Desert Queen

by Janet Wallach

  To a friend she wrote that she had grown to love the East, its sights, its sounds, its people. She thought of it not as the land of her exile but as her second native country. If her family were not in Yorkshire she would have no desire to return.

  Iraq was turning into her permanent home; England had become a dusty attic filled with ghostly memories.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Disarray

  The situation with A. T. Wilson began rather differently from the way it ended two and a half years later. To start things off, when the insurrection came, in the spring of 1918, it was discovered that an Islamic committee of over a hundred Arabs, working under cover in Najaf, planned to incite the Euphrates tribes to rebel against the British. First, they murdered a Political Officer and plotted to kill three more men. At the time, Percy Cox was away, advising Whitehall on Mesopotamia (London was actually thinking of pulling out of Iraq), but the Acting Civil Commissioner, Arnold T. Wilson, handled the situation well. Some of the criminals were deported; the real culprits were hanged.

  “I’m not sure you realize who he is,” Gertrude informed her parents of Wilson, “a most remarkable creature, 34, brilliant abilities, a combined mental and physical power which is extremely rare.” Known for his extraordinary memory and inexhaustible energy, Wilson alone exceeded Gertrude in his literary appreciation and endless working hours. Never without a classical book in his pocket, he quoted Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Virgil and Socrates in his dispatches home and mesmerized his dinner guests with Persian poetry or Indian dialects. “I’m devoted to him,” Gertrude went on; “he is the best of colleagues and he ought to make a wonderful career. I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone of more extraordinary force.”

  Admittedly, in the early days in Basrah she and Wilson had been less than friendly. He had ignored her in the mess, excluded her from his work, even refused to tell her the codes used in his communications with London and India. And when he arrived in Baghdad to replace her good friend Philby (who had gone to Arabia to try to persuade Ibn Saud not to attack Britain’s ally, the Sharif Hussein), he and Gertrude had eyed each other with suspicion. Wilson regarded her as a “born intriguer”; she viewed him with distrust. Yet now, in his role as Acting Civil Commissioner, he behaved with a cool conduct that earned her admiration.

  Gertrude had declined to go to England that summer of 1918, explaining that things were too critical for her to leave the country. If the Khatun left, the Arabs would feel she was deserting them. “I, in a small way, am one of the people who can help comfort them,” she wrote to Hugh. As for herself, she was “unspeakably anxious” about the country’s future, but “I do sometimes want you so much that I can scarcely bear it.” Perhaps Hugh would come to Iraq.

  For the sake of her health, she knew she would have to escape the heat of Baghdad. She would go to Persia instead, on the sort of holiday she enjoyed: a change of scenery, a bit of rest and a chunk of challenging work. Trouble was brewing next door to the east, in the country of the Shah. The Persian ruler was wavering in his neutrality, threatening to join Germany’s side in the war. Moreover, Turks, Germans and Russians, running amok since the Bolshevik Revolution in November, were creating problems on the border with Iraq. The British were desperate to maintain a stable atmosphere. Yet added to their concerns over a peaceful frontier, the security of their oil fields at Abadan and the continued safety of their routes to India was the new Bolshevik state now looming over Persia. A weak British Ambassador in Teheran made the situation even worse.

  The War Office had requested that clear borders be drawn, and for several weeks in the spring of 1918 Gertrude worked steadily, poring over maps of Mesopotamia and Persia, deciding vital boundary lines. Her office in Baghdad was cool and spacious, its tall shuttered windows facing the Tigris, its brick floors covered lightly with fine Persian rugs, its high whitewashed walls papered with maps. Persian vases stood on top of the black wood bookcase, and a white sofa, some white chairs, her writing desk, and a big map table on which she studied the desert outlines, made up the rest of the room. On the outdoor balcony that rimmed the building sat the kavasses, office servants in high felt hats, who fetched files or brought in tea. Next door to her, on the Residency’s first floor, was Wilson’s office, and she often went back and forth to speak with the tall, broad-shouldered Acting Civil Commissioner.

  At the end of June she left for her vacation: a week in Teheran, more weeks camping in the mountains and the rest of the time riding through the countryside gathering information. She came back at the end of August, rested and refreshed, ready to compile an Intelligence book on Persia and looking forward once again to seeing Cox.

  Upon her return, she was met with staggering news. The dark-eyed Wilson summoned her to his office and sat her down. Sir Percy Cox was leaving, he announced, assigned to Persia to oversee events. For Gertrude it came as a shocking blow. Not that she didn’t think it was a good idea for the British Empire. Indeed it was. Persia was dangerous and the situation called for his shrewd mind, his dignified manner, his deft way with few words, his clever way of handling people. Many petitioners went into his office angry, but no one ever went out mad. Yet a wave of sadness overcame her when she thought of losing her mentor. As brilliant and indefatigable as A. T. Wilson was, he was also unsociable, obstinate and strong-willed; he had none of Sir Percy’s gentle ways.

  A few weeks later, just before leaving Iraq, the reticent Cox came to see her in her office. He had visited her parents while he was in England, and his attitude toward her now seemed more paternal. Was she being properly looked after by everyone? he asked anxiously. Was she happy? he wanted to know. In an unusual show of emotion, he bent down, embraced her warmly and said farewell. Then, collecting his wife, his parrot and his assistant Mr. Bullard, Cox was off in a convoy to Teheran, leaving behind A. T. Wilson as Acting Civil Commissioner and Gertrude Bell as Oriental Secretary. “Captain Wilson and I are excellent colleagues and the best of friends,” she reported to her parents, “and I know I can do a good deal to help him by seeing people and being ready to sit and talk as much as they want.” She was right; there would be plenty of people to talk to. But as for being on excellent terms with Wilson, that would be short-lived.

  Perhaps it was Cox’s departure that made her sick, perhaps it was just the weather; but she spent much of that autumn in bed, swallowing quinine, fighting a bout of malaria. Nevertheless, she was cheered by some encouraging reports. General Allenby, with the Arab army under his command, had taken Damascus, and on October 1 the Sharif’s son, Faisal, followed by several hundred mounted soldiers of the Arab army, rode into town. With the help of T. E. Lawrence, an independent Arab constitutional government was installed three days later in Syria and the tall, slim Faisal declared the ruler. It was a slap in the face for the French and the Sykes-Picot accord, but a recognition of promises made by the Arab Bureau, and Lawrence in particular, in return for the Sharif Hussein’s revolt against the Turks.

  Gertrude’s spirits soared even higher when news arrived, on October 31, 1918, that the Allies had signed an armistice with Turkey. “War has ceased here,” she wrote home in great relief. “It’s almost more than one can believe.”

  Buoyed by the treaty, but still weary from the malaria, she welcomed an invitation from her good friend General George MacMunn. The Commander-in-Chief had become her favorite dinner companion, and now he offered to take her on a cruise. Relaxing on board his luxurious ship, she read novels, dined well and indulged in a bit of flirting with her friend. As they sailed down the Tigris word came that an agreement had been reached with Austria-Hungary, and, most comforting of all, a few days later, on November 11, 1918, they learned that the Armistice had been signed with Germany.

  Nearly ten million people had been killed and another twenty million wounded; nations had been destroyed and empires disbanded in what was one of the most brutal wars of all time. Gertrude had seen the tortured faces of too many wounded soldiers and the battered corpses of co
untless dead. She had suffered herself from too little food and too much heat, from loneliness and isolation, from sickness and fatigue, and most of all from the death of her beloved Doughty-Wylie. But now she celebrated the end of the Great War. Peace was at hand. Or so it seemed.

  The war to end all wars had left the Ottoman Empire in a state of disarray. The sick man of Europe, now in the throes of death, had abandoned his offspring, leaving them to the care of others. British and Arabs alike fingered their worry beads over the future of the East, rubbing them even harder after the announcement on November 8, 1918, of the Anglo-French Declaration. In Basrah and Baghdad, Aleppo and Amman, Jerusalem and Damascus, in public broadcasts, in newspapers and on billboards, England and France together proclaimed the “final liberation of the populations living under the Turkish yoke and the setting up of national governments chosen by the people themselves.” Promises were made to help in creating new governments and to grant them recognition as soon as they became established. A new phrase, “the right of self-determination,” declared by President Woodrow Wilson of the United States in his Fourteen Points, whirled through the streets like a Gypsy gone wild. But as much as the announcement of independence alleviated Arab concerns over the return of the Turks, it stirred up more fears about who would lead and how best to proceed. A year and a half earlier the Arabs had worried about how the British were going to rule them; now they worried about how they would rule themselves.

  To Gertrude the declaration seemed surprisingly premature; in Baghdad alone, she remarked to her father, it “has thrown the whole town into a ferment. It doesn’t happen often that people are told that their future as a State is in their hands and asked what they would like. They are all talking and mercifully they all come in to me with the greatest eagerness to discuss what they think. On two points they are practically all agreed, they want us to control their affairs and they want Sir Percy as High Commissioner. Beyond that all is divergence.”

  Beyond the divergence lurked suspicion. She continued: “Public opinion is very jumpy and the most unexpected things set the town afire with almost childish indignation. Every word we say they regard as pointing to things we have in our hearts which we won’t fully explain.… I always speak quite frankly and they believe me. I think they know I have their interests more deeply at heart than anything else and they trust me in the same sort of way that they trust Sir Percy.”

  Gertrude’s immediate task was to watch the local weathercock. The Secretary of State for India had asked her opinion on which way the political winds were blowing among the various constituencies: the educated Sunnis in town, the Shiite majority in the provinces, the large Jewish community in Baghdad, the Christians in Mosul. Did they want the British Crown or an Arab king? Most of the townspeople wanted an Arab emir, but they couldn’t decide who it should be, she wrote home at the end of November. Some preferred a son of the Sharif Hussein, some favored the head of an important family in Mosul, some thought a member of the Egyptian royal family might be best, and still others wanted the Naqib, the Sunni holy man of Baghdad. The last, however, rejected the notion of either himself or one of the Sharif’s sons and was firmly in favor of a British administration. As for the attitude of the Shiites, she would have to wait a while before they made their feelings known. Adding to the confusion, the Jewish community was so concerned about being ruled by Arabs that they petitioned for British citizenship, while several thousand Turkish sympathizers, imprisoned during the war and now returned to Baghdad, were creating havoc as they began to engage in an anti-British campaign.

  Gertrude spent time with everyone she could. In the mornings at the Residency, in her high-ceilinged office, groups of young men, some in dishdashas, long cotton shirts, most in Western suits and Turkish fezes, trooped in. The Khatun rang for coffee, and when Indian servants brought in refreshments, the men drank the rich dark brew and talked, while she smoked her cigarettes and made notes on their political views. Some days she motored outside Baghdad, visiting tribal sheikhs or seeing friends like her landlord, Musa Pachachi, who came from one of the most important trading families, or Haji Naji, who favored her with fruits from his orchards. She was gathering news, and at the same time fueling gossip that both men were her lovers. Afternoons, to smooth the way to other notables, she often called on their wives, and on Tuesdays she began to hold weekly teas. “And they come,” she wrote proudly to Domnul, “even the veiled women. No one can do that here but me, you see.”

  A stream of women, mostly Muslims, many of them Jews, their children in tow, arrived at her walled retreat. They slipped off their face veils and long black abbayas and, dressed in Turkish silks or outfits made from the patterns of Vogue, entered a world they hardly knew. At the rear of her garden stood Gertrude, receiving her guests, her figure erect in a long silk dress, her head held high under a hat blooming with fruits. Without a doubt, Miss Bell was considered by all a formidable figure of British authority.

  Chairs were placed around the garden, and her servants went from one guest to the next, pouring tea from the silver service, passing around biscuits, cakes and the cook’s specialty, caramelized walnuts filled with thick buffalo cream. When the weather turned cold or rainy, the guests were entertained indoors, and a circle of thirty chairs—all that the room could hold—was arranged for tea parties in her sitting room. For two hours, over the clatter of china cups, female gossip and feelings about the future fluttered through the air. Gertrude listened, her ear trained to pick up any nuance of political change.

  The meetings made an impact, as much on Gertrude as on the local ladies. The disdain she had once expressed to Mrs. Van Ess about Arab women disappeared. The conscious lack of interest in the harem had been discarded, replaced by knowledge and understanding. When a British education expert, Humphrey Bowman, arrived in Baghdad to set up a school system, he found her highly concerned about the future of the Arab girls.

  She was sitting on the floor, a cigarette burning in the ashtray, her dress tucked under her knees, her head buried in the piles of maps and papers scattered about, when Bowman knocked on her door. She answered sharply, “Come in.” With his arrival long overdue, he explained who he was and handed her a letter of introduction. Gertrude glanced at it quickly, threw it down with the rest and stared at the newcomer, piercing him like an X-ray machine. “I’m glad you’ve come,” she said abruptly. “I can see we shall be friends.” With that, she pointed him to a chair, stayed herself on the floor and proceeded to fill him in on the history and social conditions of Iraq.

  Of all her concerns about the Arabs, Gertrude told him, her greatest worry was the Muslim girls. Unlike the young Jewish women, taught English, Arabic, Hebrew and French at the Alliance, the Muslims had had no education under the Turks. With few exceptions, they were illiterate. She had seen how helpless these women were, how vulnerable to the whims of the men.

  “We must give the girls an opportunity for self-expression,” she said with determination. “If you only knew the harems as I do, you would have pity upon the women. Nothing has been done for them—nothing.” Here at last was an opportunity. She wanted schools for them and classes in domestic science, housecraft and hygiene. They would be willing and eager to learn, she assured him, and, of course, the teachers could only be women. With that, she dismissed him. Her interests were not forgotten; the educational system established by Bowman, still the best in the Arab world, served as a unifying force for the country and included the radical concept of education for the females.

  The notion that women were undervalued was never far from her mind. When, a few days later, a letter arrived from Florence asking whether Gertrude was the author of a recently published major report on Mesopotamia, she took up her pen at once and answered sharply: “Why, yes, of course I wrote all The Arab of Mesopotamia. I’ve loved the reviews which speak of the practical men who were the anonymous authors, etc. It’s fun being practical men, isn’t it.”

  Her reports were highly thought of by those in power
; coming out of her extensive travels and extraordinary friendships with the Arabs, they combined literary achievement with finely tuned political insights, historical perspective, a plethora of detail and a profound depth of cultural understanding. Her rare relationships had been underscored at a durbar, a convention of sheikhs and sayids, held in Baghdad in September 1918. Eighty tribal leaders, many from distant provinces and known neither to one another nor to the British authorities, were brought together in the public gardens by the British Commander-in-Chief. At the opening ceremonies the general shook the hand of each. Gertrude was sitting far down the platform, but as soon as the sheikhs caught sight of her they turned away from the dignified procession and walked across the stage to shake her hand.

  Many of the notables came to her office and spoke of the positive change in relations, the amicability that had developed since the year before. “I thought that testimony to our friendly intimacy was worth everything,” she noted.

  It was about this time that she had a different encounter with one nomadic sheikh. He had come demanding compensation for a hundred head of cattle, which, he claimed, had disappeared since the British occupation. Gertrude promised that the government would pay him two pounds for each head. The deal was acceptable, the Arab replied gleefully. But the Khatun, who heard all the gossip, knew that the man had either transferred the cattle to a neighbor or traded them for wives. As he stood up and salaamed to leave, Gertrude inquired in Arabic, “And how many head of cattle hast thou now, o sheikh?”