Letters From Baghdad

by Bell, Gertrude

  One of the joys of my new sitting-room will be that it has a fireplace...To-day Percy Loraine arrived on his way to Persia. After lunch he and I retired to my office and had a real talk. I came home at tea-time to prepare for my own dinner party, the foundation of which was three of the Kirkuk delegates. I had just had time to get my room into some sort of order when at 5:30 (the time of the dinner party being 7:30) the first of my guests arrived...

  CHAPTER XXII

  1922-23 - BAGDAD

  To H.B.

  January 2, 1922.

  I've been having an exceptionally horrid Christmas, as I will now recount. Captain Clayton, Saiyid Hussain and I intended to go to Baqubah on Dec. 23. The day looked very threatening, however we decided by telephone that we would start. In the afternoon the weather looked so bad that we gave up our scheme altogether. So there I was landed with Christmas holidays with nothing to do and nowhere to go, disgustingly cold and wet weather and an increasing cold which gradually developed into the worst I've ever had. It's still very bad. Mr. Tod and Major Wilkinson came to lunch with me on Saturday, which was cheerful, and Nuri Said on Christmas day, after which I went to tea with the King — he lives a long way outside the town, up river, and the road was indescribable; however, I succeeded in getting there and we had the usual delightful talk ... On Wednesday the damnable holidays were over — but not my cold. I went to the office and made it so much worse that I had to spend Thursday indoors ...I went to the office Friday morning and came back to lunch feeling unutterably ill...

  It is so uncheerful sitting by one's self on New Year's Eve. They had an immense party for a Fancy Dress Ball to which I didn't go nor was I in fancy dress — unless to dine in one's fur coat is fancy dress. I didn't enjoy it very much because I was feeling so miserable, and when they went to the ball I went home. However, I can't complain of any loneliness of New Year's Day. My first callers arrived at 7:30 a.m. while I was still in bed. They were Haji Naji and a sheikh of the Dulaim. Accordingly I invited them to breakfast ...I wish you could have observed even for a minute my breakfast party — I wrapped up in furs and they in their brown cloaks ...After that I had an uninterrupted stream of visitors whom I regaled on coffee and chocolates until 1:15 when the last of them fortunately left, and I went out to lunch with the Joyces, feeling more dead than alive. After I came back the throng set in again till 6 o'clock when I closed my doors for a moment's breathing space before dinner. I dined with Sir Aylmer who had asked the King and the eldest son of the Naqib and Hadoud Pasha, Mr. Tod and some of the G.H.Q. staff and Sir John Davidson, a retired Major General and M.P.

  He is coming to have a heart to heart talk with me one of these days. The dinner was a huge success. Faisal took me in and I must say I enjoyed myself mightily too. It is so pleasant and friendly at the General's house — everyone is at their ease and he is such a kind and delightful host.

  Jan. 6th.

  I am a trifle better and though far from well I begin to think I may ultimately recover.

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, Jan. 30th, 1922.

  During the last fortnight I've taken my health seriously in hand. I really was dreadfully run down and nearly expired of fatigue at the end of a morning in the office so I've firmly Come away at 1 p.m. or thereabouts, lunched at home or with Mr. Cornwallis, the Joyces or any one else I wanted to see and then gone out riding till tea time. The weather has been delicious and this programme has been just what I wanted for it has got me out every afternoon into the sun and air. Never in my experience of Iraq has there been such a spring ...To-day I rode through the Dairy Farm and back by the gardens bordering the Tigris. Man and beast were rejoicing in the abundance of green — "By God, I've never seen the like!" I stopped to say to the shepherds. And they, "It is the mercy of God and your presence Khatun."

  How I love their darling phrases: you know, Father, it's shocking how the East has wound itself round my heart till I don't know which is me and which is it. I never lose the sense of it. I'm acutely conscious always of its charm and grace which do not seem to wear thin with familiarity. I'm more a citizen of Bagdad than many a Bagdadi born, and I'll wager that no Bagdadi cares more, or half so much, for the beauty of the river or the palm gardens, or clings more closely to the rights of citizenship which I have acquired...

  An excellent Municipal Council has been returned at Basrah but what pleases me almost most is that at Kirkuk the former Mayor who is a great ally of mine, had an immense majority, though the Turkish party pulled every possible string against him, including an appeal to pan-Islamic sentiment ...It will be very interesting to see what the Shah makes of it ...

  My new room is so nice. It's also an indescribable blessing to have a real fireplace with a fire burning in it. My house has a wonderful feeling of spaciousness in a modest way. Rishan loves the fire even more than I do. You know, Father, I shall never be content till you come out again — I want you to see the King and my new room and everything. I think your next visit should be in the spring of 1923 — I'll come to Aleppo to meet you, and take you here by motor...

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, Feb. 16th, 1922.

  I want to tell you, just you, who know and understand everything, that I'm acutely conscious of how much life has given me. I've gone back now to the wild feeling of joy in existence — I'm happy in feeling that I've got the love and confidence of a whole nation, a very wonderful and absorbing thing — almost too absorbing perhaps. You must forgive me if it seems to preoccupy me too much — it doesn't really divide me from you, for one of the greatest pleasures is to tell you all about it, in the certainty that you will sympathise. I don't for a moment suppose that I can make much difference to our ultimate relations with the Arabs and with Asia, but for the time I'm one of the factors in the game. I can't think why all these people here turn to me for comfort and encouragement; if I weren't here they would find someone else, of course, but being accustomed to come to me, they come. And in their comfort I find my own. I remember your saying to me once that the older one grows the more one lives in other people's lives. Well, I've got plenty of lives to live in, haven't I? And perhaps after all, it has been best this way. At any rate, as it had to be this way, I don't now regret it.

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, Feb. 16th, 1922.

  The day after I wrote to you I went out with Mr. Thomson to see the Yusufiyah canal. We had a delightful day. We motored to Mahmudivah, half way to Hillah where we found our horses. Then with a local sheikh and a few outsiders we rode up the canal. It was an enchanting ride for this wonderful spring has covered the world with verdure ...I must tell you the Yusufiyah is one of the oldest canals in the world. It was the Babylonian Nahr Malka, Julian sailed down it to Ctesiphon and the Abbassids re-dug it. Consequently there are great early Babylonian mounds all along it. Where we crossed by the bridge we were four miles from Tel Abn Habbah, which was Sippa and as we came back we rode up on to a wonderful mound called Tel Dair. It was completely covered with potsherds and bits of brick and I picked up a half brick with an inscription in early Babylonian characters — which was rather interesting because so far as I know nothing earlier than Nebuchadnezzar has been noted there...

  Faisal sent for me that day, but as I was out I telephoned a day or two later to ask if I might come to tea. We had a tremendous talk. He is most delightful and certainly often most amazing. I caught myself up in the middle of discussion and said to him that it was almost impossible to believe that while he had been born in Mecca and educated at Constantinople and I in England and educated at Oxford there was no difference whatever in our points of view.

  Already the country is finding its feet. The stable people, the big sheikhs and nobles relying on our support of Faisal, are rallying round him and are combined. They are going to stand no nonsense from extremists and tub-thumpers...

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, Feb. 26, 1922.

  I took the King to see the apricot blossom in Karradah. I hadn't warned Haji Naji beforehand and he
unfortunately wasn't there, but the King and all his court were much impressed by the beautiful way the gardens were kept and very envious of the seedling fruit trees. One of Haji Naji's sons was there and said he would send him anything he wanted. The King's need for fruit trees is that he has bought a large bit of the Dairy Farm which he intends to make into a park...

  I'm very glad. First of all because it's evidence of his taking root and secondly because it brings him up against different sorts of people.

  Mr. Cooke and I sat long talking over the fire and we agreed that there couldn't be anything in the world more absorbing than to be in the very heart of intellectual Asia — to be watching and encouraging the effort to overmaster secular prejudices. Heaven knows their wits are acute enough; it's moral courage that's lacking to throw off the long domination of the theocratic ordinance in human affairs which from a valuable referent has become a cord of strangulation. After all it has taken us Europeans centuries to win through...

  To turn to matters of minor importance, I'm largely living on delicious truffles. One usually gets them in from the desert at this time of the year but I've never known them in such abundance as in this extraordinarily beautiful spring. Daffodils, marigolds and wall-flowers are blooming in my garden and the rose trees coming into bud.

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, March 12th, 1922.

  I spent Tuesday afternoon with the King and we had an immense talk, partly owing to the nearness of general elections, about the formation of political parties. He was anxious — I really think that in this country it would be best — that people of different opinions should find a platform of agreement and start a single party with a combined policy for the election. I've unexpectedly been thrown into the thick of it during the last few days. On Thursday the extremists petitioned the interior for permission to form a party...

  It is pretty clear that the extremists are alarmed by the determined attitude of the moderates and I fancy they have every reason for being so...

  Sir Percy has just been in to give his advice on the question of the parties, namely that if the two parties can't come to an agreement the moderates are bound to go ahead on their own lines ...It is deeply interesting but rather agonizing to be taking so decisive a share in all this. One feels that a wrong step may do a great deal of harm...

  It is just on the cards that I may have to come back here after our time together in Palestine, but I don't think it is very likely. You see my feeling is that I can't very well leave my friends here stranded at such a crucial moment, for at least I serve as a sort of clearing house for them. But in the course of the next few weeks things may have shaped themselves... [Same letter continued.]

  March 14th. The party question is still undecided and I haven't heard anything about it to-day. Meantime the wind is up in another quarter. For some time past letters have been passing between Sir Percy and Ibn Saud. The conquest of Hayil by the latter in November makes his frontiers continuous with the Iraq. Sir Percy is anxious to arrange a treaty between him and Faisal — on the basis that the desert edges into which our shepherds go down with their flocks in the spring shall be included in Iraq — Ibn Saud wants to claim all the desert as his and has recently been exacting tribute from our shepherds.

  Finally matters came to a head on the 11th when Ibn Saud's People attacked in immense force a camel corps recently organised by the King to protect our frontiers and routed them. To-day the Akhwan fired on an aeroplane reconnaissance and orders were issued that their camp was to be bombed. Ibn Saud may of course repudiate the action of his followers; that's the best that can happen, for otherwise we're practically at war with him. Life in this country is not lacking in incident ...

  Thanks to your sending me the cutting from the Times by air mail, my letter was published in one of the vernacular papers to-day and was the subject of much rejoicing to-night at the palace. It has made a good effect and I hope will restore my credit a little with the extremists who, I hear, regard me as exceedingly severe. Well, if it's severity to try and stop them from pitching headlong into a gulf of wild nationalist ambition, I am.

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, March 30th, 1922.

  During the last fortnight I have come definitely to the conclusion that I can't go on leave this summer. Things are too much in the melting pot ... I'm not going to telegraph to you because it might prevent you from coming out and I not only want dreadfully to see you but also the little holiday will be immensely to the good. I shall very likely fly over on the 29th April, but you are not to mention this to anyone. Also it's not certain. I may come by motor via Aleppo in which case I should make to be in Jerusalem a day before you so as to welcome you. If I fly back I should leave Ramleh On May 27th so that I should come down to Egypt with you and see you off. Since I made up my mind I've been feeling rather homesick but I haven't any doubt I'm doing what I ought to do. We've put our hand to this plough and at any rate Sir Percy thinks that I'm some help to him in his difficult furrow. I'm perfectly well and I shall go up to Sulaimani for a month in the middle of the summer. I might possibly come home for a bit in the autumn so that it would only be six months difference. I hope you and Mother and Maurice won't be much disappointed. I do love you so much and I hate staying away so long.

  Well now we come to the sordid but serious question of clothes — of course, I've made no provision for the summer. I've written to Marte (78 Grosvenor Street) by this mail ,telling her that if she is in time to catch you, she is to send out by you two washing gowns, an evening gown and a hat ...if, however, you have left before this letter arrives Mother will open it and will tell Marte to post things I've asked her to send me as quickly as she can so that I may find them here if possible when I get back. But please if you possibly can bring a hat. Elsa might choose it if the combination with Marte fails — she is on the telephone, by the way — a ribbon hat, black or mauvy blue and mushroom in shape. There! You'll do your best, I feel sure, and if you can't do anything I must just wear the topee I shall come over in...

  I've received a lovely photograph of Hugo's wedding. I think that is partly what made me feel homesick. You all look such darlings and my two sisters so especially delightful.

  [Hugo's marriage to Frances Morkill took place on November 24th, 1922, at Kirby Malham in the West Riding of Yorkshire.]

  To F.B.

  BAGDAD, April 28th, 1922.

  I have just telegraphed to Father at Jerusalem telling him that I'm coming over by air on the 29th and suggesting that he should meet me at Amman on that day...

  [This meeting with her father took place most successfully, as arranged. He had arrived at Jerusalem, and then gone on to Amman, where he received a telephone message to say that the two official aeroplanes, in one of which Gertrude was flying, had left Bagdad at 9 a.m. and were due to arrive at Ziza between 11 and 12. He at once motored to Ziza and stood with the officials who were awaiting the aeroplanes, looking out into the Eastern sky. It was an exciting moment when two small specks first appeared on the horizon and then came to a pause over the heads of the expectant group. The planes landed beautifully, Gertrude alighted and fell into her father's arms. For a little while she was dizzy, and unable to hear, then in a short time she completely recovered. Her father then told her that he and she had been invited to dine with Abdullah King Faisal's brother, the Emir of Transjordania, who' was then encamped near Amman, but that he had declined as he did not suppose that she would feel able to do so after her long flight. But Gertrude entirely repudiated the idea of refusing, got out her evening clothes, and they went to dinner with the Emir and enjoyed themselves very much.]

  To F.B.

  JERUSALEM, May 10th, 1922.

  I can't tell you what a wonderful time we have had. The joy of being with Father in these surroundings and of having his amazingly acute and perceptive mind to help one in coming to conclusions! Was there ever anyone who combined as he does such wealth of experience with so fresh and vital an outlook on all and everything that he encounte
rs? And isn't he the most delicious companion with his humanness and his charming humour and his appreciation of beauty and history and birds and flowers and all that ever was the biggest thing to the least. I shall so dreadfully miss him when we part and I do very much regret that I'm not coming home to you, Maurice and my sisters. It's an extraordinary sense of rest, peace and understanding that one gets when one is with one's own family and it's just that which I miss so much — the intimacy and confidence in our love for one another. But though I feel so much drawn to home and you, I know I couldn't have left Iraq happily at this moment. I should always have felt that I had left my job at a moment when I might and very likely would be needed if anything untoward had happened, though I know I couldn't have made much difference, I should have imagined that just the little I could have done might have helped to turn the scale...

  Marte sent me the most excellent clothes, bless her — lovely embroidered muslin gowns to wear during the summer.

  To H.B.

  BAGDAD, Thursday, May 18th, 1922.

  We did the journey in six hours, coming down at For amadi a quarter of an hour to refill. It wasn't really quite as comfortable as Vickers-Vimy though so much quicker...the wind being slightly in the North was very battering on the left side. Guided, however, by the gesticulation of my charming pilot, Mr. Brunton, I succeeded in following the motor track across the desert and keeping count of the landing grounds, so that I knew exactly where we were all the time...We flew very high, 6,000 to 7,000 feet and very fast, 100 to 110 miles an hour. Just before we reached Ramadi it rained a little, and when we got in we found it quite cool. Our whole journey was most agreeable and I fear I've become the confirmed aviator...

  I went to tea with the King. I took him your letter with which he was very much pleased, and told him all about Abdullah and Palestine and Syria. He talked very delightfully about his feeling that as long as he had our confidence nothing mattered. I said that I had come back with the conviction that we were the only Arab province which was set in the right path, and that if we failed here, which I hoped was unthinkable, it would be the end of Arab aspirations.