Desert Queen

by Janet Wallach

  Wanting Philby to know how bad she felt, she paid a call on him at home. “Jack, I’m so sorry to hear this news,” she said. But instead of extending their hands in friendship, he and his wife practically slapped her face. “No you’re not,” Mrs. Philby snapped and burst into tears. Accusing Gertrude of having been the cause of her husband’s dismissal, the woman turned and ran out of the room. Philby glowered: “You’ve won this time,” he snarled, “but we shall still meet at Philippi.” She would not be at the battle scene, Gertrude retorted, adding curtly that it was not she “but His Majesty’s Government that had won and always would.” Reminding Philby of their long friendship, she told him she had done everything in her power to persuade him not to run counter to orders. “How he could embrace the cause of that rogue Talib passes all belief,” she wrote.

  At lunch at the Coxes’ the following week, Gertrude found herself face to face with the Philbys once again. But by now their mood had changed. “The Philby business is clearing up,” she wrote home. “It has been horrid for me, for in their angry amazement at having to suffer for what was entirely his own fault they have accused me of being the cause of his dismissal—at least Mrs. Philby has. But I think she has thought the better of it.” Philby told her he was quitting politics, but Gertrude acknowledged sadly, “He’s not a man we can afford to lose.”

  The large Jewish community also had to be won over to the Sharifian side. Reluctant to accept an Arab ruler (they had once petitioned that they be granted British citizenship if an Arab government was installed), Gertrude worked to convince them that Faisal had British support. Her spirits rose when they agreed to host a large reception for him. On Monday morning, July 18, Jewish, Christian and Arab notables gathered in the courtyard of the Grand Rabbi’s official house, where an awning covered the open square, and flags and streamers in Arab colors—green, red and black—hung from the second-story gallery. Children crammed the balcony and women peered out from the upper windows to watch the scene in the courtyard. Row upon row of chairs were filled with turbaned Jewish rabbis, prominent Christians, all the Arab Government Ministers, the leading Muslims and Shiite holy men.

  The official party came in, took their seats and the crowd burst into applause. Gertrude was given the honored place to the right of Faisal. “You know the absurd fuss they make about me, bless them,” she wrote. The program began, and for two hours, in the sweltering heat, cool drinks and refreshments were passed while the audience listened to speeches and songs. The Rabbi, she thought, looked “straight out of a picture by Gentile Bellini”; the well-prepared oratory was “interesting” because of the underlying tensions—“the anxiety of the Jews lest an Arab government should mean chaos, and their gradual reassurance, by reason of Faisal’s obviously enlightened attitude.”

  The heavy Torah, encased in gold cylinders, was removed from the Ark and carried first to the Grand Rabbi, who kissed it, and then to Faisal, who repeated the gesture. Next, the future Emir was presented with a gold copy of the Ten Commandments and a beautifully bound copy of the Talmud. Gertrude leaned over to Faisal and whispered that she hoped he would make a speech. He hadn’t meant to say much, he whispered back, but thought he must. “You know I don’t speak like they do,” he added. “I just say what is in my thoughts.”

  At the end of the ceremonies Faisal stood up. “There is no meaning in the words Jews, Muslims and Christians in the terminology of patriotism,” he told the crowd; “there is simply a country called Iraq, and all are Iraqis. I ask my countrymen the Iraqis to be only Iraqis because we all belong to one stock, the stock of our ancestor Shem [Semites]; we all belong to that noble race, and there is no distinction between Muslim, Christian and Jew.”

  “He spoke really beautifully; it was straight and good and eloquent,” Gertrude noted approvingly. “He made an immense impression. The Jews were delighted at his insistence on their being of one race with the Arabs, and all our friends … were equally delighted with his allusion to British support.”

  As Gertrude celebrated in Baghdad, her father was suffering defeat. His attempts to boost the value of his business had failed, and now, after an exceedingly long coal miners’ strike, he was heavily in debt to the banks. At the end of July she received a despairing note and wrote hurriedly to comfort him: “Darling Father. I’m sending you a letter by aeroplane in the hope that it will reach you in seven or eight days—just to feel as if you were so near instead of so far. Your letter of June 28th was rather despondent about the fortunes of the family, and indeed it’s very hard that you should have fallen on such difficult times, but you will see it will work out all right, inshallah, just as I’m seeing our difficult task here work out in success. Anyway, dearest, don’t bother too much about it—what happens, happens and we adapt ourselves to it. The only thing that matters is that you should be well and happy.”

  Sadly, the glory days of the Bell family were beginning to decline.

  A variety of groups was needed to form a consensus for Faisal. The Sunni townsmen, the Jews, the Christians and the Armenian orthodox were all important in Baghdad, the Kurds in Mosul and Kirkuk; but in the provinces it was the predominantly Shiite tribes that made up most of the population. Each tribal nation had to be approached and won over. Yet the very idea of a centralized state was anathema to them. Their major concern was the tribe. Their laws were the vengeful laws of the tribe, their leader the chosen head of the tribe, their immediate interest, grazing land for the herds of the tribe. They had no wish for borders, no respect for bureaucracy and no apparent need to be ruled by a king. Only a dynamic personality could convince them otherwise. Gertrude called on her friend Fahad Bey to organize an assemblage of two of the largest tribes, the Anazeh, who favored British authority, and the Dulaim, who preferred the Naqib.

  At four o’clock in the morning of July 30, having already breakfasted and dressed, Gertrude quickly pinned on her hat, gathered her parasol and camera and, climbing into the large black Ford, gave crisp orders to the driver to speed toward the Euphrates: Faisal and his entourage had already left. Halfway to the river, her car caught up with his motorcade. As the driver pulled alongside Faisal’s automobile, Gertrude shouted to him, asking permission to go ahead. She wanted to be in front so that when they arrived at the town of Fallujah, she could take their photograph. Faisal nodded, granting her request.

  Crowds of howling horsemen lined the road for several miles. Fallujah itself was ablaze with flags, packed with people. She drove past the village and the shrieking mobs, continuing on toward the river. Scores of tribal horsemen encircled the motorcade, bellowing cheers, wheeling around the cars, kicking up clouds of dust. More tribesmen crammed their route as the cars wobbled along to the ferry, where they were greeted by the son of Fahad Bey.

  A big black tent had been installed for Faisal to hold a majlis, a court to hear petitions, and after the Dulaim tribesmen came before him, a meal of chicken and rice was served. Then, while the cars were driven over a flying bridge, Gertrude and Faisal crossed the river by boat. Fahad Bey was waiting on the other side. “It was a great moment,” Gertrude exulted. The Paramount Chief of the Anazeh had been “bitterly opposed to an Arab government” and was wary of giving his allegiance to the son of the Sharif Hussein; a man who had no desire to lose Britain’s financial support, he had bowed to the Khatun’s urging and was there to greet them.

  As the motorcade drove away from the river and toward the desert, the fighting men of the Anazeh loomed in the sands in front: a phalanx of warriors on camels and horses, their flag held high, their rifles slung across their hips. The cars stopped, and Faisal saluted the forces, Gertrude doing the same. The Chief of the Dulaim, Ali Suleiman, came out to meet them and led them to another huge ceremonial tent, its walls covered with great boughs of fresh greens. Outside the two-hundred-foot-long black tent stood the Dulaim—hundreds of riders on horses and camels—and a single black-skinned man on a tall white horse, holding the standard of the tribe. Inside the tent were crammed four or fi
ve hundred more tribesmen. Faisal, in white robes and long black cloak, his flowing white headdress heavily braided with silver, was led to the front, where a dais had been installed. With Fahad Bey on his right and Gertrude on his left, he took his seat.

  “I never saw him look so splendid,” Gertrude exclaimed. “Then he began to speak, leaning forward over the small table in front of him, sitting with his hand raised and bringing it down on the table to emphasize his sentences.… He spoke in the great tongue of the desert, sonorous, magnificent—[there is] no language like it. He spoke as a tribal chief to his feudatories.”

  “Brothers!” Faisal’s voice rang out in Arabic, “my word is yours and I deal with you as brother towards his brother, and as a friend towards his friend and not as a ruler towards his subjects. I am not a foreigner to you. You may accept my word in all confidence. I came to you knowing you to be Arabs and Bedouin, and for four years I have not found myself in a place like this or in such company.” Iraq, he told them confidently, as though he had already been elected, was to rise to their endeavors with himself as their head. He slammed his hand on the table. “O Arabs, are you at peace with another?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes,” they shouted; “we are at peace. The truth, by God, the truth.”

  “From this day—what is the date?” he asked, “and what is the hour?” They told him, and he continued: “From this day and this hour of the morning any tribesman who lifts his hand against a tribesman is responsible to me—I will judge between you, calling your sheikhs in council. I have my rights over you as your lord.”

  “Yes, yes,” they acknowledged, repeating the phrase. “The truth, by God, the truth.” A gray-bearded man interrupted. “And our rights?” he called out.

  “And you have your rights as subjects which it is my business to guard.”

  “Yes, yes!” the crowd shouted. “We agree. The truth, by God, the truth.”

  When he was finished, Fahad Bey, the Paramount Chief of the Anazeh, and Ali Suleiman, the Chief of the Dulaim, stood up. “We swear allegiance to you because you are acceptable to the British Government,” they declared.

  The words struck Faisal by surprise. Turning to Gertrude, he smiled and stated firmly, “No one can doubt what my relations are to the British, but we must settle our affairs ourselves.” He looked at Gertrude again, and she held out both her hands, clasping them together as a symbol of the union of the Arab and British Governments.

  “It was a tremendous moment,” she recounted, “those two really big men who have played their part in the history of their time, and Faisal between them the finest living representative of his race—and the link ourselves.” It was indeed a tremendous victory for Faisal and for Gertrude.

  After what now seemed a very short time—only five weeks of preparation—the coronation would take place. At the Cairo Conference it had been decided that Faisal’s election would be held by the Constitutional Assembly; but fearing it would take at least three months to convene, and that the Kurdish provinces might vote against him, at Cox’s will the Arab Cabinet of Ministers swifly passed a unanimous resolution declaring Faisal to be King. Nonetheless, to show that this was a “free and fair election,” a general referendum had been sent to the public. The question was asked: “Do you want Faisal to reign over you?” The answer was nearly certain.

  The installation of Faisal was an event of momentous importance. Gertrude wanted him to understand not only the immensity of the occasion but its historical significance, its profundity of meaning. She had already spread before him maps of Iraq to give him lessons about the tribes. Now, like an eager teacher with her favorite pupil, she yearned to show the future King the greatness of his past. Much of her life had been spent among the ancient ruins of Mesopotamia, and she invited Faisal to join her for a visit to Ctesiphon. The grand palace, built in the sixth century A.D. by the Persian Sassanids for their leader Khosroes, was seized by the Arabs one hundred years later, its stones used to build the city of Baghdad.

  On Tuesday, the second of August, Gertrude organized an early morning ride. Faisal, two of his aides de camp and Mr. Cornwallis joined her in their motor cars, and they set off before five A.M., stopping to breakfast along the way. Carpets were spread by the servants, china laid out for a picnic of eggs, tongues, sardines and melons, and they settled down, she in a silk dress and straw hat, Faisal in his army uniform. An hour’s drive more, and they spotted the great arch of Ctesiphon; for nearly fifteen hundred years it had marked the site. Leading Faisal around the ruins, speaking to him in Arabic (as she almost always did), Gertrude expounded on the structure and how it was built, the rounded yellow brick vault still standing and, beside it, the massive brick arch. Vividly, she reconstructed the palace and showed him the figure of Khosroes sitting on the throne. She took Faisal to where the high windows that once existed faced the south and, pointing out the Tigris, told him the legendary story of the Arab conquest: legions of Muslim soldiers marching from Mecca to Iraq. “It was the tale of his own people,” she wrote home. “You can imagine what it was like reciting it to him. I don’t know which of us was the more thrilled.” We shall make Iraq as great as its past, she promised the future King.

  Almost deliriously, she continued in her letter: “Faisal has promised me a regiment of the Arab Army—‘the Khatun’s Own.’ I shall presently ask you to have their colours embroidered. Nuri proposed that I should have an Army Corps! Oh Father, isn’t it wonderful. I sometimes think I must be in a dream.”

  Nuri Said, Jafar Pasha’s brother-in-law, had arrived a few months before. Although Jafar Pasha was likable, Gertrude had written, “he lacks force. He is naturally easy going, colossally fat, with a beaming smile. He responds at once to friendliness and sympathy, and at once gives you his confidence. The wonder is that a man of his mental and physical characteristics should be so ardent in his political convictions. But he doesn’t carry over the footlights.” Nuri Said was different. Noticeably slender and lithe, with keen gray eyes, he was quieter than Jafar, more percipient, a man of deep understanding and insight. She recognized instantly that he was “a strong and supple force.”

  The only disturbance now was Ibn Saud, who threatened Faisal’s claim over the nomadic Iraqi tribes. He had sent a message to Fahad Bey, demanding the loyalty of the Anazeh, but the note had only angered the Paramount Chief. In the well-known way of the Middle East, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Ibn Saud had relied on tacties that forged an unexpected bond between Fahad Bey and Faisal.

  At dinner a few nights later, Faisal turned to Gertrude: “I take witness in God, if we don’t stop Ibn Saud, in three months’ time there will be another battle at Ctesiphon like that which you described to me.” Gertrude felt confident that Ibn Saud could be staunched. “We shall stop him,” she said determinedly; “his claims are absolutely inadmissible.” For the time being she could claim success; but the feud between the families would soon intensify. Indeed, it still surfaces in the tense relationship between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, where upon occasion King Hussein has referred to himself as “Sharif,” and the monarchy of Saudi Arabia, which has sometimes treated him with disdain.

  By August 14, the referendum had been completed. Although some would argue that the negative votes were simply ignored and not counted, Gertrude felt vindicated. Faisal had won almost unanimously. As soon as the numbers were in, she dashed off a note to the Van Esses. “Faisal will romp on our shoulders!” she rejoiced.

  The following week, after a round of calls with the towering Mr. Cornwallis, Gertrude left the office in the early evening to take some exercise. Riding along the river bank, she passed the new house being readied for the future King and spotted his car out front. She stopped and handed the reins of her pony to one of Faisal’s slaves. The Emir was on the roof, she discovered, escaping the heat with some of his aides-de-camp. In the glow of the sunset, she looked out from the top of the house and could see the curves of the rocks just below, the groves of palm trees surrounding the t
own, the pink desert just beyond them. Faisal welcomed her warmly and she sat with the men and talked.

  “Enti,” Faisal said. “Enti Iraqiyah, enti Badawiyah.” He paid her the greatest compliment. The Englishwoman who doted on flowery hats and fancy dresses, who gardened every morning and took tea every afternoon, who wore the honorary letters of C.B.E. and would inherit the title of Lady, who bore her heritage with regal carriage and had risked her life for the Empire, wanted more than anything to be accepted by this Arab Emir. Her own people had cast her aside; her personal life had shriveled into spinsterhood; her professional life had proved a lonely path. Most of the British men refused to see her as an equal, and the British wives returned her contempt in kind. But the Arabs had made her one of their own. “You’re an Iraqi,” Faisal had just told her lovingly. “You’re a Bedouin.”

  The next evening Gertrude agreed to meet with Lady Cox and others to take a river launch to their favorite spot, near Faisal’s new house. But when she arrived at the Residency, she found poor Lady Cox in a twitter. Sir Percy’s mania for animals had gone too far. He was making a collection of Mesopotamian birds and his latest catch was an eagle. It wasn’t the bird that upset Lady Cox; it was the food that it ate. The huge fowl existed on live bats and liked to eat them in the morning. Since the bats could be caught only in the dark, they were kept overnight in the kitchen icebox. When Lady Cox opened the icebox door, she found the faces staring at her.

  Calming her down, Gertrude and the others set off with her on the river. As their boat landed, Gertrude noticed several people across the way: Jafar Pasha, looking fatter than ever in his Arab clothes; some aides-de-camp; and Faisal, regal and handsome, trailing his robes in the sand. With no room on the launch to change out of her swimsuit, Gertrude reported, she went to a “familiar dressing room in the willows above the sand.” Walking back to the boat, her hair wet, her feet bare, she was “hailed to Faisal’s dinner.” She sat with the Arab men and talked until it was time to go back to her English dinner.