Bell of the Desert

by Alan Gold

  “Not a hundred miles from where we’re sitting, you have the seeds of a future disaster. We’ve got educated Sunni in the towns and illiterate Shi’ite in the countryside to contend with. We’ve got Christians in Mosul who are concerned about their freedom to worship under an Arab regime, we have nomadic tribes who covet the lands and rights of other nomads, and don’t forget there’s a huge Jewish community in Baghdad which is terrified of Arabic rule and the very real prospect of restrictions on synagogues and their right to worship. In fact, they’re so scared of an Arab ruling them they’ve all petitioned for British citizenship. That’ll put the cat among the pigeons in the War Office.”

  MacMunn began to interrupt, but Gertrude was in full flight, and wouldn’t yield to anyone. She barely drew breath, her friends around the table noticed that since the end of the war, she’d become, somehow, more concerned, more manic in her desire to tie up loose ends.

  “And as if all that’s not problem enough,” she continued, “you’ve got those Arabs who want a partnership with the British and those who want to side with the French, you’ve got the same promises made by Britain to the Arabs and the French. Allenby told Colonel Lawrence to make promises about territory when he was leading the Arab revolt, and those will soon come home to roost. An independent Arabic constitutional government has been established in Syria under the kingship of one of Abdullah’s sons, Faisal, which will really irritate the French and which puts the whole Sykes-Picot Agreement back in the melting pot . . . I tell you, George, it’s a bloody disaster, and the mess will soon have to be sorted out, or we’ll have another war on our hands.”

  General MacMunn was concerned her conversation would worry the other ladies at the table, and suggested they retire to the withdrawing room while the men, other army officers and members of the Baghdad British diplomatic staff, smoked their cigars and drank their ports and whiskeys. Gertrude waited until the women had withdrawn, before continuing, “I’m sorry, George, I should have had more sensitivity towards the ladies. I keep forgetting they’re wives and daughters, and not members of the political office.”

  St. John Philby, sitting at the end of the table, quipped, “I was wondering whether you’d stay with the men, or leave with the ladies.”

  Gertrude smiled. “Like Queen Elizabeth when she ascended the throne in 1558,” said Gertrude, “I have the body of a woman, but the heart and mind of a man.”

  George MacMunn asked her to continue. He’d invited the army and political officers and their wives to the dinner party because he wanted everybody to be singing from the same hymn sheet, as he put it, now that the damn war was over. Gertrude had been privy to much correspondence and many dispatches from Whitehall, and so was able to fill in details about the situation the British would be facing now that the hostilities were over.

  She continued, “As you know, I recently had a holiday in Persia, and I regret to say we have problems there which could very well spill over into Mesopotamia. The Persian government almost decided to fight on the side of the Germans at one stage, but fortunately they decided not to. But now we’ve got Bolsheviks from Russia all over the border between Persia and Mesopotamia, and we’ve got disaffected Turks making trouble for us up there, and that imperils our route to India. And the oilfields are also far from safe. I tell you, it’s a bloody mess, and no mistake. That’s why poor Percy Cox was sent to Persia but he’s needed here more urgently than he’s needed there. This is the place where we need a shrewd and sophisticated mind like Percy’s.”

  An orderly knocked on the door and asked for permission to wheel in another trolley full of liquors and spirits. The room fell into silence as he placed the carafes and decanters on the table. When he left, Gertrude continued, “All of these issues could have been resolved if Percy hadn’t been told to go sort out Persia. He has to be recalled to Mesopotamia, and he has to be named British High Commissioner, because everyone admires and respects him, and he needs to be given five years to advise an Arab government here on transition. But this bloody declaration about self-determination has thrown a large and unhelpful spanner into the works. It’s all too bad, really. There has to be time for things to settle down before we can even contemplate handing over rule to the Arabs. If we pull out now, they’ll be at each other’s throats, and they’ll be massacres on a scale which will make the war we’ve just fought look like a picnic.”

  General MacMunn nodded slowly, finished his whisky, and said, “I’m afraid we’re beneficiaries of the Chinese curse. We’re living in interesting times.”

  ~

  The peace was more frantic for Gertrude than the war. During the conflict with the Ottoman Turks, she had been hellishly busy, working out logistics, placements, treaties, and advice to the War Office, working eighteen hours and more every day while eating bad wartime food and grabbing whatever she could from the Mess canteen. She’d spent much of her time cajoling tribal leaders and emirs into siding with the British, reassuring them that once the war was over, she would ensure a leader arose whom they would follow and revive the days of the Caliphate.

  And now the peace was here, she was given increasing responsibility to deal with the manifold problems besetting the land which once was Mesopotamia, but which more and more people, especially natives, were now beginning to call The Iraq, though why the land between the rivers should be named after an obscure 7th century settlement of little or no consequence was beyond her. Maybe it was all about wiping the slate clean, getting rid of the Greek name and the European influence, and making everything Arabic, especially the name of the country.

  Gertrude spent whole days with vast numbers of women who came to see her to seek advice . . . women who were Muslim, Jewish or Christian. Now that the war was over and the Ottoman overlords had retreated back to Constantinople, there was a surge of optimism that the oppressive hand of men, of mullahs and ayatollahs and those who policed shariah law so vehemently, might be loosened. Women who were shrouded in niqabs so their faces could only be seen by their husbands suddenly appeared in the streets wearing a simple hijab. Women who walked two steps behind their husband and sons were suddenly demanding the right to their own piece of roadway. And strangest of all were the women who left their houses with their husband’s permission, not to do the shopping, but to walk around in full view of everybody and breathe in the heady air of freedom.

  All the women who came to see her wanted to be freed from the constraints of their upbringing and tradition, and Gertrude arranged with a visiting pedagogical expert sent out by the government from England to create an entire syllabus for the education of Iraqi girls. The more women with whom she spoke, the more she was coming to the conclusion that Arabia could only become a single and united nation if women were included in its running. Not, perhaps, in a governmental or bureaucratic function, but freed from their households and the domination of their male relatives to enter the workforce, and labor side by side with men. Great Britain had adjusted rapidly to women working in factories, driving ambulances and trains and doing the jobs which their menfolk fighting on the battlefronts had once done. Was it too much to hope that Arabic men would cast off the sexual chauvinism which had denied half the Arab population their rights, and invest in their women, the greatest assets of their nations? Unfortunately, knowing the thousands of Arabs she’d dealt with over the years, she seriously doubted Arabia was ready for the sort of cultural transition and sexual revolution which was taking place in the West. But if the dream of a united Arab nation was slipping away from her because of the realpolitik of bureaucrats and politicians in London and Paris, then perhaps part of her lifelong goal could still be realized—to create an Arabia in which women held equal status to men.

  Increasingly her work was to create the borders for the new nation over which the British, for the time being, had taken control. The Foreign Office had just announced a new state, but hadn’t fixed the borders. She had been asked by Whitehall to study the maps of Persia, Turkey, Syria, Kuwait, and Mesopotamia and
advise them on where the new nation should be located.

  She found herself continually shaking her head. What she’d been asked to define would be a nightmare to control, no matter who was ultimately put in charge. Because of the fertility of the land between the rivers and other factors which were written as coded and veiled hints—as though she didn’t know everything about the country—the British Foreign Office wanted the new nation to include Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the middle, and Basrah in the south. But Mosul was Kurdish, and the Kurds hated the Sunni Arabs with a vengeance. Not only that, but because Mosul was the ancient Nineveh, the city of Jonah, it was also sacred to the Jews, and there was a significant Jewish community, a synagogue, and much more Hebraic culture. Baghdad and the center of the new land was Sunni, and the Sunni Muslims hated the southern Shi’ites so much they had engaged on massacring them over the ages, and Basrah was the center of the Shi’ite Muslims and the Marsh Arabs in the Shatt al Arab waterway at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and they would slit a Sunni’s throat rather than talk to him.

  To put the three utterly disparate portions of Mesopotamia together within the one border was madness. It would create an uncontrollable entity. But as she sat for long hours going through every possible permutation and examining the reality of the situation, it quickly dawned on Gertrude that it was worse than her British masters could possibly have imagined. Mesopotamia had always been a fabulously rich country and a major grain and fruit producer. But that was on top of the surface. That was where the water flowed, the wind blew, and the sun shone. But deep in the bowels of the Earth, like a stream of rich black blood which seemed to power the muscles of the nation, was what appeared to be a vast and limitless reserve of oil. And that, once it was proven, would create tectonic divisions between tribes and peoples and religions. It was a nightmare, and only a Prophet like Moses or Mohammed had the capacity to put such a disparate collection of tribes together and make them into a nation.

  Yet those were her orders. She knew every inch of the lands she was supposed to cobble together, and more than the lands, she knew the people, which was why she’d been asked to undertake the task.

  Engrossed in her work, surrounded by red and blue pens and marking lines on maps, she was interrupted by General MacMunn, who knocked tentatively on her office door, and coughed. Without looking up to see who was there, Gertrude smiled, and said, “Come in George.”

  She knew it was him, because the rest of her colleagues and superiors weren’t so polite as to knock, they barged in regardless of what she was doing, and demanded answers to their questions.

  “Have you got a moment, m’dear?” he asked tentatively.

  “I have no moments whatsoever to spare, George. I’m playing God, inventing a country which it’s impossible to invent. But for you, George, I’ll play God yet again and I’ll invent some time. What can I do for you?”

  Diffidently, he said, “You’re a writer. You’ve written books and things. Published them with respectable publishers, had them on sale in bookshops and all that stuff.”

  She put down her pens, and poured him a whisky. “And . . . ?”

  “And, well, look, this is a bit difficult, but . . .”

  She knew where the conversation was going, and took pity on him. “Allenby is writing his memoirs. Haig is too, and you think you should write an account of your wartime experiences.”

  “Good God, how did you know?” he asked, accepting the whisky and grinning sheepishly.

  “Because I’m playing God, and I’m omniscient. Because, George dearest, there is nothing in this world I don’t know. And because your wife whispered into my ear yesterday over lunch, ‘try to persuade him not to write his memoirs’.”

  “Madeleine said that to you?”

  Gertrude nodded. “It’s not that she doesn’t want you to be recognised for your wonderful achievements in Palestine and here in Mesopotamia. It’s just that she’s seen virtually nothing of you for the past four years, and she wants you to herself. She’s terrified you’ll lock yourself away in a closet scribbling away at your exploits and she’ll spend another four years alone.”

  MacMunn, a portly man with a florid face and a bushy moustache, asked simply, “And do you agree with her?”

  Gertrude thought for a moment before responding. “Partly. But I don’t see why you can’t write your thoughts down when you come home from a picnic in the Home Counties, or a day at the races. I suppose I’m lucky, because writing comes naturally to me. I write voluminous reports on the situation here which I send to Whitehall, I write a daily diary for myself, I write daily to my mother and father and friends in England. For me to write a memoir wouldn’t be such a monumental task as it might be for some general who only knows how to sign orders and requisition slips.”

  “Why don’t you write your memoirs?” he asked. “After all, my dear, you’ve done more than just about anybody in this entire theater to hasten the end of the war. Look at the people you’ve met, the deals you’ve struck, the places you’ve seen which no other white person has been privileged to gaze upon.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said firmly. “That dreadful Mr. Lowell Thomas, the American reporter, tried to get me to be the subject of an article he wanted to write for Life magazine. I said no flatly. I want my privacy and I don’t want people to know what I’m doing, or with whom I’m doing it.”

  “So he gave all the publicity to that damn Lawrence,” snorted MacMunn.

  “Colonel Lawrence deserved it,” she said. “Look what he achieved. He rallied the Arabs into a wonderful fighting force, he took Aqaba and got to Damascus and he prevented the Turks from being supplied so they became much less effective.”

  “Tosh!” hissed MacMunn. “Everybody here knows it was you who supplied him with all the intelligence and information he needed to do his job. All those conversations you had with the Arab leaders and sheiks and emirs, persuading and enticing them to get their men to join with Lawrence’s army. Lawrence only acted as a figurehead and blew up a few trains. If it hadn’t been for you and your relationship with the Arabs, there wouldn’t have been a revolt. You were the brains, he was just the brawn.”

  “Not that I agree with you, but if it were the case, then it’s best left unsaid. Let Lawrence bask in the limelight. Let him become a celebrity. I’ve never sought fame and glory.”

  “But if anybody deserves fame and glory, it’s you. It’s incumbent on you to let the world know what really happened. I think anybody instrumental in the cause of the damnable war, on any front, deserves to put his or her point of view. That’s why I want to write my memoirs. All I want is to publish a little book which sets the record straight about the war we British fought in Palestine and here, and to explain my role in it. Is that too much to ask?”

  “For you, no. For me, yes. I’m a very private person, George, and I want to stay that way.”

  He shook his head and stood to leave. “Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” she said. “I’ll contact my publisher in England, and tell him I’ve managed to persuade one of the great war heroes, General MacMunn, to write his account of the war in the Middle East. If he writes to you and commissions the manuscript, maybe that’ll change Madeleine’s mind.”

  He sat down again with a thump. “Good God, are you willing to do that?”

  “Of course, my dear, as soon as I get this damnable Act of God behind me, and I’ve invented a country which almost certainly shouldn’t be invented.”

  MacMunn looked at the map. “Still having problems with the borders?”

  “Not so much problems, because I know virtually every dry creek bed and mountain pass. No, it’s trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle with pieces which aren’t made to fit together. Of course I can draw lines around this or that and call whatever is inside Iraq, but when the people I’ve encircled begin to understand what they’ve got themselves into, there’ll be hell to pay. I tell you, George, it’ll take a ruler with the skill of Solomon to r
un this country.”

  “And look what happened to Solomon’s Israel after he died. The country split in two and the northern half was captured by the Mesopotamians. Chaos,” mused MacMunn.

  Gertrude nodded. “Come on,” she said, putting down her pens with determination. “Let go for a drink.”

  ~

  Of the many different people who came in to see Gertrude while she was attempting to determine the borders of the new Iraq, the most fascinating was one she called Haji Naji, both because the name amused her, and because Emir Ibrahim Abd Binalb bin Naji had been on the Hajj to Mecca and was entitled to style himself as a man who had completed the injunction to all Muslims.

  One of the reasons she so liked the occasional visit from Haji Naji was because he grew the most sumptuous oranges and limes, and always gave her a case whenever he visited her. Now that the war was over, his visits were more frequent.

  Haji Naji was an old man, one who was feared by his enemies, but beloved by his clan. He had twenty-seven children, twelve of them boys and men whom he loved and respected, the remaining fifteen girls and women whom he regretted having as being the unworthy offspring of a great leader.

  Haji Naji often visited Gertrude in her office in the Residency with its vaulted ceilings and oaken floors, cool in the summer and often cold in the winter. When he did, she always made time to see him, regardless of the other work or appointments she might have in her diary. For more than anybody in Mesopotamia, Haji Naji was the source of all knowledge, a man of strong opinions and elegant thinking.