Meanwhile, even the administrators were on iron rations. The food in the mess, where Gertrude ate during the working week, was rationed and monotonous. A family friend of the Bells, Colonel Frank Balfour, who later became Baghdad’s military governor, tells the story of joining her in the mess one evening for dinner. When, for the fourteenth day running, the meal consisted of bully beef, Gertrude surprised him by throwing down her knife and fork in disgust and bursting into tears.
October 12, 1917
We are put to it to feed ourselves, and it is hard to feel Herculean on biscuits—We’ve had no butter all summer and when we have it it’s tinned. I’ve forgotten what potatoes taste like—the meat is almost too tough to eat, chickens ditto; milk tinned—how sick one gets of it! . . . When one’s feeling rather a poor thing one does hate it all. . . . Heaven send us a good harvest next year.
The ferocious heat of Iraq was, perhaps, the main factor in the breakdown of her health. Light as she made of it in her letters home, she now frequently suffered from heat exhaustion, combined with overwork, cigarettes, and recurring malaria. Every summer she had to repair to an officers’ convalescent home for a few days’ recovery, and even in hospital she continued to write position papers and draft a fortnightly diary for the government. Her red hair turned white, and she wrote home to explain the extreme measures she used to get cool.
Baghdad, July 13, 1917
We have had a week of fierce heat, which still continues, temp 122 odd and therewith a burning wind which has to be felt to be believed. On the worst nights . . . I drop a sheet in water and without wringing it out lay it in a pile along my bed between me and the wind. I put one end over my feet and draw the other under and over my head and leave the rest a few inches from my body. The sharp evaporation makes it icy cold and interposes a little wall of cold air between me and the fiery wind. When it dries I wake up and repeat the process. This evening Sir Percy and I went out motoring at 7 but it was too hot. The wind shrivelled you and burnt your eyeballs. . . . My room in the office I shut up all day long and have it sluiced out with water 2 or 3 times a day. By these means I keep the temp at just under 100 [38°C].
Yes, that’s what it is like.
When dresses had to be washed and ironed every day, she was in constant need of cool Western clothing. Her family sent her parcels of clothes, but there were never enough. She called in on a convent and explained her predicament.
Baghdad, June 14, 1918
The nuns are making me a muslin gown—it will be a monument of love and care. The essayages are not like any other dressmaking I’ve ever known. I go in after riding before breakfast and stand in practically nothing but breeches and boots (for it’s hot) while the Mother Superior and the darling dressmaking sister, Soeur Renée, hover round ecstatically and pin on bits of muslin. At our elbows a native lay sister bearing cups of coffee. We pause often while the Mother Superior and Soeur Renée discuss gravely what really is the fashion. Anyhow the result is quite satisfactory. Soeur Renée isn’t a Frenchwoman for nothing.
Her highly pressurized life was complicated by her need for a maid, housekeeper, and dressmaker. Her stepmother, Florence, came up with a solution: Marie Delaire had been with the Bells since Gertrude hired her seventeen years previously. She came out to Iraq and served Gertrude devotedly for the rest of her mistress’s life.
In October 1917, Gertrude was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and a year later she was awarded the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for her journey to Hayyil. In a glimpse of Gertrude during an at home given for forty or fifty Arab notables in Baghdad in 1919, she is described as entering the room in queenly style, “beautifully dressed as always” while everyone rose to their feet. She went around the room, shaking the hands of everyone in turn and saying a few appropriate words to each.
Since Cairo, she had been living in the East on her salary of £20 a month ($16,320 RPI adjusted equivalent to a salary of $88,000 income adjusted), and her generous private allowance had been piling up at home, unused. Since the two things she craved—good food and well-made European clothing—were unavailable, she responded to her father’s letter about her allowance with the lack of financial interest that is the prerogative of heiresses that he should do whatever he wanted with the money. She was in the hospital when her father sent her a forty-ninth birthday present: a great emerald, which she pinned on her nightdress. A month later, Florence sent another parcel.
September 25, 1917
There arrived a jeweller’s shop of brooches and pendants—the loveliest things—how could you reconcile it with your conscience, both of you, to run to such extravagance? I’ve never had so many brooches in my life. . . . Anyhow, bless you both; they are exquisite and I expect will excite the unbounded admiration of I.E.F.D. [Indian Expeditionary Force D]
So successfully put together and administered, so successful in its occupation until the end of the war, the British government of Mesopotamia was about to be undermined by interminable delays while it waited for international decisions on the position of the borders and its future in Iraq. Meanwhile, many strands of minority dissent, fanned into flames by Turkish agents, would grow into outright revolt. Waiting impatiently, Gertrude had to watch all progress slipping away in the teeth of growing anarchy. At this most difficult moment, Sir Percy Cox was sent to Tehran, leaving his former deputy A. T. Wilson as acting civil commissioner. He proved to be a boss whose high-handed tactics, punitive retaliation against dissidents, and preference for imperialist policies brought home to Gertrude the appalling truth: he had no sympathy for self-determination and would do his best to prevent it. He was built from a heroic colonialist mold, but his views placed him in the past. Gertrude, though eighteen years older, with her particular intelligence and her wholehearted dedication to the Arab cause, belonged to the future.
Six months after Cox’s departure, A.T. disbanded the Baghdad branch of the Arab Bureau, under whose auspices Gertrude had been appointed, and effectively demoted her from Oriental secretary—a role equivalent to that of a Cabinet member—to political officer. At about this time, the League of Nations required her to write a paper, “The Political Future of Iraq,” in which she made her feelings clear.
I propose to assume . . . that the welfare and prosperity of Iraq is not incompatible with the welfare and prosperity of any other portion of the world. I assume therefore as an axiom that if, in disposing of the question of the future administration of Iraq, we allow ourselves to be influenced by any consideration whatsoever other than the well being of the country itself and its people we shall be guilty of a shameless act of deliberate dishonesty rendered the more heinous and contemptible by our reiterated declarations of disinterested solicitude for the peoples concerned.
A.T.’s refusal to consider Gertrude’s suggestions of negotiation with dissidents and the punitive tactics he employed to put down uprisings resulted, inevitably, in increasing subversion. Sidelined, Gertrude put her views privately in letter form to her influential friends and acquaintances in London. The year of jihad in Iraq, 1920, is remembered as a failure of the British administration. It should be remembered that Gertrude had no part in the decisions to bomb villages or in the decisions that led to military confrontations with tribes and the murder of political officers on the borders.
January 17, 1919, Four Months After Cox’s Departure
I might be able to help to keep things straight—if they’ll let me. . . . We are having rather a windy time over self-determination. . . . I wish very much that Sir Percy were here.
December 28, 1919, Letter to Chirol
Sir P.C. is a very great personal asset and I wish the Government would let him come back at once. The job here is far more important than Persia.
January 12, 1920
I wish I carried more weight. But the truth is I’m in a minority of one in the Mesopotamian political service—or nearly—and yet I’m sure that
I’m right.
February 1, 1920
We share the blame with France and America for what is happening—I think there has seldom been such a series of hopeless blunders as the West has made about the East since the armistice.
Baghdad, September 5, 1920
We are now in the middle of a full-blown Jihad, that is to say we have against us the fiercest prejudices of a people in a primeval state of civilization. . . . We’re near to a complete collapse of society—the end of the Roman empire is a very close historical parallel. . . . The credit of European civilization is gone. . . . How can we, who have managed our own affairs so badly, claim to teach others to manage theirs better?
Baghdad, April 10, 1920
I think we’re on the edge of a pretty considerable Arab nationalist demonstration with which I’m a good deal in sympathy. It will however force our hand and we shall have to see whether it will leave us with enough hold to carry on here. . . .
But what I do feel pretty sure of is that if we leave this country to go to the dogs it will mean that we shall have to reconsider our whole position in Asia. . . . And the place which we leave empty will be occupied by seven devils a good deal worse than any which existed before we came.
A.T. was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) in May 1920. Gertrude commented to her parents, “I confess I wish that in giving him a knighthood they could also endow him with the manners knights are traditionally credited with!”
June 14, 1920
Meantime my own path has been very difficult. I had an appalling scene last week with A.T. . . . Most unfortunately I gave one of our Arab friends here a bit of information I ought not, technically, to have given. It wasn’t of much importance (Frank agrees) and it didn’t occur to me I had done wrong till I mentioned it casually to A.T. He was in a black rage that morning and he vented it on me. He told me my indiscretions were intolerable, and that I should never see another paper in the office. I apologised for that particular indiscretion, but he continued: “You’ve done more harm than anyone here. If I hadn’t been going away myself I should have asked for your dismissal months ago!” . . . At this point he choked with anger.
July 4, 1920
The tribes down there [in the south of Iraq] are some of the most lawless in Iraq. . . . But I doubt whether we’ve gone the best way to make them appreciate the benefits of settled government. For months I and others have been telling A.T. that we were pressing them too hard. . . .
December 20, 1920
Rather a trying week, for A.T. has been over-worked—a chronic state—and in a condition when he ought not to be working, which results in making him savagely cross and all our lives rather a burden in consequence.
Just as Gertrude was considering whether she or A.T. should resign, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Sir Percy Cox was requested to return to Iraq. London had recognized that A.T.’s tactics were not working and that insurrection was growing worse. It was costing too much to run Iraq his way, flattening revolt to protect the infrastructure. It was the end of A.T.’s official career.
There was one final devastating argument over Gertrude’s independence in making known her own views, as separate from A.T.’s. She wrote to people who were senior to him in the British government and India. A.T. was particularly incensed by her privileged private visit to the chief Shia family, the Sadr of Kadhimain, to visit the august mujtahid Sayyid Hassan. She entertained Arab nationalists to dinner in her own house, to keep the lines of communication open with potential leaders of a future Arab government. To her chief, this was tantamount to treason, although she was pursuing official London policy.
When A.T. left Baghdad, they parted in civilized fashion. As Gertrude said, “We shook hands warmly—you can’t shake hands anything but warmly when the temperature is 115 [ 46°C].”
September 27, 1920
The night before he left he came in late to say goodbye. I told him that I was feeling more deeply discouraged than I could well say and that I regretted acutely that we had not made a better job of our relations. He replied that he had come to apologise and I stopped him and said I felt sure it was as much my fault as his and that I hoped he would carry away no ill- feelings, a sentiment to which he cordially responded.
Sir Percy Cox passed through Baghdad on his way to London in June 1920. He stopped off for a long discussion with Gertrude and left her his parrot to look after until his return to Iraq in October, when he intended to set up a provisional Arab government.
October 17, 1920
It’s quite impossible to tell you the relief and comfort it is to be serving under someone in whose judgement one has complete confidence. To the extraordinarily difficult task which lies before him he brings a single eyed desire to act in the interests of the people of the country.
November 1, 1920
Oh, if we can pull this thing off! rope together the young hotheads and the Shi’ah obscurantists, and enthusiasts like Ja’far, polished old statesmen like Sasun, and scholars like Shukri—if we can make them work together and find their own salvation for themselves, what a fine thing it will be. I see visions and dream dreams.
As the international powers were preparing their positions for the forthcoming Paris Peace Conference, President Woodrow Wilson made it clear that he expected the nations whose governments had been eliminated by the war to be allowed to decide their own future. Sir Mark Sykes, a respected adviser to the British government, engineered a joint statement with the French to prove to President Wilson that they were aligned with his intentions and did not intend to colonize. Understanding little of the situation in Iraq, the government in London required A. T. Wilson to seek the opinions of the most respected members of the region stretching from Basra north to the Kurdish area. Wilson set about the task halfheartedly, as he was a firm believer in colonization. Before the consultation process even began, the Sykes Anglo-French Declaration was already causing trouble. Muslim religious leaders, the large Christian and Jewish communities, and the more sober secular leaders and sheikhs were petrified that a sudden withdrawal of the British administration and its supporting army would open all borders to their enemies. Bolshevik Russia, Ibn Saud’s Wahhabis, and the vengeful Turks were poised to overwhelm Arabia.
Out of necessity, Gertrude had to take much of the responsibility for the conduct of the consultation, which involved inviting representatives from the major cities and religious groups to select a total of seventy-five nominees to answer three questions. Were they in favor of a single Arab state from Kurdistan to Basra? Should the state be headed by an Arab emir? Was there any preferred candidate for the role?
The responses, as expected by Gertrude, were hopelessly inconclusive except that there seemed to be unanimity about a new nation state covering the whole region. The exercise provoked vociferous responses from young would-be politicians including extremists who stated their views in the coffee shops, where public debate still takes place. They objected to the British presence, they fomented Sunni-Shia differences, and they ignored the interests of minorities. It fell to Gertrude to write a difficult document attempting to summarize the outcome of the exercise, to be sent to the Paris Peace Conference. She chose to enter the facts in great detail, describing the difficulties encountered and the conflicting wide-ranging opinions elicited. The document was entitled “Self-Determination in Mesopotamia.”
Realizing that the document would be of no conclusive value, she took the initiative of consulting the most respected figure in Iraq, the elderly naqib of Baghdad, His Reverence Sayyid Abd ul-Rahman Effendi. The primate of the Sunni religious community, he was equally respected by the Shias. Her hour and a half spent with him is beautifully described below in an appendix she attached to the “Self-Determination in Mesopotamia” paper and sent to Paris.
Political Views of the Naqib of Baghdad
I went by appointment to see the Naqib on the morning of February
6th in order to bid him farewell, as I was leaving on the 8th for England. I arrived at the house earlier than he expected and was received by his son, Saiyid Hashim, with whom I sat talking several minutes before the Naqib came in. The Naqib has been living since the occupation in his house opposite the Takiyah of Abdul Qadir, of which he is the head, the house which he usually occupies on the river next to the Residency, having been taken as a billet, with his consent. His domestic arrangements are studiously simple. The room in which he receives visitors is on the first floor, with windows looking into a small garden court planted with orange trees. Hard, upright sofas covered with white calico, are ranged round the wall. In one corner of the room, by the window, where the Naqib sits, there is a small table covered with a white-cloth on which some book or pamphlet is always to be found. The walls are white washed and the room unadorned save by its spotless cleanliness. The Naqib is an old man bowed by years and somewhat crippled by rheumatism. His dress is a long sleeved robe, reaching to the feet, made of white linen in summer and black cloth in winter, and opening over a white linen under robe which is confined at the waist by the folds of a wide white band. On his head be wears a white turban folded round a red tarbush.
At his entrance Saiyid Hashim withdrew and the Naqib gave orders that no visitors were to be admitted. I then told him that I was leaving Baghdad rather earlier than I had intended as I had been summoned to Paris and I added that there were probably minor details, such as decisions as to frontiers where local knowledge might be called for. I instanced the question of the Mutasarrifliq of Dair from which place the ex-Rais Baladiyah had recently arrived with a request that the Mutasarrifliq might be attached to the Mesopotamian State, and I asked the Naqib for his opinion.
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