Letters From Baghdad

by Bell, Gertrude

  [The fortnight's holiday takes her motoring through familiar places full of memories.]

  Yesterday, I motored out along the sandy road, the very familiar road, to Karbala, and reached Major Pulley's house about midday. He had put me up close at hand in Col. Leachman's house, the latter being out in the desert with the Arabs, my very own Arabs, Fahad Bey's tribe, but I can't go to them. And then out through mud and swamp on to the edge of the Syrian Desert, which lifted its yellow shoulder in front of me in a manner so inviting that I could scarcely bear to turn away from it... I had tea in my own house before a wood fire and afterwards received a visit from one of the desert merchants one of the Agail who had somehow heard I was here. I knew one of his brothers in Damascus and another in Bagdad. They come, like all Agail, from Central Arabia, and we sat talking desert gossip for a long time — until I felt again that I could scarcely bear to be so close and not to go in to the tribes. What a welcome Fahad Bey would give me. He's about 2 days away.

  To H.B.

  HILLAH, January 16th, 1918.

  I wrote to you almost at the beginning of my fortnight's holiday and now that I've come almost to the end of it I'll begin another letter. I get back to Bagdad to-morrow and feel very much like one going back to school. I'm not sure that it's a good plan to get out of the cage for a fortnight and enjoy the illusion of days that were almost like a former existence. Certainly I've never realized more keenly than I do now the chains and bonds which war draws about one. I wrote from Karbala, didn't I? I spent three days there, saw many people, was greeted by friends from the desert and had the wildest desire to escape into it and be heard of no more...

  On my way home yesterday I stopped at Babylon, having been asked by Sir Percy to advise about the preservation of antiquities. 'Tempi passati' weigh very heavy there — not that I was thinking of Nebuchadnezzar, nor yet of Alexander, but of the warm welcome I used to find, the good company, the pleasant days spent with dear Koldewey — it's no good trying to think of him as an alien enemy and my heart ached when I stood in the empty dusty little room where Fattuh used to put up my camp furniture and the Germans and I held eager conversation over plans of Babylon or Ukhaidir. What a dreadful world of broken friendships we have created between us.

  To F.B.

  BAGDAD, January 25th, 1918.

  Yesterday I went all over the Civil Hospital with the Municipal doctor, Capt. Carey Evans — he is a son-in-law of Mr Lloyd George. He is doing his work with real intelligence and is full of schemes for the future. ...Medical organization is of the very first importance, not only because there is so much to be done but also because it is so deeply appreciated. It is an invaluable political asset if you choose to look at it from that point of view. Hospitals and dispensaries are the first things the people ask for, and they flock to them, men and women, and don't hesitate to undergo operations or any treatment you please. Capt. C. E. says the standard of vitality is much higher than in Europe; the people here pull through operations which he would not dare to attempt at home. Their nervous system is much more solid. They don't suffer from shock ...

  To H.B. and F.B.

  BAGDAD, January 31st, 1918.

  I have your letters. Also Father's very good and wise piece about Capital and Labour, which I read with profit. A remarkable writer, there can be little doubt.

  ...The price of living here is enormous, and, though I'm rationed, a great many of the necessaries of life have to be bought, such as soap, rice, eggs and sugar, and they are all at preposterous prices. This also means that one has to raise wages. Kind Musa Chalabi, my landlord, has got me out of difficulties with regard to my gardener's family. There have been living in a single mud room, my gardener, his aged father and mother, two brothers, a wife, a sister and all of them came piteously to me for help and support. I couldn't help feeling that my garden was overcrowded, but, with feeble compassion, I didn't like turning them out into the mud. But there came a day when they quarrelled, and I called in Musa Chalabi as arbitrator. He arbitrated with some vigour and the aged father and mother, together with other members of the family, have found other lodgings. I relinquish any personal share in their fortunes.

  I found some irises and some verbenas in a market garden which I used to frequent here, and transferred them to my flower beds. They were very dear, but the joy of them will be worth the price. I have a few pots of violets which provide a tiny bunch for my writing table. Their little blue faces are very friendly and cheerful. I now pursue a happy plan of going out riding or walking every afternoon, generally alone but sometimes in company...There is a great bend in the Tigris below the town which is my favourite resort. It makes a huge peninsula full of gardens and cornfields, and almost empty of soldiers, and there I go and remember that I am really part of Mesopotamia and not part of an army of occupation. The spring is there and colour and life and sound have come with the rains, the sound and colour of the reviving world. We had a tidy drop of rain this week, enough to make 2 days of mud, but we want more. Heaven send it! we are barely up to 2 in. yet and I'm afraid we shall not get our average 6.

  The days I don't ride I generally find myself in the bazaar a mildly expensive form of exercise. To-day, after I had been to see additional houses taken on for the Armenian refugees, I dropped into the new shop of an old acquaintance — he used to have a much nicer poky room in a khan — and came away with a very charming Chinese bowl, a little copper incense burner 300 years old (it has a dated Arabic inscription, a thing I can never resist) and a metal water bottle, not old, but such a good shape. All these metal water jars are lovely, traditional shapes which you may see in any 16th Century Persian miniature. The bowl was cheap for it's good Chinese stuff — no bowl would have been cheaper, but there! even the bowl and the verbenas don't run extravagance into a high figure.

  I rather fear that my friend Thomas Effendi (he's an Armenian) will send me round a pair of rugs to-morrow. Let's hope they won't be good. Talking of rugs, I'm hatching a plan which, though it isn't directly concerned with rugs, touches their place of origin. I have been thinking about schemes for the summer and am rather inclining towards a 3 months' travel in Persian mountains, I should take tents and might very likely land up in Teheran ultimately, and home by Ispahan. The journey home takes at least five weeks, four of them through heat and the monsoon, whereas I can motor in 2 days to Kirmanshah and reach at once a temperate climate. Then motor through great hills to Urumiah perhaps, which is a paradise. Col. Willcox gives the plan his warm approval from a health point of view, but it's great drawback is that I shan't see you this summer. At any rate, when you get this letter, you might telegraph and say what you think, and meantime I'll consider things more closely. I like the Persian idea much better than Baluchistan, for to get there one still has the terrific journey down river and across the Indian Ocean — terrific in June or July heat. It's the thought of getting into camp once more, and being out of doors among mountains that attracts me and also the possibility of being away from people for a while.

  One of the worst drawbacks of the occupation, from the Point of view of the inhabitants of the country, is the requisitioning of houses. I don't see what's to be done, for we haven't time to build and we must be lodged, but it's a terrible hardship to the luckless ejected ones ... I have a clean sheet myself, for my house isn't a house and probably no one but me would think of living in it. (They would be wrong, for it is quite comfortable and the space and freedom of my garden are invaluable boons.) It's certainly very difficult to be popular rulers in war time.

  With which reflexion I'll close, merely adding that I'm very well now and much less thin.

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, February 8th, 1918.

  It is getting quite perceptibly, but pleasantly warmer. I've begun to discard some of the innumerable wraps I wear by day and coverings by night. To-day, with the soft air blowing into my room, I thought of R'ton in February and wondered whether by chance it were snowing with you...It is curious to find how many of the
Bagdad notables are tribesmen, often only settled in the town for the last generation or two. Some sheikh builds himself a town house, sends his sons to school and starts them in a learned profession leading to Government employment. And at once they settle down into citizens. But the tribal links are unbroken. Any sheikh with business in the town looks by right to his kinsman's house for entertainment in the matter of daily meals — a pretty expensive duty it is — and if a member of the town family gets into trouble he will seek sanctuary with the tribe, safe in the assurance that he would never be given up. Several men I know fled to their tribe during the year before the Occupation, when the Ottoman hand was heavy on the Arabs of Bagdad. Most of these are now in our service and their tribal connection makes them all the more useful. We have a few really first-class Arab officials, just as we have found a few really first- class sheikhs who will assume responsibility and preserve order. There are not many of them, but such as there are, are invaluable. And we in our turn have an immense responsibility towards them...We are pledged here. It would be an unthinkable crime to abandon those who have loyally served us. But there! if I write of Arabs I shall write all night.

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, February 15th, 1918.

  ...All the telegrams prepare me for a terrific assault in France. I've also got your address at the Horden meeting which is excellent. It is so full of ideas and of wise appreciations. When I feel stale I think of your wonderfully fresh mind. There's no doubt you are a very remarkable person and I say it quite without prejudice...

  The peace with the Ukraine is the worst thing that has happened, it seems to me. I agree with Lady Macmahon who said she thought the Almighty had shown Himself disappointingly neutral...

  To-day I combined business with pleasure and paid a call on Père Lion, abbot of the French monks, and Père Anaftase who is a Syrian. I went to discuss the buying of MSS. for the Indian Government and the translation of the Shiah traditional books, which is a hobby of my own that I'm pressing on the India Office. You see, the first thing in this Shiah country is that we should have a real understanding of the things that lie at the bottom of the Shiah mind. We all 3 sat together in the parlour overlooking the quiet little monastery court which lies in the heart of Bagdad; we had a delightful talk and as I came home through the incredibly narrow crooked streets — the leaves almost touch overhead and the streets wind in and out of them — I had a warm feeling of being part of it all. And so I am, you know; just as much as I'm part of English surroundings. It's a curious sense to have two native lands and to be wound into this one as with that by long links of associations. It made me content with a decision which I've just taken, not to accompany Sir Percy to Cairo and Jerusalem, where he is going for a Conference. He invited me to come too, and though it would have been most interesting, I'm not necessary and I think I had better stay here now when the weather)s so good and we can work. I shall have to go away in the summer for reasons of health. I'm rather discouraged about Persia because people coming in from there give such terrible accounts of the destitution of the country. You can't travel in a place where there's nothing to eat. England, with Palestine on the way, is another idea, but anyhow there are 3 months still before I need decide. The truth is I have a great longing to see you...

  However many native lands I may have I've only one father and mother anyway and I'm therefore ever your devoted daughter.

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, 22nd February, 1918.

  You will get this letter quicker than all the others because Sir Percy carries it. He is coming home on a hasty mission and will probably only be in England a few days, but I have asked him to communicate with you on his arrival, because I feel sure you will want to see him. Also he will discuss with you my plans for the summer...Anyhow, he will be able to tell you what it is like, and, if I can get home without an unreasonable delay, I think I will probably come...

  Springy's [Sir Cecil Spring Rice] death is just another piece of the old life gone — a life which I can't in imagination carry on into the future...

  Well now, I will finish by writing you an ordinary letter of my doings...

  On Monday afternoon, I had a funny, charming expedition. I borrowed a motor and took my old friend and landlord, Musa Chalabi, with his wife and daughter, to their garden outside Bagdad, five or six miles away. Musa's brother, Shakir, lives there and looks after the farming. It was a ramshackle place, with a couple of big single-storied mud-built houses; refuse heaps scattered around and even inside the courtyard; a dirty, smelly, Arab village, half tent, half reed hut under their walls; but the sun shone on the river bank and growing things and the palm trees, and there were three most darling little children of Shakir's to show me the hens and the puppies and the other wonders... And then we motored home. Musa and his ladies were in the seventh heaven, never, I think, having motored before...

  You know Sir Percy has been an angel of kindness to me always, but he absurdly exaggerates the value of anything I've done here...

  I knew I had another story to tell. To-day there came in to see me one of my travelling companions of 1914. An Arab of the Dulaim tribe, who rode with me for four days when I was going back to Damascus. He was a good guide, and I was glad to see his pleasant face again — as glad as one can be when one of these ghosts of an independent past rises up before one. He set me longing for the desert. The grass is springing there and the black tents flowing with milk, and man and beast prosper.

  To F.B.

  BAGDAD, March 1st, 1918.

  We had a day or two of wind and rain this week after which the world burst into loveliness. I rode directly after the rain through the gardens S. of the town and found them a vision of apricot and peach blossom and brilliant green cornfields. Everything grows together, fruit tree and palm and corn, with a marvellous luxuriance. If only it weren't going presently — and very soon — to be so infernally hot. I have been very busy this week, contributing some chapters to the review of administration here during 1917. It makes a most remarkable story, the truly remarkable part being the way the people have accepted it. The immense energy with which agricultural development has been pushed forward has been of incalculable political value...There is nothing easier to manage than tribes if you'll take advantage of tribal organization and make it the basis of administrative organization. And our people, with their natural inclination to deal with men on their merits, at once establish familiar relations with sheikh and headman and charge them with their right share of work and responsibility. And the men so treated respond wonderfully well — but then they are men, they've got stuff in them and that's all that is necessary...The European news is terribly bad and I see no prospect of an end. The strain on you at home is more than I like to think of. Don't you wonder often when you wake in the morning, how you are to carry on through the day? I wonder often enough how you bear it...

  Yesterday afternoon I went to see one of our new primary schools where the headmaster is a friend of mine. There wasn't a very large attendance. I went round the 3 classes and asked them questions. In the smallest class we held a kind of general intelligence examination and I began by asking who was king of England. One student of history (aged about 7) replied unhesitatingly Chosroes, and another with a better grasp of modern politics amended with Lloyd George. (I don't know whether Father will be able to bear that story!)...The roses in my garden will be out in a week or two and I'm eating my own lettuces, but I'm sorry to say the cabbages have burst into luxuriant yellow flower before they ever became cabbages, so to speak.

  To F.B.

  BAGDAD, March 6th, 1918.

  I'm going away the day after to-morrow down Euphrates again to gather up the remaining threads of tribal information which I want in order to complete my monumental work on Mesopotamian tribes. So if I don't catch a mail next week you'll know why. I'm looking forward to it very much and I hope I shall be able to get the material I want, but it's a difficult job and if one thing's more certain than another, it is that all one write
s on tribes is sure to be full of mistakes. One ought to live for a month or two in each district in order to understand them.

  This afternoon I attended a small function, the opening of a Civil Dispensary in the heart of the town. It has been the darling wish of Capt. Carey Evans to have a dispensary on this side of the river, and it will be infinitely valuable. There's a ward with 6 beds besides accommodation for seeing outpatients. All the notables came, secular and religious; it was most gratifying as well as being most agreeable. I sat in a row with the Qadhi, the Mudir of Church Lands (Muhammadan), the judge of Appeal and so on and so on, and we had tea and talked and were pleased to see one another. The Grand Rabbi, the Prior of the Dominicans, the Mother Superior and representatives of other Christian denominations were there too.