiz helped me locate people to interview. In Washington, D.C., Christine Rourke and Betsy Folkins of the Middle East Institute were always willing to search for obscure facts and books; Nancy Wood did marvelous research on mountain climbing. Edmond Ghareeb and Nameer Jawdat were patient readers and teachers. My great thanks to Simon Serfaty, a good friend and wise counselor; Ghida Askari offered good cheer and vivid memories of her grandfather; Tamara Weisberg was always ready to listen; Sue Glaser added her psychologist’s insights on childhood; Amos Perlmutter gave me his ebullient advice on the great British personalities; and Geoffrey Kemp helped me understand the role of India and oil. Christine Helms and Clovis Maksoud both led me to invaluable sources. Tania Hanna was a willing and able research assistant.
Ron Goldfarb and Linda Michaels, my literary agents, were enthusiastic believers from the beginning. My thanks to Jesse Cohen for his patience with endless details. I am indebted to Nan Talese for her encouragement, inspiration and attentive care to this project. Most of all, my thanks to my husband John, whose understanding and love made it possible to write this book.
Janet Wallach
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 1996
Prologue
She was always surrounded by men: rich men, powerful men, diplomats, sheikhs,* lovers and mentors. To picture her you had only to envision a red-haired Victorian woman with ramrod posture, piercing green eyes, a long pointed nose and a fragile figure fashionably dressed, and, whether in London, Cairo, Baghdad or the desert, always at the center of a circle of men. So it was only natural that on the drizzly evening of April 4, 1927, less than a year after her death, those who gathered at London’s Royal Geographical Society to pay her tribute were mostly men. Resplendent in white tie and tails, beribboned medals flanking their chests, they marched through the halls recounting their explorations and hers.
“Gertrude Bell,” “Gertrude Bell,” the name flew around the room. She had been, they seemed to agree, the most powerful woman in the British Empire in the years after World War I. Hushed voices called her “the uncrowned queen of Iraq.” They whispered that she was the brains behind Lawrence of Arabia, and a few knowingly ventured that she had drawn the lines in the sand for Winston Churchill.
Some said she had been arrogant, imperious and ruthlessly ambitious, but others knew that flowers and children could melt her heart, and that what she had desperately wanted, more than anything else, was to have been a wife and mother. They had heard she was engaged to be married once, and that later there had been a painful love affair, but they wondered why she had never wed.
A handful of men acknowledged she had achieved nothing less than a miracle by creating the modern state of Iraq; many grumbled that she had given in to the whims of the Arabs, causing the British no end of trouble and expense. A few even believed that she, the exuberant Englishwoman, had fallen in love with Faisal, the melancholy Arab prince, and that she had lost her head like a schoolgirl, but none could deny her achievements: the first woman to earn a first-class degree in Modern History at Oxford; the author of seven books, scores of articles in publications that ranged from academic journals to the pages of The Times, and a White Paper considered to be a masterpiece by the British Government. She was the only woman to earn the grade of Political Officer during the Great War and the only woman after the war to be named to the high post of Oriental Secretary; the winner of the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society; the honorary director of antiquities at the Baghdad museum; and the recipient of a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
The members of the Royal Geographical Society reminisced about her life before the Great War: a lone Englishwoman in the male, Muslim world of the Middle East, a famous author who wrote about the Arabs, an acknowledged archaeologist, a courageous traveler who dined with china and crystal, dressed in extravagant clothes, rode on camel and horse and penetrated dangerous regions of the Arabian desert. They had heard she was a spy who went behind enemy lines to gather information for the British during World War I. They remembered the way Vita Sackville-West had described her “irrepressible vitality” and her “gift of making every one feel suddenly eager; of making you feel that life was full and rich and exciting.” And yet, on that same visit to Iraq in 1926, Vita had noticed how frail and ill her friend looked. Gertrude Bell’s life had ended tragically only a few months after that, two days shy of her fifty-eighth birthday.
At the gathering in her honor, her father addressed the distinguished group. Sir Hugh, in his eighties, affirmed the unique relationship of which so many had known. “I think,” he said, “there never were father and daughter who stood in such intimate relations as she and I did to one another.” But it was her mentor David Hogarth, President of the Royal Geographical Society, who spoke that evening about her Arabian adventure, of which “[T. E.] Lawrence, relying on her reports, made signal use in the Arab campaigns of 1917 and 1918.” That trip through the desert was only one of the many milestones that marked the journey of her life.
* For the meaning of this term and other Arabic words used in the book, please refer to the Glossary.
CHAPTER ONE
Of Great and Honored Stock
Great persons, like great empires, leave their mark on history. The greatest empire of all time, the one that stretched over a greater amount of ocean, covered a greater amount of land, contained a greater number of people than any before it, was the British Empire of Queen Victoria. Her superpower left its mark on continents and subcontinents, from Europe to Australia to India to America to Africa to Asia, from Adelaide to Wellington, Bombay to Rangoon, Ottawa to the Virgin Islands, Alexandria to Zanzibar, Aden to Singapore. The British navy ruled the seas, British coal fueled the ships and industries, British bankers financed the businesses, British merchants ran the trade, British food fed the stomachs and British factories clothed the bodies of one fourth of all human beings who lived and worked and played in every corner of the world.
Nothing better exemplified Britain’s place at the center of the universe than the very first world’s fair, the Great Exhibition of 1851, held in London. Along with Queen Victoria (who visited it forty times), half a million people—entrepreneurs, industrialists, landed aristocrats, diplomats, professionals, tradesmen and workers—came on opening day to see the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations” at the new Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. Six million more people followed, most of them arriving by railway, to walk under the domed glass and along the carpeted hallways, to see goods from countries as nearby as France, Germany, Italy and Spain and from as far away as Russia, Persia, Turkey and China. They saw every imaginable product and some that were unimaginable: fabrics, raw hides, machine looms, jewelry, china, chocolates, coffee, tea, carpets, automatic revolvers, hydraulic presses, mechanical wood saws, wheat-grinding machines, gold quartz mills, high-pressure steam engines, a twenty-four-ton chunk of coal and a machine that sent messages by telegraph. The point of the exhibition, said Prince Albert, who had conceived it, was to show how far mankind had come and to give a direction for future development. No nation had come farther than Britain, the pioneer of the Industrial Revolution, “the workshop of the world.” Its citizens had the highest per capita income and its workers contributed more than half of the fourteen thousand exhibitions at the Crystal Palace. In addition to the products of its colonies, the British booths displayed English cottons from Lancashire, sturdy woolens from Yorkshire, linens from Scotland, edged tools and fancy silver from Birmingham, glass and cutlery from Sheffield and huge mac
hinery from Northumbria.
Nowhere did Britain’s workshops toil harder than in Northumbria. In this remote region of northeast England, gray clouds still hover like withering ghosts, reminders of the black smoke of the furnaces that once choked its air and filled its skies. Northumbria. Its very name rumbles with the grimness of murky towns, desolate moors and dark seas. From its plants and factories came ships and railroads and enough iron and steel to help Britain fill forty percent of the world’s supply. From beneath its surface came vast amounts of salt, lead, alum and iron ore and enough coal to help Britain provide two thirds of the world’s needs. To and from its coastline came and went massive steamships carrying goods and keeping Northumbrians in touch with every outpost of the Empire.
If Northumbria was England’s industrial country, Middlesbrough was its model town. Built out of bleak salt marshes, it began in 1801 with twenty-five people, but after railway lines were laid and ironworks started, it exploded into a booming town with a population of 7,431 in 1851, 19,416 in 1861 and more than 90,000 at the end of the nineteenth century. Its collieries that mined coal and converted it into coke (by 1840 Middlesbrough was mining one and a half million tons of coal annually), its blast factories that smelted iron ore into iron (by 1873 it was producing five and a half million tons of iron ore), its foundries that combined the silvery iron with the refined coke to manufacture steel (by 1879 it was producing over 85,000 tons of steel), its railroad lines, its factories, its potteries, its mills, its ships, its docks and its warehouses drew workers from all over Britain. Young men and women eager for jobs in the miserable pits or the hellish foundries came from the West Midlands, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the East Indies, even the United States, and stared in awe at the night sky lit up with the brilliant flames of the steel furnaces or watched in amazement as locomotives steamed out of town hauling railroad cars filled with coal, iron, steel and pottery for every major city in England. The people who came for jobs crammed into the sooty rows of brown brick houses and breathed in the smutty air, cheering their mayor when he told the Prince of Wales that Middlesbrough took pride in its smoke. “The smoke is an indication of plenty of work … an indication of prosperous times, an indication that all classes of workpeople are being employed.… Therefore we are proud of our smoke.”